The Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands, Gulf of Carpentaria Archaeological Project

This field-based project investigates patterns of past Aboriginal island use in the south-west Gulf of Carpentaria. It addresses the nature and chronology of island habitation, and how people in the Gulf responded to the post-glacial sea level rise. Did people in northern Australia become stranded on islands in the mid-Holocene as they did on Flinders and Kangaroos Islands in the south, or were watercraft already part of their material culture? This and other issues such as the cultural relationship between the present-day Yanyuwa and past island inhabitants, and the influences of early Macassan (Indonesian) contact will be investigated archaeologically.