ABSTRACT
From the initial movements of people into the already ancient Australian landscape until shortly before European settlement and the beginning of historical texts, archaeological evidence gives us reason to imagine that past societies changed regularly and were noticeably different from those in the historic period. At the start of this book rapid, far-reaching social and economic changes following the transmission of disease to Aboriginal people during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries illustrated the magnitude of alterations that took place within a short time. The book now returns to a consideration of economic, technological and social transformations that had occurred within Aboriginal cultures in the centuries immediately before the arrival of Europeans.
