Late Holocene technological provisioning at the Kings Table rockshelter, Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia

Abstract

Technological analysis of the late Holocene component of the stone artefact assemblage recovered from the Kings Table rockshelter in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, provides the basis for an assessment of the site's role in broader late Holocene settlement-subsistence systems. Drawing on Kuhn's widely employed “provisioning model”, as well as Kelleher's general pre-contact occupation model for the Blue Mountains National Park (BMNP), we argue that the Kings Table rockshelter functioned as a short-term field camp for logistically-organised hunter-gatherers whose principal residential bases were located in “off-mountains” contexts. It is argued that the late Holocene component of the Kings Table assemblage has a technological “signature” entirely consistent with individual provisioning. Aboriginal groups occupying this site over the course of the late Holocene employed a mobile toolkit whose lithic component was dominated by artefacts manufactured out of high-quality, transported silicified tuff and incorporated both backed artefact-bearing composite tools and hafted edge-ground hatchets (axes) as key elements.