Early Human Occupation of Australia’s Eastern Seaboard

RGSQ Lecture Series

Prof Patrick Moss, Head of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, QUT

Evidence from northwest Australia suggest that people arrived in Australia by around 65,000 years ago and potentially earlier and until recently there was a lack of late Pleistocene sites (>40,000 years ago) along the eastern seaboard. Recently, evidence has emerged from Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) of two archaeological sites that are greater than 40,000 years in age. These two sites also provide evidence of continuous occupation over the last 50,000 years, with marked responses to environmental change from the artefacts found within these locations. This presentation will provide an overview of these two sites, particularly in terms of linking with the broader landscape change across southeast Queensland that has been derived from pollen analysis of archaeological sediments samples, as well as a number of wetland sites across the region. In addition, indirect evidence of human arrival will be examined based on palaeoecological data from the Wet Tropics of northeast Queensland and there will also be discussion of the environmental implications of people arriving into eastern Australia prior to 40,000 years ago in terms of fire history, vegetation change and megafauna extinction.

Biography: Patrick Moss is a Head of School and a Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Queensland University of Technology. His research is related to an improved understanding of how Australian and Southeast Asian landscapes have responded to climatic alterations and/or human impacts. This research has focused on how past environmental change can contribute to a number of key archaeological, management and/or conservation issues, including water security, fire ecology, conservation of key ecosystems and ecological/anthropogenic response to climate change. His areas of teaching are in Biogeography, Palaeoecology, Landscape Ecology Environmental Management, Fire Ecology and Quaternary Science and has a number of PhD and undergraduate students working on projects in these areas. Professor Moss also provides expert knowledge to government agencies, particularly in terms of maintaining World Heritage values, as well as broader landscape change across the Great Barrier Reef catchment, as well as the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. A particular focus is on tropical environmental change, with an emphasis on wetland systems, particularly how they have responded to past periods of environmental change (both climate and/or anthropogenic), which provides improved understanding of ecosystem resilience and vulnerability. This knowledge can then be utilised in environmental management, particularly in terms of conservation and restoration practices, as well as reconstructing past landscapes linked to archaeological research.