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Bird, Hook & Rhoads 2016 Persistent places in a landscape: rock shelters in Nyiyaparli country. Paper presented at the 2016 Australian Archaeological Association Conference, Terrigal, NSW Rock shelters commonly attract interest from archaeologists in relation to their excavation potential and their contribution to building chronological sequences. In the Pilbara, rock shelter use is often interpreted as an ephemeral aspect of Aboriginal settlement patterns. Small rock shelters with shallow deposits are commonly not thought to warrant further investigation and these sites are quite poorly understood. This paper discusses a suite of more than 40 rock shelters in Nyiyaparli country in the eastern Chichester Range and the diverse range of archaeological material associated with them both in terms of their structural characteristics and landscape context. Individual shelters vary markedly in terms of characteristics and associated cultural debris, but commonly occur as components of site complexes or ‘places in the landscape’. The inferred functions of spatially associated rock shelters appear complementary. Surface assemblages associated with shelters are also distinctive and indicate provisioning of these places with raw material. Although most shelters have only shallow occupation deposits, or none, these places were clearly regularly and repeatedly used for a range of tasks and formed a network of planned visitation within a socialised landscape. No doubt the visibility and permanence of rock shelters in the landscape made them foci of attention, charged with meaning as markers of ‘persistent places’ and places of memory. Current practice in compliance archaeology in the Pilbara means that individual components of these complexes are recorded and assessed as separate 'sites', which in turn has implications for assigning significance and the nature of archaeological investigation deemed appropriate. We argue that a consideration of the relationships between individual archaeological components and their landscape context should be paramount in interpreting such site complexes as well as more in keeping with Nyiyaparli understanding of places.

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Hook, Bird & Rhoads 2016 Lived and living landscapes in the eastern Chichester Range—understanding a Nyiyaparli taskscape. Paper presented at the 2016 Australian Archaeological Association Conference, Terrigal, NSW Hunter-gatherers do not occupy sites, they inhabit landscapes. The landscape is not a passive backdrop to Aboriginal activity but shaped by ongoing natural and cultural processes that create a ‘taskscape’. The surface archaeological record is a palimpsest formed as the result of numerous individual events in combination with natural processes that serve to reveal, conceal or alter the record. In this paper we reinterpret archaeological data, collected as part of place based consultancy methodology as dictated by the Western Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972, as part of a Nyiyaparli taskscape. The idea of the taskscape focuses on how landscapes are perceived and experienced not as backdrops or scenery, but in terms of the collection of activities carried out there (Ingold, 1993). Ingold (2007, p. 100) suggests that the lives of hunter-gatherers can be portrayed in terms of the sum of their journeys traced on the ground. The sum of the lives of many individuals is a ‘meshwork’. Places then are the knots in the meshwork, connected and formed by the threads of individual journeys. Nyiyaparli country is filled with the marks of these past journeys both from the Kukutpa and from generations of ancestors. Individual archaeological ‘sites’ in Nyiyaparli country sit within a wider locality where activities frequently occurred, or where natural processes reveal or preserve evidence of past activity, or where an activity that happened to involve durable material such as stone occurred. Some evidence at sites is a by-product of activity—‘just rubbish’—such as stone flaking, quarrying stone. Other evidence comprises the remains from deliberate actions—fires, shelters. Still other evidence represents deliberate constructive actions—producing art, leaving cores or grindstones at places to be used again, stone arrangements for ceremonies, fish traps, walled niches and the like. All are evidence of the taskscape—the lived and living landscape at the intersection between nature and culture. Understanding the taskscape calls for a shift in focus from individual ‘sites’ to an ‘archaeology of place’.

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Bird, Hook & Rhoads 2016 Provisioning places in Nyiyaparli country: the nature and use of rock shelters in the eastern Chichester Range. Poster presented at the 2016 Australian Archaeological Conference, Terrigal, NSW

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Bird, Hook & Rhoads 2016 Issues of scale and resolution in interpreting surface artefact scatters in the inland Pilbara. Award winning poster presented at the 2016 Australian Archaeological Conference, Terrigal, NSW

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Had a great post conference tour with Darkinjung LALC visiting the beautiful Mangrove Creek area and visiting a rock shelter with iconic rock art

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So we've just finished the 2016 Australian Archaeology Conference #AAA39. Archae-aus staff Fiona Hook and Caroline Bird presented two papers and two posters. One of the posters won the best conference poster award ! Great to catch-up with friends and colleagues. Thanks to the Nyiyaparli and to Karlka Nyiyaparli Aboriginal Corporation for their support and for allowing us to talk about their sites and country.

Archae-Aus is very proud to announce that our book Kakatungutanta to Warrie Outcamp: 40,000 years in Nyiyaparli country has just won the John Mulvaney Book Award at Australian Archaeological Association Conference. Congratulations to all those involved #AAA39

Fiona Hook and Caroline Bird are on their way to Terrigal to present papers and posters on the Nyiyaparli heritage research project at Australian Archaeological Conference 3016 #AAA39 https://www.australianarchaeologicalassociation.com.au/conference/

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