Nomads in Archaeology addresses the problem of how to study mobile peoples using archaeological techniques. It therefore deals not only with the prehistory and archaeology of nomads but also with current issues in theory and methodology, particularly the concept of 'site structure'. This is the first volume to be devoted exclusively to nomad archaeology. It includes sections on the history and origins of pastoral nomad societies, the economics of pastoralism, social organisation of pastoral communities and the 'visibility threshold' of nomad material culture. Examples and case studies are drawn from field work and published sources primarily in Turkey and Iran.

We examine the criteria for distingi shing middens from natural shell accumulations, in the light of the Stone's (1992Stone's ( , 1993 hypothesis that large shell mounds, dominated by the bivalve Anadara, in the Weipa area are scrub fowl nests built from shelly chenier ridge deposits that formed by natural géomorphologie processes. Several previous investigators have considered that the same mounds were humanly made. We present fresh field observations from Anadara mounds, scrubfowl nests and beachand chenier-ridge deposits near Weipa, and show how these differ in terms of stratigraphie, textural and compositional characteristics. This evidence, together with the distribution of Anadara mounds on different substrates ranging from upper intertidal mudflats to lateritic regolith, very strongly indicates that the large shell mounds were not built by scrub fowls from natural coastal deposits, and we conclude that humans were responsible for their accumulation.

The following is a preliminary report on archaeological work undertaken in September and October 1985 in conjunction with an ethnographic mapping project carried out by the South Australian Museum and Arukun Shire Council. The mapping project, which has continued in some form for the past 15 years, was set up by anthropologists Peter Sutton and John von Sturmer along with the traditional owners of clan estates. As this work, and similar work in eastern Cape York, has had as one of its primary aims the elucidation of traditional patterns of land tenure, it represents a major potential resource for archaeology (Chase 1980; Sutton 1978; von Sturmer 1978).

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