TY - JOUR
T1 - The lost oasis
T2 - Archaeology of a 'forgotten' mikiri well in the simpson desert
AU - Rowlands, Don
AU - Smith, Mike
AU - Macfarlane, Ingereth
AU - Wright, Duncan
AU - Tischler, Max
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, James Cook University.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - This paper describes a previously unknown mikiri well in the Simpson dune field. This site was abandoned about 500-600 years ago and does not feature in ethnographic records for this region. We argue that its abandonment was most likely due to failure of the well caused by a fall in the local watertable. The Simpson Desert is one of the major sand-ridge deserts of the world, but current views of the chronology of human use of this vast dune field rest on only a handful of radiocarbon ages (n=12). The radiocarbon ages for this mikiri, and its surroundings, add to this limited dataset. We plot all available radiocarbon ages from archaeological sites in the dune field showing that occupation of this mikiri coincided with a widespread increase in use of the dune field during the last millennium, at about the time the Wangkanguru people in the dune field were becoming linguistically distinct from the Arabana to the west.
AB - This paper describes a previously unknown mikiri well in the Simpson dune field. This site was abandoned about 500-600 years ago and does not feature in ethnographic records for this region. We argue that its abandonment was most likely due to failure of the well caused by a fall in the local watertable. The Simpson Desert is one of the major sand-ridge deserts of the world, but current views of the chronology of human use of this vast dune field rest on only a handful of radiocarbon ages (n=12). The radiocarbon ages for this mikiri, and its surroundings, add to this limited dataset. We plot all available radiocarbon ages from archaeological sites in the dune field showing that occupation of this mikiri coincided with a widespread increase in use of the dune field during the last millennium, at about the time the Wangkanguru people in the dune field were becoming linguistically distinct from the Arabana to the west.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85086947854&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.25120/QAR.23.2020.3717
DO - 10.25120/QAR.23.2020.3717
M3 - Article
SN - 0814-3021
VL - 23
SP - 1
EP - 7
JO - Queensland Archaeological Research
JF - Queensland Archaeological Research
M1 - 3717
ER -