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.

The emergence of stone-tipped projectile weaponry was an important event in hominin evolution. A common archaeological approach to identifying projectile weapons is to extrapolate from optimal values of ballistically-relevant attributes as determined from ethnographic North American weapons and modern experiments. Among the most significant of these attributes is "tip cross-sectional area" (TCSA) because it determines a point's efficiency in penetrating an animal. The warranting argument for projecting these data onto prehistoric artefact's is that past "research and development" necessarily led to stone projectiles with optimal TCSA values for a given delivery system. However, our test of this warranting argument, involving analysis of 132 hafted ethnographic Australian stone projectile points and 102 hafted knives, demonstrates that Aborigines did not optimize TCSA values, thus offering a challenge to TCSA-based narratives about the first appearance of projectile weaponry. This illustrates the difficulty of inferring ancient stone workers' design intentions from narrowly-defined optimal values. Instead, tool designs should be considered in the context of the reduction sequences that produced them and the dynamics of transmission of those reduction sequences across generations.

Associated Rock Art Traditions are surface modifications usually found in association with rock art. They are the product of repeated mechanical actions and usually lack the figurative elements of stylistic rock art traditions. While pecked cupules, fingerfluting, abraded areas, and abaded grooves are well documented both in the archaeological and ethnographic record, flaked edges have received limited recognition as an Associated Rock Art Tradition. This thesis will examine bedrock flaking as another example of an Associated Rock Art Tradition. Research was conducted in the northwest Kimberley where linear panels of bedrock flaking are abundant in association with rock art. Seventy eight sites were recorded across six (6) research areas, containing 1719 bedrock flaking panels from which 10,178 flake scars were recorded. Sites were classified as Quarry sites - abundant flaking debris; Ritual sites - limited flaking debris and rock art; and Other - limited flaking debris and no rock art. The analysis of variables from panels and flake scar measurements showed that Quarry sites were significantly different to Ritual and Other sites, containing a high quantity of larger flake scars. Ritual and Other sites were much harder to differentiate, containing flakes of similar dimensions but of varying stone quality and scar quantity. Other sites contained limited bedrock flaking panels and were interpreted as prospecting sites, where stone was assayed. Ritual sites had high numbers of bedrock flaking panels, but with much smaller flake scars than found at Quarry sites and very limited flaking debris. It is proposed here that bedrock flaking at Ritual sites represent an Associated Rock Art Tradition rather than an economic activity. The mechanical similarities between pounding and bedrock flaking may have led to these being viewed as closely related ritualised behaviours along with rubbing, hammering and incising which have been recorded ethnographically and archaeologically as Associated Rock Art Traditions.