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Diagrams showing skeletal features and tooth structure and a glossary of technical terms are included.
Australia's human prehistory through more than 40,000 years is the theme of this survey. The authors bring together the discoveries and often controversial interpretations of six decades of archaeological research to reveal that across the continent, human responses produced many cultures.
Peter Hiscock presents an introduction to the archaeology of Australia from prehistoric times to the 18th century AD.
Step back to a time when giant goannas and marsupial lions stalked the Australian bush. Imagine herds of two-tonne Diprotodon roaming the plains, and flocks of flightless ducks bigger than emus striding across the shallow inland sea.
Subtitled `The dynamics of prehistoric adaptations within the arid zone of Australia' this book reports on the author's research within the semitropical desertlands at the interphase of the Little and Great Sandy Deserts of north-western Australia.
This book challenges traditional perceptions of Australian Aboriginal prehistory: that the environment is the major determinant of hunter-gatherers; that Aborigines were egalitarian and culturally homogeneous and therefore experienced few economic and demographic changes. Harry Lourandos argues that the social and economic processes of hunter-gatherers were complex and that the prehistoric period was dynamic and revolutionary. Lourandos presents prehistoric data, reviews archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence, and analyses environmental, demographic and socially-oriented perspectives - drawing from them an original hypothesis. He addresses initial colonisation, the role of Tasmanian Aborigines, the role of fire, faunal extinctions, the intensification debate, horticultural origins, plant exploitation, and the significance of Australian prehistory in the study of other prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies.
The vast continent of Australia was settled in two main streams, far apart in time and origin. The first came ashore some 50,000 years ago when the islands of Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea were one. The second began to arrive from Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. Each had to come to terms with the land they found, and each had to make sense of the other. The long Aboriginal occupation of Australia witnessed spectacular changes. The rising of the seas isolated the continent and preserved a nomadic way of life, while agriculture was revolutionising other parts of the world. Over millennia, the Aboriginal people mastered the land's climates, seasons and resources. Traditional Aboriginal life came under threat the moment Europeans crossed the world to plant a new society in an unknown land. That land in turn rewarded, tricked, tantalised and often defeated the new arrivals. The meeting of the two cultures is one of the most difficult and complex meetings in recorded history. In this book Professor Geoffrey Blainey returns first to the subject of his celebrated works on Australian history, Triumph of the Nomads (1975) and A Land Half Won (1980), retelling the story of our history up until 1850 in light of the latest research. He has changed his view about vital aspects of the Indigenous and early British history of this land, and looked at other aspects for the first time. Compelling, groundbreaking and brilliantly readable, The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia is the first instalment of an ambitious two-part work, and the culmination of the lifework of Australia's most prolific and wide-ranging historian. 'Absorbing and important ... the first volume of an ambitious work on the peopling of this continent from its human origins to our own day...bold, rich, wise, authioritative and questioning.' Peter Stanley, The Age 'The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia situates pre-invasion Aboriginal society as a triumphant culture with much to celebrate.' John Maynard, The Age 'Blainey has produced a book that all Australians could and, dare I say it, should read . . . I very much look forward to the next instalment of his bold, rich, wise, wry, authoritative and questioning trilogy.' Canberra Times 'This is the real story of Australia, at last.' Courier Mail 'Blainey delivers a brilliant narrative on Australia's settlement.' Australian Geographic
Australia is the last continent to be settled by Europeans, but it also sustains a people and a culture tens of thousands years old. For much of the past 200 years the newcomers have sought to replace the old with the new. This book tells how they imposed themselves on the land, and brought technology, institutions and ideas to make it their own. It relates the advance from penal colony to a prosperous free nation and illustrates how, as a nation created by waves of newcomers, the search for binding traditions was long frustrated by the feeling of rootlessness, until it came to terms with its origins. The third edition of this acclaimed book recounts the key factors - social, economic and political - that have shaped modern-day Australia. It covers the rise and fall of the Howard government, the 2007 election and the apology to the stolen generation. More than ever before, Australians draw on the past to understand their future.
In Queensland, in northeast Australia, lies one of the most significant fossil deposits in the world—Riversleigh. Here, the remains of many thousands of weird and wonderful prehistoric animals have been superbly preserved in the limestone outcrops. There are marsupial lions, carnivorous kangaroos, 23-foot long pythons, primitive platypuses, and early ancestors of the now extinct Tasmanian tiger. So important is this site to our understanding of what has happened to Australia and its living cargo over the last 25 million years that Riversleigh has been inscribed on the World Heritage List. Michael Archer, Suzanne J. Hand, and Henk Godthelp, the principal scientists on a remarkable excavation since 1976, explain the vast environmental and geographic changes that have occurred in this area since Australia broke away from the supercontinent of Gondwana, and how the animals on board this continental raft evolved through the ages. Photographs and evocative artwork bring to life the teeming tropical world that once existed in the now arid wastes of Riversleigh, and the authors discuss some of the unusual techniques used on a dig. They describe how to recognize fossils, how to date them, and how to reconstruct extinct animals from them. Originally published as Riversleigh: The Story of Animals in Ancient Rainforests of Inland Australia, this award-winning book is being issued for the first time in the United States.