Archaeological evidence for early human presence in the western reaches of the Greater Swan Region, Western Australia

This paper presents archaeological evidence for early human occupation in the western parts of the Greater Swan Region, Western Australia during the last ice age and immediate post-glacial period, when sea levels globally were greatly lowered. The informal label ‘Greater Swan Region’ refers to a 60-km-long and 40-km-wide, east-west transect from the Darling Escarpment through the centre of the Perth Metropolitan Region to the coast, and thence seaward to the deepening contours of the continental shelf edge, ten kilometres west of Rottnest Island (cf 100 m isobath: Fig. 1). In assessing early human presence in this study area through many millennia of lowered sea levels, one views this stretch of land from the Darling Scarp westward across the exposed (emergent) continental shelf as a single region. This is requisite, on the grounds that through hundreds of human generations this coastal sand plain was in its entirety traversed by Aboriginal hunter-gatherer groups.