Patterns of modernity taphonomy, sampling and the pleistocene archaeological record of Sahul

Man entered a new continent, adapted his own culture to deal with unfamiliar country, animals and plants, and conversely subjected the environment to the ecological pressures of his own technology. Jones (1968, 186) The ‘behavioural modernity debate’ has generated a plethora of publications discussing singlespecies or multiple-species models, ‘bow waves’, innovation hypotheses and cultural skill accumulation and resulted in a debate that has grabbed headlines for the past 20 or more years (recent examples include McBrearty & Brooks 2000; Henshilwood et al. 2002; d’Errico 2003; Mellars 2005, 2010; Mellars et al. 2007; Bouzouggar et al. 2007; Powell et al. 2009; Zilh ã o et al. 2010; Shea 2011b). While signii cant advances in our understanding of the origins and development of our own and neighbouring hominin species’ cognition, social and economic behaviour have occurred, the impact that taphonomic processes have had on the archaeological records under study has not played as prominent a role in these debates as perhaps they should. The trait lists used by archaeologists to identify modern cognition in the archaeological record are dominated by organic-based artefacts and features (e.g., burials, shell and bone beads, mobile art, osseous technologies, evidence for marine, freshwater and terrestrial faunal exploitation) as well as fragile features such as rock art. The use of so much organic-based and archaeologically fragile evidence for identifying the first appearance of modern cognition and its consequent development in the archaeological record indicates that taphonomy should be a key consideration when identifying and describing spatial and temporal patterns. However, this has not always been the case.