Traditions, Transformations and Technology in Aboriginal Australia

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This project aims to understand the development and spread of technological systems in pre-contact Aboriginal Australia and the connection between that diffusion process and the major expansion of Pama-Nyungan languages spoken over much of our country. Fundamental change occurred in Aboriginal societies over the last ten millennia, as new technologies and languages were adopted during a period of climatic shifts. Using archaeological observations and statistical methods from evolutionary biology, the project plans to map the spread of ancient technologies across the continent and compare the direction and sequence of that expansion to the reconstructed pattern of language spread. The result is expected to be a new understanding of the evolution of Aboriginal cultural systems.