Research Report for 1974, by the Department of Prehistory Research School of Pacific Studies

The Department is concerned with the prehistory of the Indo-Pacific region. During the year, research was carried out in the following areas; the original human colonisation and the later man-environment relations in south eastern Australia, including Tasmania and Kangaroo Island; the ecology and camp site geography of modern Aboriginal hunters in the Central Desert and Arnhem Land; the evolution of horticultural systems in the New Guinea Highlands; the articulation and history of sea-borne trading systems in the coastal mosaic of Melanesia; development of absolute and relative dating methods involving radioactive isotopes, thermo luminescent energy, ion diffusion rates and shell growth rings; the ecology of Pleistocene faunas, including the problem of the extinction of the giant marsupials; and the implication of recent human palaeontological discoveries in the region to the broader question of the evolution of modern Homo sapiens