Bruno David - Böcker

65,000 years ago, modern humans arrived in Australia, having navigated more than 100 km of sea crossing from southeast Asia. Since then, the large continental islands of Australia and New Guinea, together with smaller islands in between, have been connected by land bridges and severed again as sea levels fell and rose. Along with these fluctuations came changes in the terrestrial and marine environments of both land masses. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea reviews and assembles the latest findings and ideas on the archaeology of the Australia-New Guinea region, the world's largest island-continent. In 42 new chapters written by 77 contributors, it presents and explores the archaeological evidence to weave stories of colonisation; megafaunal extinctions; Indigenous architecture; long-distance interactions, sometimes across the seas; eel-based aquaculture and the development of techniques for the mass-trapping of fish; occupation of the High Country, deserts, tropical swamplands and other, diverse land and waterscapes; and rock art and symbolic behaviour. Together with established researchers, a new generation of archaeologists present in this Handbook one, authoritative text where Australia-New Guinea archaeology now lies and where it is heading, promising to shape future directions for years to come.

Rock art is one of the most visible and geographically widespread of cultural expressions, and it spans much of the period of our species' existence. Rock art also provides rare and often unique insights into the minds and visually creative capacities of our ancestors and how selected rock outcrops with distinctive images were used to construct symbolic landscapes and shape worldviews. Equally important, rock art is often central to the expression of and engagement with spiritual entities and forces, and in all these dimensions it signals the diversity of cultural practices, across place and through time. Over the past 150 years, archaeologists have studied ancient arts on rock surfaces, both out in the open and within caves and rock shelters, and social anthropologists have revealed how people today use art in their daily lives. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art showcases examples of such research from around the world and across a broad range of cultural contexts, giving a sense of the art's regional variability, its antiquity, and how it is meaningful to people in the recent past and today - including how we have ourselves tended to make sense of the art of others, replete with our own preconceptions. It reviews past, present, and emerging theoretical approaches to rock art investigation and presents new, cutting-edge methods of rock art analysis for the student and professional researcher alike.

Deep underground, hidden from view, some of humanity’s earliest artistic endeavours have lain buried for thousands of years. The most ancient artworks were portable objects, left on cave floors. Shell beads signal that 100,000 years ago humans had developed a sense of self and a desire to beautify the body; ostrich eggshells incised with curious geometric patterns hint at how communities used art, through the power of symbols, to communicate ways of doing things and bind people together. In time, people came to adorn cave walls with symbols, some abstract, others vivid arrangements of animals and humans. Often undisturbed for tens of thousands of years, these were among the first visual symbols that humans shared with each other. However, as archaeologist Bruno David reveals, we have ways of unlocking their secrets. Sometimes these lie in the art itself, sometimes lying on the ground, or buried beneath where people have left traces of what they did, footprints of the ancestors. In pictures and words, David tells the story of this mysterious world of decorated caves, from the oldest known ‘painting kits’, found virtually intact after their use 100,000 years ago in South Africa, to the magnificent murals of the European Ice Age that are so famous today. Showcasing the most astounding discoveries made in the past 150 years of archaeological exploration, Cave Art explores these creative achievements, from our remotest ancestors to recent times, and what they tell us about the human past and ourselves today.

This Element presents emerging concepts and analytical tools in landscape archaeology. In three major sections bookended by an Introduction and Conclusion, the Element discusses current and emerging ideas and methods by which to explore how people in the past engaged with each other and their physical settings across the landscape, creating their lived environments in the process. The Element reviews the scales and temporalities that inform the study of human movements in and between places. Learning about how people engaged with each other at individual sites and across the landscape deep in the past is best achieved through transdisciplinary approaches, in which archaeologists integrate their methods with those of other specialists. The Element introduces these ideas through new research and multiple case studies from around the world, culminating in how to 'archaeomorphologically' map anthropic constructions in caves and their contemporary environments.

This Element presents emerging concepts and analytical tools in landscape archaeology. In three major sections bookended by an Introduction and Conclusion, the Element discusses current and emerging ideas and methods by which to explore how people in the past engaged with each other and their physical settings across the landscape, creating their lived environments in the process. The Element reviews the scales and temporalities that inform the study of human movements in and between places. Learning about how people engaged with each other at individual sites and across the landscape deep in the past is best achieved through transdisciplinary approaches, in which archaeologists integrate their methods with those of other specialists. The Element introduces these ideas through new research and multiple case studies from around the world, culminating in how to 'archaeomorphologically' map anthropic constructions in caves and their contemporary environments.

This Element addresses a burning question - how can archaeologists best identify and interpret cultural burning, the controlled use of fire by people to shape and curate their physical and social landscapes? This Element describes what cultural burning is and presents current methods by which it can be identified in historical and archaeological records, applying internationally relevant methods to Australian landscapes. It clarifies how the transdisciplinary study of cultural burning by Quaternary scientists, historians, archaeologists and Indigenous community members is informing interpretations of cultural practices, ecological change, land use and the making of place. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This Element addresses a burning question - how can archaeologists best identify and interpret cultural burning, the controlled use of fire by people to shape and curate their physical and social landscapes? This Element describes what cultural burning is and presents current methods by which it can be identified in historical and archaeological records, applying internationally relevant methods to Australian landscapes. It clarifies how the transdisciplinary study of cultural burning by Quaternary scientists, historians, archaeologists and Indigenous community members is informing interpretations of cultural practices, ecological change, land use and the making of place. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The apparent timelessness of the Dreaming of Aboriginal Australia has long mystified European observers, conjuring images of an ancient people in harmony with their surroundings. It may come as a surprise, therefore, that the Dreaming's historical antiquity had never been explored by archaeologists prior to this study. In this seminal text in rock-art research, now reissued with a new preface, Bruno David examines the archaeological evidence for Dreaming-mediated places, rituals and symbolism. What emerges is not a static culture, but a mode of conceiving the world that emerged in its recognizable form only about 1,000 years ago. This is a world of what the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer has called pre-understanding, a condition of knowledge that shapes one's experience of the world. By tracing through time the archaeological visibility of one well known mode of pre-understanding - the Dreaming of Aboriginal Australia - the author argues that it is possible to scientifically explore an archaeology of pre-understanding; of body and mind, identity and Being-in-the-world.

Over the past three decades, “landscape” has become an umbrella term to describe many different strands of archaeology. From the processualist study of settlement patterns to the phenomenologist’s experience of the natural world, from human impact on past environments to the environment’s impact on human thought, action, and interaction, the term has been used. In this volume, for the first time, over 80 archaeologists from three continents attempt a comprehensive definition of the ideas and practices of landscape archaeology, covering the theoretical and the practical, the research and conservation, and encasing the term in a global framework. As a basic reference volume for landscape archaeology, this volume will be the benchmark for decades to come. All royalties on this Handbook are donated to the World Archaeological Congress.

Over the past three decades, “landscape” has become an umbrella term to describe many different strands of archaeology. From the processualist study of settlement patterns to the phenomenologist’s experience of the natural world, from human impact on past environments to the environment’s impact on human thought, action, and interaction, the term has been used. In this volume, for the first time, over 80 archaeologists from three continents attempt a comprehensive definition of the ideas and practices of landscape archaeology, covering the theoretical and the practical, the research and conservation, and encasing the term in a global framework. As a basic reference volume for landscape archaeology, this volume will be the benchmark for decades to come. All royalties on this Handbook are donated to the World Archaeological Congress.

In 2008 intensive archaeological surveys began at Caution Bay, located 20km to the northwest of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. This was followed by the excavation of 122 stratified sites in 2009-2010, and detailed analysis of the well preserved and abundant faunal, ceramic and lithic finds has continued ever since. The Caution Bay Archaeology Project is providing new and exciting contributions to western Pacific prehistory. It has radically expanded the known geographic distribution of the Lapita Cultural Complex to include, for the first time, the southern coast of Papua New Guinea; it has established the relationship of Lapita to later cultural expressions in this area; it has pinpointed the time of arrival of domesticated animals along the southern coast of Papua New Guinea and, by inference, on the larger island of New Guinea; it has provided new insights into the impact of resident populations on local terrestrial and marine environments over a 5000 year time period; and perhaps of greatest significance, it has provided a unique opportunity to document, using multiple strands of archaeological evidence, interactions between resident and colonizing populations at a time of cultural transformation c. 2900 years ago. The first volume of the Caution Bay monographs is designed to introduce the goals of the Caution Bay project, the nature and scope of the investigations and the cultural and natural setting of the study area. To this end a series of chapters are included on the ethnographic and linguistic setting, the present and past natural environment, archaeological surveys of the study area and investigative and analytical methods. These background chapters will be repeatedly referred to in all the other monographs, as foundational reference materials for the broader study.

The Southern Ocean surrounding the Antarctic continent is vast, in particular, its history, its isolation, and climate, making it a unique "laboratory case" for experimental evolution, adaptation and ecology. Its evolutionary history�of adaptation provide a wealth of�information on the functioning of the biosphere and its potential.

The Southern Ocean is the result of a history of nearly 40 million years marked by the opening of the Straits south of Australia and South America and intense cooling. The violence of its weather, its very low temperatures, the formation of huge ice-covered areas, as its isolation makes the Southern Ocean a world apart.

This book discusses the consequences for the evolution, ecology and biodiversity of the region, including endemism, slowed metabolism, longevity, gigantism, and its larval stages; features which make this vast ocean a "natural laboratory" for exploring the ecological adaptive processes, scalable to work in extreme environmental conditions. Today, biodiversity of the Southern Ocean is facing global change, particularly in regional warming and acidification of water bodies. Unable to migrate further south, how will she cope, if any, to visitors from the North?

Designed for curious readers to discover the immense ocean surrounding the most isolated and most inhospitable continent on the planet. Describes the Southern Ocean facing biodiversification due to global change Authored by scientists with experience of expeditions to the Southern Ocean

The Archaeology of Tanamu 1 presents the results from Tanamu 1, the first site to be published in detail in the Caution Bay Studies in Archaeology series. In 2008–2010, the Caution Bay Archaeological Project excavated 122 stratified sites 20km northwest of Port Moresby, south coast of Papua New Guinea. This remains the largest archaeological salvage program ever undertaken in the country. Yielding well-provenanced and finely dated assemblages of ceramics, faunal remains, and stone and shell artefacts, this remarkable set of sites has extended the geographical range of the Lapita cultural complex to not only the mainland of Papua New Guinea, but more remarkably to its south coast, at Australia’s doorstep. At least as important has been the discovery of rich and well-defined layers deposited up to c. 1700 years before the emergence of Lapita in the Bismarck Archipelago, providing insights into pre-ceramic cultural practices on the Papua New Guinea south coast.Sites and layers interdigitate across the Caution Bay landscape to reveal a 5000-year story, each site contributing unique details of the grander narrative. Positioned near the coast on a sand ridge, Tanamu 1 contains three clear occupational layers: a pre-Lapita horizon (c. 4050–5000 cal BP), a Late Lapita horizon (c. 2750–2800 cal BP), and sparser later materials capped by a dense ethnohistoric layer deposited in the past 100–200 years. Fine-grained excavation methods, detailed specialist analyses and a robust chronostratigraphy allows for a full and transparent presentation of data to start laying the building blocks for the Caution Bay story.

Anthropogenic climate change has become a reality, and in Australia this means longer wildfire seasons with more intense fires across a wider area. The GunaiKurnai people of southeastern Victoria saw a large proportion of their Country decimated by the Gippsland Fires of ‘Black Summer’ (2019–2020), prompting questions about the management of Country and its heritage places and artefacts, and of the role that traditional (‘cultural’) burning could play. This volume, written at the request of the GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation (GKLaWAC), seeks to investigate these twin issues. Bringing together a multi-disciplinary team of Aboriginal Elders, archaeologists, environmental scientists, ecologists, historians and art historians, it considers the histories of GunaiKurnai and European settler burning-based landscape management practices, the impacts of fire on specific classes of cultural materials, and the broader impact of changing wildfire patterns on cultural sites in the landscape. This is a truly collaborative venture that sees GunaiKurnai and academic expertise brought to bear in the service of common and pressing issues.

Pundawar Manbur is one of the largest painted rock shelters in the Drysdale River valley of the Kimberley, Western Australia. It contains more than 600 rock paintings, engravings and rock markings with a complex series of overlapping styles of rock art. It is a cultural jewel of Kwini Country, within the lands of the Balanggarra Native Title determination. This monograph presents the first detailed recording and analysis of the site and its art. There are many figures in superposition, and many also in carefully targeted patterns of superimposition, making for a rich story of sequential engagements going back many thousands of years. There is much figurative art, including images from the earliest purported phase of Kimberley art, the Irregular Infill Animal Period, but there are also stencils and other markings. There is evidence of additive reuse – some of the figures have been repainted. There is also fascinating evidence of subtractive reuse, some of the images showing signs of having been ‘battered’ and/or scratched, that is, directly engaged with subsequent to their painting. This monograph is unusual in Australian archaeology as it does not focus on an excavated site; it focuses solely on the rock art of Pundawar Manbur and gives it the attention it deserves.