Hunter-gatherer economies along the Newcastle coastline: An analysis of a shell midden site from the Late Holocene Birubi, New South Wales

Abstract

Until relatively recently, shell middens have been overlooked as culturally rich sites that can inform archaeologists on many aspects of the past. In depth analyses of all features of a site are needed in order to gain an understanding of the people who created them. Analyses that examine both the ecological and economic aspects of sites through the use of quantitative data have been promoted via detailed research of coastal shell deposits in South Africa and California. Although the application of this type of approach has not been as widespread in southeast Australia, the foundational work on which to build more detailed coastal archaeological research and midden analysis comes from Attenbrow (Attenbrow 1993, 1995, 2010a, 2010c, 2011) and Sullivan (Sullivan 1982, 1984, 1987).This thesis, through a holistic and methodical approach, seeks to provide a material based analysis of hunter-gatherer interactions with the environment along the NSW coastline during the late Holocene. The case study of the Birubi shell midden is located near Port Stephens in NSW and was systematically excavated and recorded by Prof. Len Dyall (then of the University of Newcastle) in the 1970s. The results from the quantitative analysis undertaken in this thesis demonstrate that the hunter-gatherers of Birubi sustained a diverse coastal economy. This thesis aims to provide a dataset, following the framework of Sullivan and Attenbrow, which can be used alongside other similar studies in order to build up a more comprehensive understanding of subsistence economies along the NSW coastline in the Holocene.