Human reactions to the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in Greater Australia: a summary.

Human reactions to the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in Greater Australia: a summary. Introducing the book, we began with the broad pattern of change inhuman behaviour associated with the end of the last glaciation. Thispattern - the 'Archaic' of the New World,'Mesolithic' of the Old - is often attributed to environmentalchange, specifically the appearance of modern climates and habitats.Adjustments to a new array of economic opportunities and constraints areseen to have had demographic, technological, social and politicalimplications. In short, environmental change provided the catalyst;major changes in human behaviour resulted. This line of argument, bestdeveloped for parts of western Eurasia and the Americas, is widelyfavoured. General acceptance of this proposition rests heavily on the grosstemporal correlation between environmental and behavioural change. Thereis no equally general agreement about processes linking these phenomena,even in areas like the Near East where, despite a long history ofresearch and a rich archaeological record The archaeological record is a term used in archaeology to denote all archaeological evidence, including the physical remains of past human activities which archaeologists seek out and record in an attempt to analyze and reconstruct the past. , mutually exclusive Adj. 1. mutually exclusive - unable to be both true at the same timecontradictoryincompatible - not compatible; "incompatible personalities"; "incompatible colors" argumentspersist about the ways in which terminal Pleistocene environmentalchange affected behaviour. Greater Australia presents an interesting case in this context.Although it sustains essentially the same suite of Pleistocen-Holoceneenvironmental changes, and witnesses the development of many of the samepatterns in human behaviour associated with that transition elsewhere,the coincidence in timing between the two is said to be much less closein Australia. Although some Mesolithic, elements appear very early, wellbefore the Last Glacial Maximum The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) refers to the time of maximum extent of the ice sheets during the last glaciation (the W��rm or Wisconsin glaciation), approximately 20,000 years ago. This extreme persisted for several thousand years. , most are seen to be quite late in theGreater Australian sequence, post dating major changes in climate andenvironment by several millennia. It is for this reason that manyAustralianists have avoided or down-played environmental explanations.Instead, some argue that changes in social relationships were catalytic,while others appeal to population pressure, and still others cite theimpact of exotic technology. Whatever the identified stimulus,adjustments in subsistence economy A subsistence economy is an economy in which a group generally obtains the necessities of life, but do not attempt to accumulate wealth. In such a system, a concept of wealth does not exist, and only minimal surpluses generally are created, therefore there is a reliance on renewal are said to follow. Localenvironments simply provide the arena in which the developments takeplace. Terminal Pleistocene climatic change is, by implication,irrelevant. Phrased in the simplest terms, this argument has a more generalimplication. As we said, the conventional 'climate ascatalyst' model draws support primarily from the commonly observedcorrelation between environmental and behavioural change. Because thespecific processes involved remain the subject of debate, anysignificant mismatch between climatic and behavioural change, especiallyon a scale as large as Greater Australia, draws the entire argument intoquestion. Global mechanisms should have global effects. To the degreethese models are challenged anywhere, they are challenged everywhere. Itis for this reason that archaeological evidence of human reaction to thetransition in Greater Australia deserves a closer look. As we said inthe Introduction, the recent literature suggests close links betweenclimatic, environmental, and cultural change in this region.Contributors to this volume find this, and show that - as else where -the precise nature of these relationships is not fully understood. Here we summarize general points emerging from this volume andidentify their implications. We speak first to the pattern ofenvironmental change, then to the evidence for behavioural reactions toit. Environmental change Kershaw summarizes the data for Greater Australia as a whole; othercontributors provide additional details. In broad terms, climatic andenvironmental change displays a relatively simple trajectory from LastGlacial Maximum through mid Holocene. At the beginning of this period,sea-levels were about 130 lower than at present; now-submerged areas ofBass and Torres Straits, the Arafura Sea, and the Gulf of Carpentaria Noun 1. Gulf of Carpentaria - a wide shallow inlet of the Arafura Sea in northern AustraliaCarpentariaAustralia, Commonwealth of Australia - a nation occupying the whole of the Australian continent; Aboriginal tribes are thought to have migrated from were exposed, joining Australia, New Guinea, Tasmania and islands on thecontinental shelf into a single land-mass covering some 11.5 millionsquare kilometres, an area roughly 35% greater than that of modernAustralia. New Britain, New Ireland and the northern Solomons - onlyslightly larger than today - were still separated from the mainland bysubstantial water barriers (see also Birdsell 1977; Chappell 1993; Irwin1993). Sahul itself was colder and drier than at present, with glaciatedmountains on its northern and southern margins, and a much-expanded aridcore covering perhaps 65% of the continent. Seasonal contrasts intemperature and moisture were greater. Sources of free surface waterwere limited, except along the northern, eastern and southern margins,and in parts of the Great Artesian Basin Great Artesian Basin,c.670,000 sq mi (1,735,300 sq km), between the Eastern Highlands and the Western Plateau, E central Australia, extending S from the Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland, to NE South Australia and N New South Wales. . Tree cover was much reducedeverywhere; vegetation zones shifted lower and northward. Bioticcommunity composition itself may have been quite different. Coastalresources may have been comparatively limited, especially on thecoast-lines Beaton (this volume) calls 'procumbent': coral andmangrove mangrove,large tropical evergreen tree, genus Rhizophora, that grows on muddy tidal flats and along protected ocean shorelines. Mangroves are most abundant in tropical Asia, Africa, and the islands of the SW Pacific. communities in particular may have been sharply restricted innumber, extent and complexity (see also Chappell 1993). Over the next 11,000-12,000 years, climate warmed rapidly butirregularly, storm tracks shifted to about their present positions,monsoon systems developed in the north, rainfall generally increasedacross the continent as a whole, tree cover became more extensive, thearid zone contracted, and biotic biotic/bi��ot��ic/ (bi-ot��ik)1. pertaining to life or living matter.2. pertaining to the biota.bi��ot��icadj.1. Relating to life or living organisms. communities moved further south andhigher in elevation, gradually assuming their modern composition anddistribution. Run-off in major stream systems draining formerlyglaciated uplands was reduced, but the productivity of some riverine riv��er��ine?adj.1. Relating to or resembling a river.2. Located on or inhabiting the banks of a river; riparian: "Members of a riverine tribe ... communities may have improved, particularly in the interior southeast.Free surface water became more readily available. In terrestrialhabitats, the period of greatest change coincided with thePleistocene-holocene boundary, c. 12000-9000 b.p. The sea rose from thepeak of the last glaciation onward, separating Tasmania from themainland by about 11,000 b.p., New Guinea from Cape York by 8000 b.p.,and reaching roughly modern levels by 6000 b.p. Littoral littoral/lit��to��ral/ (lit��ah-r'l) pertaining to the shore of a large body of water. littoralpertaining to the shore. communitiesbecame more productive thereafter, especially in the north. Absent from this summary is mention of megafaunal extinctions.Although Pardoe (this volume) claims they were important in thePleistocene-Holocene transition, occurring in some areas (notably thesoutheast) as late as 7000 b.p., we think most local specialists woulddisagree (cf. Kershaw, this volume). Dates on Australian megafauna meg��a��fau��na?n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb)Large or relatively large animals, as of a particular region or period, considered as a group.meg laterthan about 17,000 b. p. are few in number and in every case open toserious challenge (e.g. Flannery 1990). Though megafaunal extinctionswere certainly important in regional prehistory prehistory,period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept. The term was coined by Daniel Wilson in 1851. It is followed by protohistory, the period for which we have some records but must still rely largely on archaeological evidence to , none can be confidentlyassigned an age more recent than the Last Glacial Maximum (White withO'Connell 1982). Recent re-analyses of key sites suggests they mayhave been well underway even before that time (Hope 1978; van Huet 1994;White S, Flannery 1994). Behavioural change Evidence of changes in past human behaviour can be summarized underfour headings: population density and distribution, subsistence economy,lithic technology, and socio-political organization. Population density and distribution In this environmental scenario, many parts of Greater Australiabecame more favourable to human occupation across the Pleistocene -Holocene transition, at least insofar in��so��far?adv.To such an extent.Adv. 1. insofar - to the degree or extent that; "insofar as it can be ascertained, the horse lung is comparable to that of man"; "so far as it is reasonably practical he should practice as rainfall was generally moreabundant and reliable, sources of surface water more persistent andwidespread, and coastal resources more abundant and stable. This leadsus to expect a broad, continent-wide pattern of human population growthand dispersal throughout this period. Areas continuously inhabitedthrough the Last Glacial Maximum should have witnessed increases inlocal population densities; unoccupied areas should have been(re)-colonized. This pattern should be marked archaeologically bydiachronic di��a��chron��icadj.Of or concerned with phenomena as they change through time. increases in site numbers and rates of refuse discard acrossmost habitats. Departures from a monotonic monotonic - In domain theory, a function f : D -> C is monotonic (or monotone) iffor all x,y in D, x f(x) n.The study of the evolution and configuration of landforms.geo��mor work by Chappell & Thom(1977), Beaton argued such populations could only have becomeestablished after sea-level stabilized and productive littoral habitatsbegan to develop, a process that took some time. Given the apparentinstability of such habitats prior to the mid Holocene, Beaton wonderedif there had been much use of coastal resources earlier anywhere inGreater Australia. Subsequent work (summarized here by Beaton, Gosdenand Veth) indicates there was in some localities, but the degree towhich we can generalize from these to other parts of the coast isuncertain. Pending clarification, we still find Beaton's originalstatement compelling: whatever the nature of previous coastaloccupation, human population densities seem to have increased in mostareas after, and as a direct result of, terminal Pleistocene sea-levelchange. Subsistence economy Elsewhere in the world, the Pleistocene-Holocene transition iscommonly seen to be marked by two important changes in humansubsistence: * the exploitation of previously unused or little-usedresources; and * initial experiments in environmental manipulation,including the domestication domesticationProcess of hereditary reorganization of wild animals and plants into forms more accommodating to the interests of people. In its strictest sense, it refers to the initial stage of human mastery of wild animals and plants. of plants and animals, some of which hadapparently just entered the diet. In Holocene Australia, the striking evidence for subsistence changehas conventionally been assigned to the mid Holocene, relatively late byworld standards. Local investigators recognize that some resourcesallegedly added to the diet at this time (notably tree and grass seeds,including cycads) have relatively high processing costs, but the timingof their adoption is seen to argue against a climatic explanation, or atleast against one associated with the Pleistocen-Holocene transition.Causality is usually assigned instead to social or demographic processes(e.g. Beaton 1977; Lourandos 1983; Ross et al. 1992) Edwards S, O'Connell (this volume) argue from theory and aknowledge of local resource characteristics that high-cost plant foodsshould have been part of arid-zone Australian diets much earlier, fromat least the Last Glacial Maximum onward. The logic of their modelsuggests these resources should also have been exploited elsewhere onthe continent by about the same time: if conditions in the arid zonewere sufficiently difficult to require the use of high-cost foods, whylive there and accept such low foraging returns unless opportunitieselsewhere were equally poor and similarly expensive resources alreadypart of the diet? If Edwards SE O'Connell are right, prehistoricGreater Australians began to exploit relatively expensive foods as earlyas, perhaps even earlier than, human populations elsewhere (cf. Kislevet al. 1992; Wright 1994), at least partly as a result of theclimate-related depletion of other resources. This argument notwithstanding, the notion of a sharp change inmid-Holocene diet still draws compelling support from some areas. Pardoe(this volume) estimates that average adult body size among Murray Rivergroups drops by about 20% at or shortly after 7000 b.p., a change thatcould be explained by a significant increase in subsistence costs (seealso Brown 1987). Evidence of a parallel change in patterns of toothabrasion, possibly the result of increased consumption of Typha, isconsistent with this proposition. (Harvesting experiments (Simms 1985)indicate that Typha rhizomes are an extremely expensive resource).Pardoe relates these developments to the establishment of modernriverine habitats, arguing that their appearance favoured humanpopulation growth, increased sedentism, reductions in foraging range,and, ultimately, the depletion of higher-ranked resources. Evidence of active habitat manipulation, including the developmentor adoption of agriculture, comes primarily from the northern part ofGreater Australia. Pollen records indicate anthropogenic an��thro��po��gen��ic?adj.1. Of or relating to anthropogenesis.2. Caused by humans: anthropogenic degradation of the environment. firing(presumably pre��sum��a��ble?adj.That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. to improve the productivity of certain plants and/or toenhance hunting opportunities) as early as 35,0000-37,000 b.p in boththe New Guinea Highlands The New Guinea Highlands, also known as the Central Range or Central Cordillera, are a chain of mountain ranges and intermountain valleys on the island of New Guinea which run generally east-west the length of the island. and north Queensland (Kershaw 1976; Haberle1993) Groube (1989) has argued that over the same general area, from asearly as 40,000 b.p., large stone tools called 'waisted axes'were hafted and used to maintain openings in the forest canopy, again toincrease plant productivity. Gosden (this volume), reporting exoticplants and animals introduced across significant marine thresholds inparts of Island Melanesia by 20,000 b.p., sees the plant introductionsas marking the early spread of arboriculture arboricultureCultivation of trees, shrubs, and woody plants for shading and decorating. Arboriculture includes all aspects of growing, maintaining, and identifying plants, arranging plantings for their ornamental values, and removing trees. throughout the Melanesianlowlands. Hope A Golson (this volume) describe the complex swampdrainage systems evident in the New Guinea Highlands by 6000 b.p., withsimpler systems indicated by 9000 b.p. By world standards, this recordis precocious. The role of plant domesticates in this sequence remains unclear.Reviews by Harris, Yen, and Hope A Golson indicate that ethnographicallyimportant cultigens such as taro taro:see arum. taroHerbaceous plant (Colocasia esculenta) of the arum family, probably native to Southeast Asia and taken to the Pacific islands. , Dioscoria yams, bananas, andsugar-cane could have been introduced as domesticates from SoutheastAsia, or domesticated do��mes��ti��cate?tr.v. do��mes��ti��cat��ed, do��mes��ti��cat��ing, do��mes��ti��cates1. To cause to feel comfortable at home; make domestic.2. To adopt or make fit for domestic use or life.3. a. independently from locally indigenous varieties,or both. The timing of their adoption is also uncertain. It is commonlyassumed that intensive water management in the Highlands by 6000 b.p.implies some form of agriculture, probably involving taro but perhapsbananas or yams as well. Yen, Hope & Golson think taro was also thebasis of the less elaborate 9000 b.p. system, the distribution of wildforms suggesting even earlier experiments in cultivation (and perhapsinitial domestication; at lower elevations. As Yen emphasizes, however,the near-complete absence of pertinent plant macrofossils from depositsof this age makes any scenario highly speculative. One thing does seemcertain: domesticates other than the dog were neither developed noradopted by the residents of Greater Australia south of what is nowTorres Strait. Not surprisingly, opinion is divided about what causes variabilityin patterns of habitat manipulation. Gosden plays down the importance ofenvironmental constraints, including long-term climatic change. Hope S,Golson take the opposite position, identifying terminal Pleistoceneclimatic change as the agent prompting the initial development ofHighland swamp-management systems. Yen seems to agree on this point, butattributes the lack of interest in domesticates among Aborigines aborigines:see Australian aborigines. tocultural attitudes. Harris suggests that the failure of New Guineanagriculture to spread across Torres Strait may reflect its'non-expansive' nature. In our view, Yen and Harris both beg the question Beg the Question is a graphic novel by Bob Fingerman. It chronicles the trials and tribulations of protagonists Rob — a squeamish freelance cartoonist/pornographer — and Sylvia — a beauty salon manager with loftier aspirations — as well as a of diffusion,though in somewhat different ways. Aborigines have a long history ofmodifying habitats to improve productivity; thus the issue cannot bewhether to do so, as Yen would have it, but how. Harris'characterization of New Guinean agriculture as nonexpansive seems toignore the probability that, at one or more times in the past, it did infact spread. The question is not whether it was expansive but whatdetermined its limits. Hope & Golson's suggestion - not unprecedented - thatenvironmental change encouraged early investments in agricultureidentifies a line of inquiry that could be used to investigate variationin all aspects of environmental manipulation throughout GreaterAustralia. The basic questions to be addressed are these: Whatsubsistence strategies can be pursued in any given situation? What arethe costs and benefits associated with each? How are these costs andbenefits likely to vary with changes in climate and human populationdensity? This puts emphasis not on defining the absolute ecologicallimits of any particular strategy (e.g. temperature requirements for thecultivation of various domesticates), but rather on assessing therelative merits of alternate, locally possible options, essentially thesame approach used in the analysis of resource choice among modernhunter-gatherers, including Australian Aborigines. Testing predictionsabout the past distribution of various strategies will be difficult butprobably possible in at least some situations. Lithic technology Stone tools have always been an important focus of GreaterAustralian archaeology, primarily because they make up so much of thelocal record. Research has generally emphasized the identification ofvery-long-term, very-large-scale patterns in artefact form andassemblage composition, although shorter-term, regional-scale analyseshave become less unusual in the past decade. Significantly from theperspective of this volume, studies of the possible relationshipsbetween climatic and environmental change and changes in lithics havebeen few: Hiscock (1988) is an important exception. Holdaway and Frankel argue that such research should be pursuedmore frequently. Everywhere on the continent, they contend, climaticchange is likely to have affected the character and distribution ofsubsistence resources available to local groups. Reaction to it -especially in the form of adjustments in size of areas covered in thecourse of a seasonal or annual round - should have changed the costs andbenefits of acquiring and using toolstone. Some of these adjustmentsshould have had predictable effects on artefact form and assemblagecomposition. Regional-scale studies attentive to variation in rawmaterial, technology and function should enable analysts to identifythese effects. A more comprehensive appreciation of lithics themselvesand a better understanding of the relationship between past climaticchange and human behaviour should follow. Results of two recent projects, partially reported here, providespecific examples of the approach Holdaway and Frankel advocate. Insouthwest Tasmania, Porch SE Allen (this volume) describeclimate-related temporal changes in technology and tool-stone use downto and across the terminal Pleistocene transition; in the same area,Holdaway & Porch (1995) show a link between climate change anddiscard rate, the latter read as an index of intensity of siteoccupation and, perhaps, regional population size. Combining thesestudies allows relationships between changes in climate, environment andlithic technology to be examined. From southeast Cape York, Morwood& Hobbs (this volume) describe changes in aspects of tool-stoneprocurement and use, including a long-term trend towards greaterreliance on high-quality materials, 'more successful' knappingstrategies, more economical use of cores, and more emphasis on haftedtools - all seen as reactions to terminal Pleistocene environmentalchange. Innovative as it is, research along these lines will inevitablydraw sceptical review. It is one thing to advocate,regional, analyses inprinciple, as Holdaway and Frankel do; another to be clear about thescale at which such research ought to be pursued. Does one frame theexercise in tens, hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands ofsquare kilometres? Ethnography may provide guide-lines in some cases butnot others, notably (from the perspective of this volume) those in whichenvironmental and demographic circumstances are unlike any knownhistorically. This problem may not be resolved easily everywhere; but theinductive approach adopted in southwest Tasmania appears to have yieldedgood results. There, rich and well-preserved Pleistocene deposits haveallowed measures of assemblage variability that match existing (andPleistocene?) ecological boundaries: southwest Tasmanian lithic lith��ic?1?adj.Consisting of or relating to stone or rock.Adj. 1. lithic - of or containing lithium2. lithic - relating to or composed of stone; "lithic sandstone" assemblages display a certain unity when compared with those to thenorth and east; sub-regional divisions are also apparent. Currentreconstructions of site-specific environments through time, involvingspecies identification of charcoal and the ecologies of variousland-snails in the deposits, in conjunction with more usual faunalstudies, should allow comparisons of site-specific lithic assemblageswith local environmental characteristics. In the case of Morwood & Hobbs's work, questions might beraised about predictions concerning tool-stone use and the ways in whichthey were tested. Why should 'better', 'moreeconomical' or 'more efficient' strategies be adoptedlater rather than earlier in a local sequence, especially if increasesin regional population density and concomitant reductions in the size offoraging ranges restricted access by some groups to good tool-stone?Under these circumstances, tool-stone acquisition and use might wellhave become less efficient: increased reliance on poorer resourcesrequired that more time be invested in tool-stone production relative toutility gained - despite the sources being close at hand and heavilyexploited (see Elston S, Raven 1992a; b; Elston & Budy 1990 forextended discussion). 'Efficiency' and 'economy' canbe defined in different ways. Although Morwood A Hobbs make a good case,analysts must be alert to the ambiguities. Reservations aside, the importance of these exercises (and otherslike them being under taken elsewhere in Greater Australia) should beclear. They alert us to new ways of integrating artefacts previouslydismissed as 'crude, colourless colourlessor US colorlessAdjective1. without colour: a colourless gas2. dull and uninteresting: a colourless personality3. and unenterprising' (White1977) into our developing understanding of past human behaviour. Socio-political organization Contributors to this volume focus primarily on aspects ofAustralian (as opposed to Greater Australian) socio-politicalorganization. The topic has long been of general interest toethnographers, primarily because its local socio-political systems areunusual when compared to those of historically known hunters elsewherein the world. Inter alia [Latin, Among other things.] A phrase used in Pleading to designate that a particular statute set out therein is only a part of the statute that is relevant to the facts of the lawsuit and not the entire statute. , local groups are seen to be more closelyconnected with well-defined 'territories', more patrilineal patrilineal/pa��tri��lin��e��al/ (pat?ri-lin��e-il) descended through the male line. pat��ri��lin��e��aladj.Relating to, based on, or tracing ancestral descent through the paternal line. ,more polygynous po��lyg��y��ny?n.1. The condition or practice of having more than one wife at one time.2. Zoology A mating pattern in which a male mates with more than one female in a single breeding season. , more gerontocratic, and in some sense more complex inthe realms of religion and aesthetics than many non-Australian huntingpopulations. Interestingly, especially from the perspective of thisvolume, and again unlike the situation elsewhere, there has beenrelatively little attempt by ethnographers to develop ecological orenvironmental explanations either for the general nature of Aboriginalsocio-political systems or for the variability they display across thecontinent. Steward (1936), Birdsell (1953) and Peterson with Long (1986)are notable exceptions. Prehistorians have been only slightly less reticent. As Frankelpoints out, two perspectives on the problem can be identified in therecent literature. One projects the 'essential'characteristics of traditional Aboriginal life, includingsocio-political organization, back to the time the continent wasinitially occupied. This position can be connected with the notion,familiar from the work of Service (1962), that Aborigines represent thefundamental human pattern, projected to the ethnographic present bygeographic isolation, all other hunting populations having been'disrupted' by contact with agricultural or industrialsocieties. The counter-view, popular among Australian archaeologistsfrom the mid 1970s on, holds that ethnographically familiar patterns oforganization crystallize crys��tal��lizealso crys��tal��ize ?v. crys��tal��lized also crys��tal��ized, crys��tal��liz��ing also crys��tal��iz��ing, crys��tal��liz��es also crys��tal��iz��esv.tr.1. in the mid Holocene as a product of socialand/or demographic processes, perhaps with an assist from exoticcontacts (e.g. Beaton 1977). Environmental change is generally not implicated in thistransition, except insofar as it involves changes in sea-level (e.g.Blainey 1975). As conventionally posed, this argument rests heavily onevidence for new or increased use of food resources that were importantethnographically, especially in ritual or ceremonial contexts (seeEdwards & O'Connell for additional discussion). Essays by Pardoe, Tacon & Brockwell, and Morwood & Hobbsdepart significantly from this perspective. Collectively, they reportmany changes in the archaeological record coincident with terminalPleistocene environmental change, specifically in terrestrial habitats,including shifts in skeletal morphology, burial practice, art style,site location, technology, and refuse-discard rate; most - if not all -involve the appearance of patterns comparable to those knownethnographically or historically. Moreover, environmental change is seento be catalytic: modern habitats are thought better watered andgenerally more productive, favouring increased, widespread populationgrowth, more restricted foraging ranges, higher population densities,and greater competition for resources. These changes are in turn seen topromote more complex patterns of social organization, increasedterritoriality TerritorialityBehavior patterns in which an animal actively defends a space or some other resource. One major advantage of territoriality is that it gives the territory holder exclusive access to the defended resource, which is generally associated with , and the development of large-scale ritual and economicexchange systems. As indicated above, there is a basis for scepticism about thenature and timing of some of the subsistence changes implicated in thisargument (Edwards & O'Connell, this volume). Yet variation insocio-political organization is correlated with terminal Pleistoceneclimatic change in at least some parts of the continent. Moving beyondthis to a compelling argument (rather than a plausible assertion) thatsocial change is climatically driven will be difficult. The trick willbe to determine how global processes operate in different habitats inways that ultimately produce the wide range of variation insocio-political organization observed among late-prehistoric and modernhunter-gatherers world-wide, including those patterns ethnographicallyrestricted to Australia. Given the history of research on this topic,the exercise will likely be challenging. Conclusions Conventional understandings of Greater Australian prehistory havegenerally seen the climatic events of the terminal Pleistocene as havinghad little or no significant effect on local human affairs. Broadlycontinuous patterns of economy, technology and socio-politicalorganization are thought to have characterized most of the continentfrom initial occupation at least through mid-Holocene times. Changesthereafter have generally been attributed to some combination ofintrinsic population growth, social forces, and/or the arrival of exotictechnology. Only New Guinea agriculture has been identified as apossible product of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, and even here,notions of a very long history of environmental manipulation by humans,coupled with the proposition that at least some important domesticateswere introduced from the outside at some stil-uncertain dates,complicate the proposed relationship. This general model makes terminalPleistocene Greater Australia unusual compared with the rest of theworld, and challenges arguments concerning the critical affect of globalclimate change on fundamental aspects of human behaviour. Contributions to this volume mark the beginning of a change inthese conventional understandings. Though some echo long-standing localarguments about the independence of climate, environment, and behaviour,most develop a very different line, contending that major changes inhuman behaviour throughout Greater Australia not only coincide with thePleistocen-Holocene transition but are the products of it. Althoughlocal sequences remain frustratingly unclear in some ways and unusual inothers relative to events and processes associated with the terminalPleistocene elsewhere in the world, they no longer seem unique.Climatic, environmental, demographic and behavioural processes are nowtaken to be at least potentially inter-related, rather than essentiallyindependent, phenomena. The challenge now is to explore these relationships in greaterdetail with an eye toward clarifying sequences and establishingcausality. In this sense, the residual 'oddity' of GreaterAustralian phenomena may prove especially useful in that it provides anopportunity to test hypotheses about the operation of general processesunder what are in effect different experimental circumstances. Thisrequires, among other things, a commonly accepted theoretical frameworkthat guides the investigation of relationships between environment andbehaviour, and a recognition of the importance of a truly globalcomparative perspective in pursuit of that investigation. We hope thisvolume contributes to the development of both. ReferencesAllen, J., J. Golson A R. Jones (ed.). 1977. Sunda and Suhul:prehistoric studies in Southeast Asia, Melanesia and Australia. London:Academic Press. Beaton, J.M. 1977. Dangerous harvest. Unpublished Ph.Ddissertation, Department of Prehistory, RSPacS, Australian NationalUniversity, Canberra. 1985. 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Crude, colourless and unenterprising Adj. 1. unenterprising - lacking in enterprise; not bold or venturesomenonenterprisingunadventurous - lacking in boldnessambitionless, unambitious - having little desire for success or achievement prehistorians andtheir views on the Stone Age of Sunda and Sahul, in Allen et al. (ed.)13-30. White, J.P. &, T. Flannery. 1995. Late Pleistocene fauna atSpring Creek, Victoria: a re-evaluation, Australian Archaeology 40:13-16. White, J.P. with J.F. O'Connell. 1982. A prehistory ofAustralia The prehistory of Australia is the period between the first human habitation of the Australian continent and the first definitive sighting of Australia by Europeans in 1606, which may be taken as the beginning of the recent history of Australia. , New Guinea and Sahul. Sydney: Academic Press. Wright, K.1994. Ground-stone tools and hunter-gatherer subsistence in southwestAsia: implications for the transition to farming, American Antiquity52(2): 238-63.