Archaeology of Aboriginal Australia

During the past thirty years the human history of the Australian continent has become the object of intense national and international interest. These years have been the 'decades of discovery', featuring fieldwork and analyses which have rewritten the distant past of Australia almost on a yearly basis. One measure of the international significance of these discoveries is the listing of three great archaeological provinces (Kakadu, Lake Mungo, and South West Tasmania) on the World Heritage Register. The Archaeology of Aboriginal Australia seeks to convey a sense of the excitement and significance of the research undertaken during the 'decades of discovery'. The material presented here--specially commissioned essays and key published articles by new and established scholars--focuses on the themes and issues which continue to attract the most attention among archaeologists: * the antiquity of the human settlement of Australia * patterns of colonisation * the significance of change in Aboriginal society in the late prehistoric period * the usefulness of reconstructions of past ecological systems in understanding the hist