Despite the ubiquity of Aboriginal stone arrangements around the Australian continent, there is very little data-driven information about the antiquity or development of these sites. The lack of chronological controls for these sites has limited our understanding of the timing, development, and functions of stone arrangement culture. Here, we present geochronological investigations of a stone arrangement complex near the Packsaddle Valley in the Pilbara region of Western Australia using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating. Sedimentary OSL samples were collected from directly beneath the boulders that comprise the stone arrangements to estimate the timing of their emplacement. The process of boulder erection by Aboriginal people involved partial removal of the topsoil, which would only have provided the sediments with brief periods of sunlight exposure. Hence, the OSL signals of our samples were not expected to have been fully bleached during boulder erection. Consequently, t
The peopling of Sahul (the combined landmass of New Guinea and Australia) is a topic of much debate. The Kimberley region of Western Australia holds many of Australia's oldest known archaeological sites. Here, we review the chronological and archaeological data available for the Kimberley from early Marine Isotope Stage 3 to the present, linking episodes of site establishment and the appearance of new technologies with periods of climatic and sea-level change. We report optical ages showing human occupation of Widgingarri 1, a rockshelter located on the Kimberley coast of northwest Australia, as early as 50,000 years ago, when the site was located more than 100 km from the Late Pleistocene coastline. We also present the first detailed analysis of the stone artefacts, including flakes from ground stone axes, grinding stones and ground haematite recovered from the deepest excavated layer. The high proportion of flakes from ground axe production and resharpening in the earliest occup
Relatively little is known about the long-term sediment accumulation dynamics of Naracoorte Cave Complex (NCC) solution pipe cavities, and many of the megafauna-bearing infill deposits at this globally significant Australian Pleistocene fossil locality remain partially dated or lack any numerical age control. In this study, we assess the suitability of three different luminescence dating signals for improving existing chronologies at six Late and Middle Pleistocene NCC sites (n = 22 samples), and we undertake multi-site examinations of NCC sediment infill dynamics spanning the last 550 thousand years (ka). Modern analogue samples collected from above and beneath two active cave entrances confirm that single-grain OSL, single-grain TT-OSL and multi-grain pIR-IRSL signals can be reset down to insignificant residual levels (<10−1–100 Gy) when compared with the natural dose ranges of interest for most NCC palaeontological applications. Replicate luminescence dating comparisons perfo