#083 Regenerating in Deep Time
New finds, narratives & future possibilities, with leading archaeologist Peter Veth
Australia’s history is being significantly rewritten - or perhaps better said, heard. There is growing widespread understanding of the sophistication, presence and wisdom of the First Australians, and not just from the game-changing works of people like Bruce Pascoe and Bill Gammage. Now that modern Australia is looking in more of the right places, with the right mind, and with the First Australians themselves, our national - and really, human - story, is changing everywhere.
This is a story of successful continuous human migration, cultivation and livelihood, right across Australia, over many a changing climate and shifting sea level. And leading archaeology professor from UWA, Peter Veth, has been working with First Nations for over 40 years to help share this story.
Title slide image: Cape Range, on the World Heritage Ningaloo Coast (pic: UWA).
“The populations generally didn’t seem to crash, they moved. And so mobility, the ability to mobilise where your residential bases are, and to shift your economic preferences ... That kind of flexibility allowed people, we can prove, to cope with 130 metres of sea level change.”
Peter has just started a new dig with First Nations folk here on the North West Cape of Australia, part of the World Heritage Ningaloo Coast. It’s expected to reveal the First Nations presence in this part of the world dates back an extraordinary 60,000 years. And when pieced together with other finds and collaborations happening across Australia and the world, it changes the way we see our country, it’s people, and the human experience generally. And that, in turn, is broadening the menu of present and future possibilities enormously, at a time when this region, its people, and the world as a whole, need it most.
This conversation was recorded on the new moon of 12 May 2021.
Click on the photos below for full view, and hover over the image for descriptions & credits. Please note that some of the photos below contain images of people who have died.
Get more:
Tune into the special extra with Peter.
On Peter Veth.
On the new Nyinggulu Archaeology Project, from ABC Pilbara, ‘Ningaloo research to tell 60,000-year-old story as new technology uncovers deeper past’.
Songlines the book, by Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly.
On the Resilient Reefs initiative. (And hear my conversation with Dr Peter Barnes & Joel Johnsson from last year on this.)
Music:
By Jeremiah Johnson.
And the special extra to this episode features Gone Clear, by William Tyler off his album Modern Country.