This paper reviews the late Holocene archaeology of Central Australia. The last 1500 years saw significant changes in the archaeological record in this part of the Australian arid zone, with shifts in settlement pattern, site histories, resource use, tool inventories and rock art. Much of the evidence points to regional population growth, beginning 1500-1000 cal. BP and coinciding with expansion of summer-rainfall grassland and more frequent palaeoflood events. Hunter-gatherer groups appear to have increased their use of marginal or outlying areas as these became seasonally accessible. Responses to the demographic changes, especially in the better-watered ranges, include more extended occupation of existing sites, more processing of acacia and grass seeds, and an increase in territoriality reflected in the greater differentiation of rock art complexes after 1500 cal. BP. The archaeological changes are not scaled commensurately with the modest environmental shifts at this time, indicating that human-environment interactions were not linear. A human-environment threshold may have been breached 1500-1000 years ago, with existing socio-economic or historical factors acting to amplify the effects of small environmental changes. However, it remains difficult to fully characterize the nature of these human-environment interactions, despite the fine-grained archaeological record now available. An unresolved problem for this emerging picture of climatic amelioration and population growth is that Aboriginal settlement in Central Australia was expanding at a time when ENSO-driven variability appears to have been at its highest.

One of the largest concentrations of rock paintings in Australia is found in the rugged Kimberley region in the northwest of the continent. A temporal sequence of visually distinctive figurative styles is presumed to span periods of cultural change and major climatic events. As the nature and course of these changes are poorly understood, this paper investigates the relationships between continuity and change in the stylistic attributes of the selected anthropomorphic figures in the rock art assemblage. Some previous Kimberley rock art researchers have argued for an abrupt discontinuity in the art assemblage between the Wararrajai Gwion (the most recent of the Gwion styles) and Painted Hand Periods (formally Clothes Peg Figure and Clawed Hand Periods respectively), while others have argued for more gradual change. Based on the study of 204 rock art sites from 15 site complexes, which included a total of 7,579 motifs and 3,685 identifiable anthropomorphic figures, we identify the core characteristics of anthropomorphic figures in each of the established stylistic periods and show that there is no evidence to support notions of an abrupt discontinuity of art through time. Rather, attribute preferences changed gradually, existing as clades of variation rather than discrete units, with identifiable threads of continuity and periods when certain attributes (core characteristics) are preferentially adopted. A quantitative analysis supports our interpretation.

The continuing discussion about Indigenous perspectives and understandings of rock-art has implications for archaeological research, especially in Central Australia where rock-art is a significant part of Aboriginal life today. We present an Indigenous view of outcomes of research projects generally and an outline of acurrent collaborative rock-art study in Central Australia. We investigate the context in which rock-art was produced in order to develop an understanding of the relationship between the landscape, the motif assemblages and other past human activities.

The Kimberley region of Western Australia is one of the largest and most diverse rock art provenances in the world, with a complex stylistic sequence spanning at least 16 ka, culminating in the modern art-making of the Wunumbal people. The Gunu Site Complex, in the remote Mitchell River region of the northwest Kimberley, is one of many local expressions of the Kimberley rock art sequence. Here we report excavations at two sites in this complex: Gunu Rock, a sand sheet adjacent to rock art panels; and Gunu Cave, a floor deposit within an extensive rockshelter. Excavations at Gunu Rock provide evidence for two phases of occupation, the first from 7-8 to 2.7 ka, and the second from 1064 cal BP. Excavations at Gunu Rock provide evidence for occupation from the end of the second phase to the recent past. Stone for tools in the early phase were procured from a variety of sources, but quartz crystal reduction dominated the second occupation phase. Small quartz crystals were reduced by freehand percussion to provide small flake tools and blanks for manufacturing small points called nguni by the Wunambal people today. Quartz crystals were prominent in historic ritual practices associated with the Wanjina belief system. Complex methods of making bifacially-thinned and pressure flaked quartzite projectile points emerged after 2.7 ka. Ochre pigments were common in both occupation phases, but evidence for occupation contemporaneous with the putative age of the oldest rock art styles was not discovered in the excavations. Our results show that developing a complete understanding of rock art production and local occupation patterns requires paired excavations inside and outside of the rockshelters that dominate the Kimberley.

In October 1962 Norman Tindale was fl own to the Geosurveys Hill area, deep in the Simpson dunefield (Figure 1), to follow up reports of prehistoric occupation exposed on interdunal pans in the area (Anon. 1962). Tindale, then at the South Australian Museum, had been invited to make the trip by Reg Sprigg, Managing Director of Geosurveys of Australia Ltd, one of several companies prospecting the Simpson Desert for oil and gas in the 1960s (Sprigg 1993). Geosurveys staff had noticed that 'long lines of stones on a claypan disappear under sand hills' (Sprigg 1993). Left alone in the desert in the late afternoon, Tindale, then nearly 62, was a hardy, self-reliant field archaeologist: ‘I took stock of my camp,' he wrote in his journal, 'got together some firewood against the night, chose a place to sleep and then made a hasty reconnaissance of the claypan.' Later he 'fed on chops grilled in ashes, made tea and then with a flashlight searched for and found stone implements ... on the claypan' (Tindale 1962:7). Although he had planned for several days of fieldwork, Tindale only had a few hours of daylight in the area as the plane returned the next morning to collect him before impending rain made local clay pans too soft to land on.

The earliest accounts of Central Australian rock art were recorded in the journals of the explorer Ernest Giles, who set out in 1872 to explore the unknown interior of Australia. Mounted on horses, he and his two companions followed the dry sand bed of the Finke River into the rugged and relatively well watered central ranges. before turning south-west across the mulga-covered plains which run west to the sand dune country where surface water is found only after rains. Several months into the trip, after days without water, the party's progress was impeded by a vast salt lake whose surface proved treacherously boggy. forcing the riders to turn hack to what Giles quaintly recorded as 'a little pass and glen where we knew that water was to be got' (1995:49). The water, described as 'thick and dirty with a nauseous flavour', was found by digging a deep trench into the sand (Giles 199):50). Subsurface water seeped slowly into the bottom of the trench leaving lime for the men to explore their surroundings as they waited to water their horses.

Anthropogenically modified pigments are held to be some of the earliest, most unambiguous and persistent evidence for behavioural modernity, frequently (and often tenuously) invoked as material expression of symbolic thought and action. Recent finds, increases in the sophistication of analytic techniques and theoretical frameworks have renewed interest in ochre, reflected by a spike in actualistic studies, investigations of pigment morphology and geochemistry. Archaeological studies continue a bias towards Pleistocene pigments, while archaeometric research continues to focus on ochre from known source locations, and in Australia, ethnographically documented mines. Here I take a different tack, targeting Holocene ochres, focusing on pigments with at least one known, indisputably symbolic function- the production of rock art. As part of the physical and metaphorical (cultural) landscape, rock art offers a unique pigment archive as it remains in the location in which it was created. A decade since the first published application of portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF) to rock art there has been an absence of critical scrutiny and methodological development. Aiming to redress this, I use conventional and Synchrotron X-ray Diffraction, Micro Computed Tomography and Scanning Electron Microscopy to explain and evaluate pXRF. I develop novel methods of using geochemical data to identify paint mineralogy (including differentiating between paints of the same colour), recognise the chemical signatures of taphonomy and compare ochres from excavated contexts with rock art. Interpreting the resultant elemental profiles relies on understanding the complex taphonomy of pigments and the chemical expression of non-cultural phenomena, something not adequately addressed previously. This work therefore offers a non-invasive means by which large scale studies of archaeological pigments can be undertaken.

The plaintive 'gwarr gwaaar' of two foraging cows is the only sound that greets our arrival at Mt Yarrowyck Nature Reserve, half an hour's drive west of Armidale. The pair swoop and swerve between the stringybarks, keeping a sharp eye on the activities of all who enter the area. More alert than military sentinels, the crows watch over the Aboriginal sites found on the slopes of the mountain. Like us, most visitors to the Reserve are keen to see one of the few publicly accessible examples of Aboriginal rock art on the New England Tableland.

Many rock art studies in Australia and indeed, worldwide, have focused on the content of art assemblages: the individual motifs that together make up an engraved or painted assemblage. While earlier research frequently focused on quantitative analysis, which placed signifi cance on numerically dominant motifs (e.g., Edwards 1966; Franklin 1991; Vinnicombe 1976), research over the past four decades has expanded to incorporate contextual analyses (e.g., Bradley 2000; David and Chant 1995; Ross 1997). Stylistic changes across space and through time have been evaluated against the social and environmental contexts in which rock art was produced in order to provide explanations for the form and content of assemblages. Rather than considering art as an "object," art is seen as a "practice" (Conkey 1990: 5-17) intentionally created by individuals as a visual expression of aspects of their society. Despite these developments, the content of the assemblage remains central. Identifi cation and analysis of the relationship between motifs is likely to broaden our understandings of rock art assemblages and inform us about the ways in which past societies viewed their world.

Distinctive mulberry paintings found in northern Australia, particularly those of the Kimberley region, have been argued to represent some of the oldest surviving rock art on the continent. Significant research efforts continue to focus on resolving the age of these motifs, but comparatively little attention has been given to understanding their physical composition and potential source(s). In a pilot investigation, we conclude that (at least) two mineralogically distinct mulberry pigments occur in 'Gwion' motifs and demonstrate that their major components can be indicatively chemically differentiated, non-invasively. Characterization of a 'quarried' mulberry ochre source demonstrates that these pigments occur locally as natural minerals.