Landscape and Cultural Change on the South Alligator River, Kakadu National Park, Northern Australia
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2015-10-21

Sally Brockwell, Bethune Carmichael
AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

The vast floodplains of the South Alligator River contain iconic freshwater wetlands internationally renowned for their natural and cultural values. These low-lying floodplains are particularly vulnerable to sea level rise, which threatens devastation to freshwater flora and fauna and Indigenous cultural heritage sites. For the past three years, an inter-disciplinary research programme involving archaeology, palaeoecology and social history has been documenting occupational and environmental histories associated with the river from mid Holocene to historical times. The major outcome will be a greater understanding of the implications and management challenges associated with climate change, by contextualising threatened change in a history of past change.