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This paper interprets macroscopic charcoal (>250 μm), humification and loss-on-ignition over the last ∼14 200 cal. BP from Goochs Swamp, located to the west of Sydney in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. This study aimed to investigate relationships between humans, climate and fire through time, primarily by comparison of these palaeoenvironmental indices with archaeological evidence from the region. Climatic forcing can explain all periods of change in the history of fire at Goochs Swamp: fire activity was variable during the Lateglacial-Holocene transition, low during the relatively stable climate of the early Holocene, and high but variable after the onset of modern El Niño from the mid Holocene. Although the dominant control on fire in this environment during the Holocene appears to be climate, fluctuations in the late Holocene may reflect anthropogenic fire or human responses to climate change. The archaeological record of the Blue Mountains and other parts of the Sydney Basin illustrates that Aboriginal people altered subsistence, resource and land-use patterns in the late Holocene. We propose that these cultural measures were adopted to overcome new risks as the frequency of ENSO events increased, and the natural fire regime and resource reliability changed. These strategies perhaps included a more systematic use of fire. The most parsimonious interpretation of the evidence for changes in fire activity at Goochs Swamp in the light of nearby archaeological evidence is that Aboriginal people used fire within a changing climatic framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three terrestrial climate proxies are used to investigate the evolution of Holocene palaeoenvironments in southern central Australia, all of which present a coherent record of palaeohydrology. Single-grain optically stimulated luminescence from sediments supplemented by 14C from charcoal and lacustrine shells was obtained to date shoreline deposits (Lake Callabonna) and the adjacent Mt Chambers Creek alluvial fan. Our findings are complemented by a U/Th-based record of speleothem growth in the Mt Chambers Creek catchment, which we interpret to reflect increased precipitation. Together, these archives shed light on the timing of, and possible sources of water for, Holocene pluvial intervals. We identified several phases of elevated lake levels dated at ~5.8–5.2, 4.5, 3.5–2.7 and 1 kyr, most of which correspond to fluvial activity resulting from increased precipitation in the adjacent ranges. The enhanced hydrology during phases of the late Holocene likely increased the reliability of resources for regional human populations during a time of reduced winter rainfall. When considered within the framework of the current understanding of Holocene palaeoclimate in central Australia, our data suggest that the pattern of landscape response was broadly synchronous with larger scale climatic variability and punctuated by pluvial periods greater than today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the long history of human occupation in Australia and New Guinea, any interaction between people and their environment has been played out against changing sociocultural and environmental contexts. Although archaeologists have used palaeoenvironmental data to better characterize the relationships between humans and their environment, and palaeoecologists and geomorphologists have likewise used archaeological and historical information to augment their interpretations, it is our contention that few Australian and New Guinean studies have truly integrated these perspectives. Often archaeologists and palaeoenvironmentalists use each other's information in a one-dimensional manner, tendencies that have yielded simplistic interpretations of the past that overemphasize intentional or unintentional human causation on the one hand, and climatic and environmental causation on the other. We discuss three issues relevant to a more integrated understanding of the past: conceptualizing human-environment interactions, issues of scale and perspective, and multidisciplinary research integration in Australia and New Guinea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]