Crafting Country

<p>Based on ten years of surveys and excavations in Nyiyaparli country in the eastern Chichester Ranges north-west Australia <em>Crafting Country</em> provides a unique synthesis of Holocene archaeology in the Pilbara region. The analysis of about 1000 sites including surface artefact scatters and 19 excavated rock shelters as well as thousands of isolated artefacts takes a broad view of the landscape examining the distribution of archaeological remains in time and space. Heritage compliance archaeology commonly focuses on individual sites but this study reconsiders the evidence at different scales – at the level of artefact site locality and region – to show how Aboriginal people interacted with the land and made their mark on it.</p><p><em>Crafting Country</em> shows that the Nyiyaparli ‘crafted’ their country building structures and supplying key sites with grindstones raw material and flaked stone cores. In so doing they created a taskscape of interwoven activities linked by paths of movement.</p>