New discoveries from Australia's oldest known underwater archaeological record reveal how First Peoples lived, transported goods and used different places within a vast cultural landscape that was submerged when rising seas transformed the continent after the last Ice Age.
Published in the prestigious journal Quaternary Science Reviews, compelling new evidence shows that significant Aboriginal cultural heritage survives on Australia's seabed. It also shows that earlier discoveries at Murujuga, in north-western Australia, were not isolated finds but part of a broader submerged cultural landscape across this World Heritage-listed region.
The discoveries, which include stone artefacts associated with an ancient freshwater spring, provide insights into a world that existed before rising seas reshaped Australia's coastline.
While the sites were submerged at least 9,000 years ago, the artefacts could be considerably older.
At the heart of this discovery is a partnership between underwater archaeology researchers from Flinders University, The University of Western Australia, James Cook University and University of York (UK) with Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation and its Rangers, who trained as scientific divers and worked alongside archaeologists to locate and document the underwater cultural sites.
