In July 2011, I went to the Czech Republic for 3 weeks to take part in an archaeological dig in a paleolithic cave, located in the spectacular Moravian Karst region. Here’s one of the updates I sent home. After an interesting trip (Italian woman on the flight who kicked the back of my chair, and
This post was originally published on 10 February 2012 at aletheakinsela.wordpress.com Recently, I wrote about glass artefacts in Australian contact sites. Today, I decided to try out my new camera and document a few more interesting finds. And here they are:
This post was originally published on 10 February 2012 at aletheakinsela.wordpress.com In Australian archaeology, a contact site is a cultural site that contains worked stone artefacts as well as adapted non-traditional technology, such as glass, metal or ceramics. Usually these introduced materials are fashioned in similar ways to stone tools (a technique called ‘knapping’). Contact
The following is an extract from an article first published in Agora magazine (HTAV). The first evidence of outside contact can be traced to about 4500 BP, when dingoes were introduced from Asia [1]. Between 800 to 1000 years ago, the Macassans began trading with people in Arnhem Land. Evidence of Macassan contact is found
The following is an extract from an article first published in Agora magazine (HTAV). It probably took around 4,000 years to settle the entire continent. The reptiles and megafauna were unlikely to have been the greatest danger. Instead, people had to learn which fruits were safe to eat, which plants were poisonous, which nuts or
The following is an extract from an article first published in Agora magazine (HTAV). According to the Australian Curriculum: History, the Ancient World falls neatly into a bracket of time that began approximately 60,000 years ago and ended 650 years ago. The Ancient World, and in particular Ancient Australia, is not as straightforward as this timeframe
Got an archaeology question? Submit it to: archaeology@ancientaustralia.com.au and an answer will appear on the Ask the Archaeologist blog shortly.
When conceptualising ‘history’, people usually imagine a stack of dusty books, or perhaps some crumbling stone ruins. But what happens when a place has no written records or clearly identifiable infrastructure? Is it still possible to construct a definitive historical narrative? If we are attempting to define Australia’s ancient history in a ‘Western’ sense then this can
Thanks to H. for submitting today’s Reader Question: Is it possible for an artefact to hold any value if its story has been lost? Take pennies for example. Quite a few features on a penny can help indicate its age, but for this instance, I’ll simplify our only understanding to what the date tells us.
