ABSTRACT
The surface archaeological record is abundant in some parts of arid Australia and, if analysed with attention to the history of deposition, it provides an accessible resource with which to assess past landscape use. Here, we report results of studies of the mid-late Holocene Aboriginal occupants of one part of the Australian arid zone, based on analyses of the archaeological record in the 62 km2 catchment of Rutherfords Creek in western New South Wales (NSW). We consider the types of behavioural information that can be derived from this record and how interpretation varies when considering different spatial and temporal scales. Those hunter-gatherers, who were highly mobile, traversed areas that were orders of magnitude larger than the areas that can be studied in detail by archaeologists. This requires the development of techniques for inferring the extent of landscape use from isolated spatial and temporal samples. We describe some of these techniques and consider the implications of the results obtained from their application.
