ABSTRACT
While ethnographic observations expose the intimate interplay between recent indigenous Australian patterns of land use and physical and conceptual landscapes, these fundamental relationships are harder to perceive archaeologically. Rosenfeld and Smith (2002) have demonstrated patterned relationships between site use and stone artefacts, environmental systems and art. These reflect specific local changes in central Australia indicative of conceptual and ideographic associations, as well as more mundane economic adaptations (see also David et al. 1994; Taçon & Brockwell 1995; Smith & Ross 2008). In this chapter we attempt another such analysis, suggesting the way in which a diverse array of evidence can be integrated into a model of long-term changes in indigenous patterns of mobility and land use in western Victoria. The starting point is the evidence from excavations at several rockshelters in Gariwerd (the Grampians)—a series of sandstone mountain ranges that rise up to 700m above the surrounding plains (Figure 5.1).
