Mounds of the North: Discerning the nature of Earth Mounds in North Australia
Creators: name: O Foghlu, Billy
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2021

description: This thesis is dedicated to the study of late Holocene Earth Mound sites in two separate regions in northern Australia: Weipa, Cape York Peninsula; and the South Alligator River floodplains, Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory. Broadly speaking, Earth Mounds are shallow mounds of earth that have been left in the landscape by the people of the past. These sites typically present little, if any visually discernible stratigraphy and yield few, if any cultural remains. Some sites can be difficult to differentiate from other archaeological site types (e.g. shell matrix sites), others can be difficult to differentiate from natural features (e.g. megapode mounds) and others still can be difficult to even identify in the landscape at all. Even in instances where Earth Mounds can be positively identified, it can often be difficult to progress past this fundamental point. Earth Mounds are at their heart, enigmatic archaeological sites and yet their careful study can prove to be fruitful. This thesis chronicles the last half a century of study of Earth Mounds in Australia and presents new archaeological fieldwork undertaken in two separate regions in northern Australia. This thesis compares archaeological Earth Mounds with natural features in the landscape and demonstrates how and why they are different on both micro and macroscopic levels through the use of revealing, soil-based post-excavation analyses. These analyses reveal some of the mechanisms behind anthropogenically modified Earth Mound soils and human-engineered firing, and how these compare to natural soils and the by-products of natural processes. In addition to investigating faunal and modified stone assemblages, this thesis also analyses termite mound heat retainers on a crystalline level in order to compare these artefacts with naturally baked termite clay. This thesis compares information from a range of Earth Mounds within the same study areas across different microenvironments, and from sites and environments across these two separate regions of northern Australia. This thesis demonstrates that these sites exhibit nuanced and regionally specific variations that require equally nuanced and individually tailored methodologies to investigate and interpret. Importantly, this thesis demonstrates how and why listening to local Traditional Owners was crucial throughout every stage of this project. Listening to experts today does not provide a blueprint of the past, but it can highlight some of the questions that need to be asked about the past. This thesis will also compare its archaeological findings with the results of an extensive survey of both regions' ethnographic corpora. This work will demonstrate why Earth Mounds are important archaeological sites in their own right, and how their study can contribute to larger archaeological discourses. The study of Earth Mounds contributes to palaeoenvironmental research and furthers the understanding of past relationships between people and their environments, including cultural responses to environmental change in the late Holocene. This thesis will demonstrate the complexity and importance of Earth Mounds in northern Australia, both in the archaeological record, and in living, breathing cultural landscapes today.