ABSTRACT
Ethnographic accounts indicate that at the time of European contact the Tasmanians did not eat fish. Jones’ excavations in two sites, North Cave and South Cave at Rocky Cape, northwest Tasmania, carried out in the 1960s (Fig. 29.1), revealed abundant fish remains in midden layer dated before c. 3800 BP (Jones 1971). More recent layers contained no fish bones. A similar pattern was subsequently discovered elsewhere in Tasmania (Lourandos 1970, Jones 1978, Bowdler 1984, Vanderwal & Horton 1984). It was clear that the Tasmanians had previously eaten fish but had stopped sometime between c. 3800 and 3500 BP.
