Modelling past Aboriginal hunter‐gatherer socio‐economic and territorial organisation in Western Australia's lower south‐west

Abstract

Abstract Past Aboriginal hunter‐gatherer adaptation is modelled in Western Australia's ‘lower South‐west’ — an informally named archaeological study area incorporating coastal and immediate hinterland districts from the Swan Region southward to Cape Leeuwin and then eastward to King George Sound. The modelling is principally based on Stanner's concepts of estate ownership and interpenetrative ranges, and is developed regionally through review of ethnohistoric records describing the mobile systems of land usage practiced by Nyungar‐speaking groups in this most south‐westerly part of the South‐western cultural bloc. These records show that the ecological and demographic viability of these contiguously distributed open systems was sustained through reciprocal arrangements between families, local descent groups and bands, at times interacting in larger groupings provisionally termed ‘middle‐tier’ socio‐economic units. Five ethnologically recorded ‘tribal’ or ‘dialect’ group territories reaching across the study area provide the biogeographical and topographical framework for this systemic model, framed within parameters of spatial, demographic and social behaviour formulated for the European Palaeolithic. The regional record of archaeological sites classifiable as congregative or dispersive supports the territorial and socio‐economic modelling. Site complexes in the Leeuwin‐Naturaliste Region and the Swan Region reflect adaptive systems existing through a broad span of Late Quaternary time.