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Australia's human prehistory through more than 40,000 years is the challenging theme of this masterly survey. John Mulvaney and Johan Kamminga bring together the discoveries and often controversial interpretations of six decades of archaeological research to reveal that across this island continent, in the face of contrasting environments and changing climates, human responses produced many cultures, languages and life styles.
The Old World is usually credited with the origins of art and spirituality. Recent discoveries, however, prove that symbolic rock art and complex burial rites also existed in Australia at challengingly early times. The authors evaluate the dating evidence upon which Australia's human story before 1788 is reconstructed. They review diverse topics, such as the controversy about the time people first arrived on the continent's northern coast, the extinction of marsupial megafauna and the diversity of Aboriginal rock art.
Prehistory of Australia explains why Aboriginal Australia is recognised today for its significance in global prehistory and why so many of its archaeological places have merited World Heritage listing.
Table des matières
Preface
1 The past uncovered and its ownership
2 The diversity of surviving traces
3 Dating the past
4 Changing landscapes
5 People, language and society
6 Subsistence and reciprocity
7 Seafarers to Sahul
8 Sahul: a Pleistocene continent
9 The initial colonisation
10 The original Australians
11 Pleistocene settlement
12 Conquest of the deserts
13 Pleistocene artefacts
14 Holocene stone tool innovations
15 Theories and models
16 People of the coast
17 Regional challenges and responses
18 Island settlement
19 Tasmania
20 Art on rock
21 Rock art of temperate Australia
22 Rock art of trpoical Australia
23 Asian and European newcomers
Glossary
Endnotes
References
Index
A propos de l'auteur
John Mulvaney is the founder of Australian archaeology, a frequent media commentator on current issues and the only living Australian public intellectual to have had a book entirely devoted to his work. After 40 years of university teaching and advising governments, he remains a highly respected yet controversial activist.
Johan Kamminga is a consultant archaeologist, chosen by Mulvaney to assist him in surveying the last three decades of discovery.
Résumé
A superb synthesis of human prehistory, across a continent and 400 centuries
