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Temporal variability in shell mound formation at Albatross Bay, northern Australia
Abstract
We report the results of 212 radiocarbon determinations from the archaeological excavation of 70 shell mound deposits in the Wathayn region of Albatross Bay, Australia. This is an intensive study of a closely co-located group of mounds within a geographically restricted area in a wider region where many more shell mounds have been reported. Valves from the bivalve Tegillarca granosa (Linnaeus, 1758) were dated. The dates obtained are used to calculate rates of accumulation for the shell mound deposits. These demonstrate highly variable rates of accumulation both within and between mounds. We assess these results in relation to likely mechanisms of shell deposition and show that rates of deposition are affected by time-dependent processes both during the accumulation of shell deposits and during their subsequent deformation. This complicates the interpretation of the rates at which shell mound deposits appear to have accumulated. At Wathayn, there is little temporal or spatial consistency in the rates at which mounds accumulated. Comparisons between the Wathayn results and those obtained from shell deposits elsewhere, both in the wider Albatross Bay region and worldwide, suggest the need for caution when deriving behavioural inferences from shell mound deposition rates, and the need for more comprehensive sampling of individual mounds and groups of mounds.
Type
Journal Article
Type of thesis
Series
Citation
Holdaway, S. J., Fanning, P. C., Petchey, F., Allely, K., Shiner, J. I., & Bailey, G. (2017). Temporal variability in shell mound formation at Albatross Bay, northern Australia. PLoS ONE, 12(8): e0183863. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0183863
Date
2017-08-30
Publisher
Public Library Science
Degree
Supervisors
Rights
© 2017 Holdaway et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.