Blowing in The Wind. Slte Destruction and Slte Creation at Hawker Lagoon, South Australia

Autor: Stan Florek, David Cameron, Peter White, Ronald Lampert
Rok vydání: 1990
Předmět:
Zdroj: Australian Archaeology. 30:58-69
ISSN: 2470-0363
0312-2417
Popis: The post-depositional movement of stone artefacts within sites by treadage and scuffage (e.g. Matthews 1965; Stockton 1973) and site-maintenance activities (Steele 1987), their movement by animals and especially birds (Cane 1982; Solomon et al. 1986), and their in situ alteration (Hiscock 1985) have all been recorded in Australia. Site destruction on a large scale, especially by wave action and erosion on the coasts, has been commonly invoked in explanations of prehistory and sometimes demonstrated (e.g. Head 1987; Godfrey 1989). We present here preliminary investigations into a further stage in these taphonomic processes. We demonstrate not only site destruction in a semi-arid environment but also the formation of a new 'site' incorporating disturbed cultural material in a new deposit which could be mistakenly interpreted as an undisturbed occupation horizon. Elsewhere in the world such site re-constitutions by natural forces are widely known. For example, nearly all of the earliest human sites now recognised in Africa have been modified by water movement to some extent (Bunn et al . 1980; Isaac 1977). Water transport plays some part in our story too, but the main agency we wish to document is that of wind. Wind is usually regarded as responsible only for site destruction through deflation, as in the discussion of aeroturbation by Wood and Johnson (1978: 358-9). but, as we show here, it is also a force that can create sites.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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