Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

This is a limestone cave in the valley of the north-flowing Forth River in the central highlands, east of Mackintosh 90/1 Cave and Cradle Mountain, and northwest or Warragarra Shelter. Occupation at this site was continuous from about 34,000 to 780 years ago. Thumbnail scrapers, but no wallaby bones, have been found between 18,000 and 10,000 years ago. Occupation density is low between 10,000 and 3,000 years ago, artefact numbers increasing at about 3,000 years ago, as occurred at Warragarra Shelter.

This is the only known site in Tasmania where undisturbed occupation deposits continued throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene.

Links

1. Tasmania: archaeological and palaeo-ecological perspectives

2. The Tasmanians: Part 8b: Archaeology and the Oldest Tasmanians

Sources & Further reading

Josephine Flood, Archaeology of the Dreamtime, J.B. Publishing, 2004