Rocky shores, mud, and mangroves: An assessment of economic intensification at the Yindayin rockshelter, Stanley Island

Abstract

Economic intensification is a prominent concept in hunter-gatherer literature, being used to explain increasing hunter-gatherer complexity and the transition to domestication and permanent settlement. This study used invertebrate material from the Yindayin rockshelter to evaluate whether population driven economic intensification was present during the Holocene. Environmental and climate data was also assessed to evaluate its impact on the observed subsistence patterns. An explanatory model describing the occupation at Yindayin was produced that incorporated the results of the economic intensification assessment, the environmental and climatic data, and data from Beaton’s original analysis of Princess Charlotte Bay.This study did not find a unidirectional increase in occupation during the Holocene. Instead, the results demonstrated that subsistence and occupation patterns at the site were complex and non-linear with periods of increased intensity interspersed with periods of stability and abandonment. Environmental and climate change had the most visible effect on subsistence behaviours while the potential for population induced economic intensification was only identified within the last 200 years of occupation. The results emphasised that interactions between population, environment, and climate are complex, and that to presume there are singular explanations for variation in coastal occupation and subsistence is to deny this complexity. The study demonstrate how economic intensification can be deduced from archaeological correlates and how population driven effects may be separated from environmental effects under certain circumstances. Finally, this study demonstrated how valuable invertebrate assemblages can be for understanding the responses of coastal foragers to environmental and population driven resource pressure.