ABSTRACT
The Willandra Lakes lie in the southwest corner of the Murray-Darling Basin on the edge of Australia's arid core (Figure 3.1). They were inscribed on the World Heritage register in 1981 partly because of their perceived potential for providing insights into the interplay between human and environmental history in a climatically sensitive area during the Late Pleistocene, a period of significant change in global climate (Mulvaney & Bowler 1981). This potential derives from the archaeological traces preserved in the alternating layers of sand and clay that record fluctuations in the amount and quality of water in the adjacent lakes, which were controlled primarily by changes in the amount of spring meltwater flowing westward from the Australian Alps.
