Author: Louise Brooke
Brooke, Louise, 2024 Australian Submerged Cultural Landscapes in Context: Examining an Onshore and Offshore Site at Withnell Bay, Murujuga, Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Terms of Use: This electronic version is (or will be) made publicly available by Flinders University in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. You may use this material for uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968. If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material and/or you believe that any material has been made available without permission of the copyright owner please contact copyright@flinders.edu.au with the details.
Withnell Bay is located to the north of Western Australia and was chosen as a prospective site for the preservation of cultural materials found in sub-tidal contexts. This was based on the identification of a lithic artefact found in the intertidal zone in 2022 by Professor Peter Veth (University of Western Australia). In August and September 2023, a further nine underwater lithic artefacts were recovered from the northern coast of Withnell Bay with two distinct clusters located to the east and west. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that submerged landscape archaeology benefits from contextual based inquiry which aims to connect underwater sites to the broader terrestrial landscape. This was achieved through the analysis of published archaeological and geomorphological literature and systematic pedestrian survey of the intertidal zone. Identified in this study were archaeological sites such as petroglyphs, lithic scatters and quarrying along with stone features which occurred frequently around exposed outcrops of granophyre in the nearshore environment. The size and morphology of the intertidal artefacts when compared to the underwater lithics demonstrated that there were two clusters, as the eastern assemblage was distinctively different to the western site and are likely from different ages and activities. The western site situated near the headland to the northwest of Withnell Bay extends across the onshore and offshore environment and may have been used both pre-and-post sea-level stabilisation. Whereas the eastern underwater assemblage which is situated closer to the mangroves has similar features to intertidal artefacts and due to the artefact morphology, may represent a site that dates to the late-Pleistocene or early-Holocene. This study was a formative exploration of the submerged archaeological landscape of Withnell Bay and aimed to assess the terrestrial, intertidal and sub-tidal environment to contextualise the northern coastline through periods of sea-level change, representing a cultural continuum both on-land and underwater.
Keywords: submerged landscapes, archaeology, lithics, geomorphology, maritime archaeology, australian archaeology
Subject: Archaeology thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2024
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Dr John McCarthy