Murujuga Rockshelter: First evidence for Pleistocene occupation on the Burrup Peninsula

Aboriginal artefacts on the continental shelf reveal ancient drowned cultural landscapes in northwest Australia

“…Age determinations fall predominantly within the Holocene (the past ten thousand years), but the sequence of rock art styles includes extinct animals, demonstrating a longer history of occupation extending back into the Pleistocene [42,43,45,49,50]. Rockshelters with stratified and dateable deposits are rare in this type of geology, but one granite overhang on the Burrup Peninsula contains deposits with evidence of occupation extending from 21,000 to 7000 cal BP [51]; while excavations of limestone caves on the more distant Barrow Island have yielded a sequence between 50,000 and 8000 cal BP, confirming the Pleistocene time depth of human activity in the region [7]. The lithic raw materials and food remains found within these sites demonstrate their use as bases for wide-ranging movements into the hinterland and out onto the coastal plain exposed at lower sea level.…”

“…The lithic raw materials and food remains found within these sites demonstrate their use as bases for wide-ranging movements into the hinterland and out onto the coastal plain exposed at lower sea level. As sea level rose and the shoreline moved progressively closer, stratified food remains and changing rates of artefact discard show changing patterns of site use and movement across the landscape, increased representation of marine foods, and ultimately abandonment and a reconfiguration of land-use patterns adjusted to the modern coastline [51]. Similarly, rock art motifs show an increase in marine animals with progressive sea-level rise.…”

A Strategy for Assessing Continuity in Terrestrial and Maritime Landscapes from Murujuga (Dampier Archipelago), North West Shelf, Australia

“…mangrove molluscs from the terminal Pleistocene units suggest that the coastline was comparatively productive well before still-stand and that these and other species were carried inland by up to an estimated 15 km distance (Manne and Veth 2015;Veth et al 2017b). While occupation is not registered during the LGM, this may be due to groups being more closely tethered to a productive Pleistocene coastline and to interior ranges such as the Murujuga uplands (McDonald et al 2018a).…”

“…Since 65,000 50,000 years ago, the currently accepted earliest date-range for human entry into Australia and New Guinea (Clarkson et al 2017;David et al 2011;Hamm et al 2016;Maloney et al 2018;McDonald et al 2018a;Veth 2017a), one third of the continental land mass of Sahul has been drowned by postglacial sea-level rise. As in other parts of the world, there is good reason to expect that this drowned territory offered attractive landscapes and resources for human occupation, and that features of this drowned landscape and their associated archaeological remains have survived inundation and can be retrieved by underwater exploration (Bailey et al 2017;Benjamin et al 2011a;Evans et al 2014;Ulm 2011;Ward et al 2013Ward et al , 2015.…”

A multi-scalar approach to marine survey and underwater archaeological site prospection in Murujuga, Western Australia

“…Evidence for the early occupation of the Pilbara region is demonstrated at Boodie Cave, with occupation between c. 50 ka until 8 ka when rising sea level separated Barrow Island from the mainland (Veth et al 2017) and in the Western Desert to the east, similarly by c. 50 ka (McDonald et al 2018a). In the Dampier Archipelago, large rock shelters with stratified deposits are rare, however the sequence at Murujuga Rockshelter (MR1) indicates occupation from 23 ka to the rockshelter's abandonment at 7 ka (McDonald et al 2018b). Archaeological sites on Barrow Island and the Montebello Islands, 30 km north of Barrow Island, indicate that people pursued a combination of marine and terrestrial fauna, with a shift towards marine fauna towards the terminal Pleistocene, continuing through the Holocene (Manne and Veth 2015).…”