Symbolic behaviour and the peopling of the southern arc route to Australia

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Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier’s archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright Author's personal copy Quaternary International 202 (2009) 59–68 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint Symbolic behaviour and the peopling of the southern arc route to Australia Jane Balme a, *, Iain Davidson b, Jo McDonald c, Nicola Stern d, Peter Veth c a University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia University of New England, Australia c Australian National University, Australia d La Trobe University, Australia b a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Available online 18 October 2008 a b s t r a c t It is now widely accepted that modern humans dispersed from Africa some time after 100 ka, arriving in Australia before 40 ka via a route known as the southern arc. Along this route modern humans would have encountered new and diverse environments but their dispersal into and settlement of new areas was rapid. Language and other symbolic behaviours would have contributed to the flexibility of social and economic strategies required for such rapid dispersal and colonisation. However, there is generally little material evidence in the southern arc for the existence of this symbolic behaviour, except in Australia. We believe that previous assessments of the quantities of such evidence in Australia have underestimated its abundance. The crucial point is that colonisation of the southern arc is itself evidence for the existence of complex information exchange systems, planning depth and symbolic conceptualisation. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction This paper investigates the dispersal of modern humans along the southern arc and how flexible their social and economic strategies may have been in terms of the speed of dispersal, the range of habitats colonised and the use made of material symbols. It begins with a brief overview of the chronology of expansion through the southern arc and the range of habitats encountered along the possible routes of dispersal. It then moves to a discussion of the evidence for inter-group interactions and identity markers (movement of goods imbued with high social value, ornaments, art, ritual burial, use of arbitrary conventions in the making of artefacts) and evaluates existing explanations for the apparent dearth of conventional markers of symbolic behaviour. 2. Expansion across the arc Fossil and genetic evidence (Stringer, 2002; White et al., 2003; Forster, 2004; McDougall et al., 2005; Manica et al., 2007) indicates that modern Homo sapiens originated in Africa between 195 and 130 thousand years ago. Recent mtDNA studies suggest that several genetic lineages emerged in Africa after 150 thousand years ago. Of these, only the L2 and L3 genetic lineages expanded to lay the foundation for successful migration out of Africa between 85 and * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ61 8 64883825; fax: þ61 8 64881023. E-mail address: jbalme@cyllene.uwa.edu.au (J. Balme). 1040-6182/$ – see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2008.10.002 55 thousand years ago (Oppenheimer, 2004; Forster and Matsumura, 2005; Macaulay et al., 2005). Exactly when the dispersal began has not yet been resolved and there are no fossils from the Arabian Peninsula or DNA data bearing on dispersal in this region. However, there is new, tantalising evidence from the site of Jwalapuram in India suggesting that the dispersal may have begun earlier rather than later in the time bracket determined by the mtDNA studies. This evidence consists of stone artefact assemblages that resemble Middle Stone Age assemblages in Africa (Petraglia et al., 2007). These assemblages occur both above and below ash layers deposited from the eruption of the Sumatran volcano, Toba, and the assemblages lying beneath include an ochre fragment. On these bases, Petraglia et al. (2007) tentatively suggest a date of about 74 ka for modern humans in South Asia. Dates of this order (65 ka and 60 ka, respectively) are also suggested by mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA work with Andamanese (Thangaraj et al., 2005) and mitochondrial DNA studies of Malaysian Orang Asli (Macaulay et al., 2005). It must be remembered, however, that coalescence dates only provide maximum ages for the timing of dispersals because of the possibility that dispersing populations already contained divergent DNA sequences. Archaeological evidence, on the other hand, provides minimum dates but it is inevitably patchy. The oldest modern human fossil remains in South Asia are from two sites in Sri Lanka – Fa Hien Cave dated to 31 ka and Batadomba-lene dated to 28.5 ka (Deraniyagala, 1992 cited in James and Petraglia, 2005). In Southeast Asia there is a firm date of about 46 ka from Niah Cave in Sarawak (Barker et al., 2007). In Australia there is some Author's personal copy 60 J. Balme et al. / Quaternary International 202 (2009) 59–68 controversy about the oldest dates of between 50 ka and 60 ka based on TL, OSL and/or ESR age determinations (see, for example, Roberts et al., 1994). Those who reject these early dates point to the problems associated with luminescence techniques and the apparent lack of clear association between the materials dated and the archaeological occupation (see, for example, Allen and O’Connell, 2003 and Gillespie, 2002). Relying exclusively on radiocarbon technology and a strict approach to archaeological association, dates of between 40 and 47 ka have been obtained for mainland Australia and island Melanesia (Fig. 1) (see Allen and O’Connell, 2003 and O’Connor, 2006). All of this evidence suggests that the process of colonisation along the southern arc took 30,000 years at most and about 10,000 years at least. There were numerous points along the southern arc where divergent routes could have been followed (Field and Lahr, 2005) (Fig. 2). The first of these points of divergence are the two possible routes out of Africa (marked as ‘A’ on Fig. 2). At this point colonisers could have proceeded via a ‘northern route’ across the Sinai Peninsula and thence to the rest of the world or a ‘southern route’ across the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait (involving a water crossing), along the coast of the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia and Australia (Macaulay et al., 2005). The second critical point of divergence was reached at Sunda, because at this point dispersing population could have taken a path either to Sulawesi or southwards through the lesser Sundas (marked as B on Fig. 2). Morwood (Morwood and van Oosterzee, 2007, pp. 167–182) has suggested recently that the pattern of currents in island Southeast Asia would have made a third route possible, one which initially went north to Palawan before turning back south. The existence of this route is supported by the distribution of much earlier mid-Pleistocene fossil species. Fig. 1. Archaeological sites in Australia and Wallacea with radiocarbon age determinations of 40,000 years B.P. or more. (Sources of information on the position of the À75 bathymetric contour: Duncan, 1982, pp. 140–141; Geoscience Australia, 2003; Kilgour and Hatch, 2002; Lampert, 1981, p. 4; Voris, 2000). Author's personal copy J. Balme et al. / Quaternary International 202 (2009) 59–68 61 Fig. 2. The southern arc route, showing critical points of divergence (after Field and Lahr, 2005). Another critical point was reached at the Bird’s Head of New Guinea: from there people could have moved along either the north or south edge of New Guinea (marked C on Fig. 2). Although there is no DNA or archaeological evidence from the horn of Africa, both the DNA and archaeological evidence from elsewhere suggest that the colonisers of the southern arc took the southern route out of Africa (e.g. Oppenheimer, 2004). Evidence bearing on the movement of modern humans through the Sunda Shelf is sparse, but it has generally been assumed that a southerly route, through the Lesser Sundas was the most likely. If the southern route to Sahul was taken the first island target of any size east of the Sunda Shelf would have been Flores. Debate about whether Flores was passed through, or by, is complicated by the discovery of several fossils of Homo floresiensis on Flores, with a known time range from 90 to 11 ka (Morwood et al., 2004, 2005). H. floresiensis is a very small descendent of an earlier species, currently undetermined, probably that which made the tools at Mata Menge (Brumm et al., 2006) and is part of a specialised and depauperate island fauna (Morwood et al., 2005). At present, no archaeological evidence for the presence of modern humans on the island before 10 ka has been identified (Brumm and Moore, 2005; Veth, in press). Furthermore, it has been argued (Davidson, 2007a) that the selection pressures that produced a hominin with small stature and small brain size suggest that H. floresiensis is unlikely to have had a larger-bodied and larger brained competitor. In consequence one of the northern routes seems more likely. Further consideration of a southerly route through the Sunda Shelf has been encouraged by the suggestion that there was a north-south ‘savannah corridor’ running through this region during the Last Glacial Epoch (Bird et al., 2005). This savannah corridor existed whenever sea level fell 40 m or more below its present level, opening up a narrow landbridge between Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra and along the north coast of Java that supported open vegetation communities. This belt of savannah would have provided a route to Niah and then a southern route to Australia through the lesser Sundas (Bird et al., 2005). However, even if modern humans had strategies for coping with the conditions encountered in a wide variety of habitats, there is no reason why the southerly route should have been preferred over other options. The northern margin of the reconstructed savannah corridor would have led these modern humans straight to the shortest crossing point to Sulawesi, and the route that took them to Niah would have led them through the savannah to Palawan and Morwood’s preferred, far northern route. Genetic research, based on mtDNA, indicates a time lag of 10 thousand years between first occupation of Papua New Guinea and subsequent movement eastwards into Island Melanesia (Friedlaender et al., 2005a,b). An alternative scenario involves a single founding population that split prior to entry into Sahul, with some groups colonising the northern edge of the continent, and others moving simultaneously into more southerly regions. Genetic data do not identify the immediate point of geographic origin for the earliest migrants into Sahul. More detailed reconstruction of how and when populations of modern humans moved through the Sunda Shelf and into Sahul cannot be gleaned from current knowledge of the fossil and archaeological records. This is a consequence of the fact that limited archaeological research has been undertaken in many parts of the Sunda Shelf and the implications of acquiring new data from these regions is illustrated by the situation in East Timor. There a new generation of archaeological research was initiated in 2000 and within six years the earliest dates for occupation had been extended from 13 ka to 42 ka in calibrated years (O’Connor, 2006, 2007). However, the distribution of sites in the region with basal dates older than 40 ka (Fig. 2) indicates that people moved rapidly, even using the limited range of sites accepted by O’Connell and Allen (2004). In addition, by 30 ka years ago people occupied most habitats across Sunda and Sahul (Fig. 3) 3. The environment Although savannah seems to have been the easiest habitat for the colonising populations, the evidence form Niah and elsewhere suggests that they were able to use the margins of such environments successfully. This is demonstrated in Fig. 4 which combines Hope et al.’s (2004) vegetation reconstructions for the cooler conditions of the Last Glacial Maximum based on pollen records. Bird et al.’s (2005) suggested savannah corridor and the positions of archaeological sites dated to 50–40 ka. From these overlays it is evident that 40 thousand years ago people in this region were in most habitats except grassland and temperate forest. An initial date does not necessarily mean continuous occupation of a region as Author's personal copy 62 J. Balme et al. / Quaternary International 202 (2009) 59–68 Fig. 3. Archaeological sites in Australia and Wallacea with radiocarbon age determinations indicating that they were occupied between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago (Bathymetric sources are the same as for Fig. 1). indicated, for example, by the apparent abandonment of many sites in lowland arid areas during the last Glacial Maximum (see, for example, Hiscock, 2008, pp. 45–62; O’Connor and Veth, 2006). Nevertheless the speed of dispersal and diversity of environments in which people settled as they dispersed through the southern arc, particularly the uncertain resources of the deserts (cf. Smith and Hesse, 2005; Veth et al., 2005), indicates an extraordinary flexibility that we argue is indicative of group planning and of information feedback. Evidence for some of this has been recovered recently from Niah Cave in Borneo and includes indications that before 46,000 years ago the inhabitants of this cave occupied a diverse landscape in which they practised a complex foraging behaviour that included forest burning, time consuming detoxification of plant foods and probably animal trapping (Barker et al., 2007). 4. Inter-group relations Discussing inter-group relations of the earliest people on the Australian continent is difficult when there are so few sites. One line of evidence is the migration patterns indicated by mtDNA and Y-chromosome lineages. The latest evidence from genetics suggests that the Australian and New Guinea populations were relatively isolated after their arrival in the continent of Sahul (Hudjashov et al., 2007). However, this claim for isolation is not supported by archaeological evidence: for example, by 9 ka people had travelled from Sahul to Timor, taking with them cuscus, one of the marsupials native only to Sahul (Heinsohn, 2001; O’Connor et al., 2005); by 4000 years ago, the dingo reached Australia (Gollan, 1984; McNiven and Hitchcock, 2004). Neither of these animals could have crossed the sea passages that always separated Sahul from island Author's personal copy J. Balme et al. / Quaternary International 202 (2009) 59–68 63 Fig. 4. Australia and Wallacea showing the vegetation as interpreted by Hope et al. (2004), the suggested savannah corridor (Bird et al., 2005) and the locations of archaeological sites with radiocarbon age determinations of 40,000 years or more. Southeast Asia, unless they had been carried in watercraft built and guided by people. The archaeological evidence demonstrates a movement of people that appears to be invisible to the genetic record and establishes that the isolation was not as great as inferences from the mtDNA data imply. Of course, it is also possible that the genetic lineages on both sides of the water might have been similar throughout the period. Nevertheless, the small groups who initially made landfall in Sahul were responsible, apparently without significant later introductions of genetically different people, for the emergence of more than a thousand languages in Australia and Papua New Guinea (Yallop, 1982; Blake, 1988), consistent with genetic diversity within Australia possibly dating back 40 thousand years (van Holst Pellekaan et al., 2006). We might ask how that diversity was achieved. Was it economic, reflecting different specialisations in a foraging economy? Or, more likely, was it social (cf. Keen, 2004) reflecting responses to high population density in some regions, and in areas of low population density and dispersal, the need to maintain identity and extended social networks? Oppenheimer (2004, pp. 89–128) argues that genetic changes are not sufficient to explain the behavioural differences associated with the success of the first people who left Africa and colonised Asia, Australia and the rest of the world. Nor, he argues, is the material record studied by archaeologists a straightforward indication of the behaviours that permitted such extraordinary expansion of the new species into territories some of which were Author's personal copy 64 J. Balme et al. / Quaternary International 202 (2009) 59–68 occupied already by rather similar hominin species. Paradoxically, genetic change does not cause behavioural change and the material evidence of behaviour does not indicate the nature of behaviour. So, what was distinctive about the colonisers of the southern that might be identifiable from the archaeological record? One way of tackling this question is to think about the cognitive ability of the colonising hominins. This approach derives from work by Barnard et al. (2007). First, the cognitive abilities demonstrated by early modern humans were not just different from those of great apes, but represented several steps of change away from them. Second, cognitive change is not simply a result of neural change and may not be linked directly to genetic change. It is more likely to result from the complex interactions involved in learned behaviour, including (1) learning itself, (2) social interactions, particularly in the context of its ontogenetic development, and (3) cognitive feedback through a fully modern, reflective cognition. Despite the acceptance that there is something cultural about the ordinary behaviour of chimpanzees (Whiten et al., 1999, 2001; McGrew, 2004), it is difficult to argue that those animals attach meaning to the implicit roles in their everyday lives in the way that people do. Barnard’s (1999) model includes a propositional cognitive subsystem that is identified through the attachment of meaning to those implicit roles and the consequent expansion of the possibilities of mental representation (Davidson and Noble, 1989). The key component of almost all of the traits said to indicate modern human behaviour (Klein, 2000; McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; d’Errico, 2003; Henshilwood and Marean, 2003; Mellars, 2005) is that they exhibit information flow, planning depth and conceptualisation that follow from the use of language (Noble and Davidson, 1991). Consequently colonisation by people with modern cognitive ability allowed (1) efficiency due to information feedback as groups moved into new environments but maintained contact with ancestor populations and (2) group planning of the strategies of movement in ways unavailable either to earlier hominins or to other genera. To what extent can these abilities be recognised in the archaeological record? Such behaviours can be identified from the presence of archaeological evidence for inter-group interactions, such ´ as long distance material transportation (Feblot-Augustins, 1993; Ambrose, 1998; Marwick, 2003) and identity markers in the form of symbolic behaviour such as art, ornaments or ‘style’ (as indicated by functionally redundant or otherwise unexplained variation in material culture assemblages) and ritual burials. 5. Evidence for inter-group interactions and identity markers Apart from the fragment of ochre from Jwalapuram (Petraglia et al., 2007) the earliest unambiguous evidence for symbolic behaviour in South Asia is the ostrich egg shell beads dated to 28, 500 years (James and Petraglia, 2005); the earliest explicitly symbolic artefacts are found on the Indian subcontinent between about 30,000 and 20,000 years ago. In Wallacea and Australia the earliest evidence for symbolism overlaps with the time of the arrival of people in Australia and includes painted rock fragments dated to 42 ka from Carpenter’s Gap in the Kimberley (O’Connor and Fankhauser, 2001) and lumps of haematite with ground facets from Malakunanja 2 and Nauwalabila 1 in Arnhem Land. These are dated by OSL to 53 ka and 53– 59 ka, respectively (Roberts et al., 1994) but the early dates have been disputed because of the difficulties of associating the archaeological remains and the luminescence samples (Allen and O’Connell, 2003) and the sites may date more closely to 40 ka. In New South Wales, 2500 km south of the Arnhem land sites, there is evidence for ritual burial practices at Lake Mungo, about 40,000 years ago, in the form of cremation and fragmentation of one body and the use of sprinkled ochre on the extended burial of another (Bowler et al., 1970, 2003; Bowler and Thorne, 1976; Olley et al., 2006). By about 30,000 years ago there is evidence of the movement of materials over long distances including ochres that are sourced from distant quarries found in 32,000 year old levels at Puritjarra in Central Australia (Smith et al., 1998) and the movement of scaphopod shells over distances of 500 km from their source to Riwi in the Kimberley dated to about 30 ka (Balme, 2000; Balme and Morse, 2006). Art was almost certainly part of the cultural repertoire of the first Australians – if only because of the presence of ochre in sites occupied before 30,000 years ago. The development of a figurative component – archaic faces – within this art tradition may date to the earliest period of a widespread, engraved, graphic tradition (McDonald, 2005). All recorded examples are heavily weathered, highly patinated and many are significantly geologically altered (Edwards, 1968; Dix, 1977; McCarthy, 1977; Walsh, 1988) in all conditions of dip, strike, orientation and petrology. These motifs are distributed across the arid zone between the Dampier Archipelago and Mount Isa. A small proportion of figurative motifs occur amongst a larger repertoire of non-figurative motifs and track motifs and there is some suggestion of early regionalisation amongst Australia’s earliest art (and see Franklin, 2004). Pigment art is considered to have a lower probability of survival than engraved art. Nonetheless, Bradshaw Figures in the Kimberley have been dated by OSL to 17 ka (Roberts et al., 1997) and the pigment on buried rock fragments at Carpenter’s Gap has been dated to 42 ka (O’Connor and Fankhauser, 2001). Changing inventories of species also demonstrate major environmental change from the Pleistocene to the early Holocene in the paintings of Kakadu (Chaloupka, 1993) and the petroglyphs of the Dampier Archipelago (Lorblanchet, 1992; McDonald and Veth, 2007; Mulvaney, K. pers.comm. 2008). Dates for pigment found in oxalate crusts in NE Queensland reach 24.6 ka in Laura and 28 ka in Chillagoe (Watchman, 2001). Calibration of these dates gives figures of 29 ka for Laura and 32.6 ka for Chillagoe. Although there is no way to establish whether this dated pigment was part of a painted motif, these results suggest we should not be surprised to date art elsewhere in Australia older than 30 ka. These well documented sequences across the northwest (in Kakadu, the Kimberley and the Dampier Archipelago) show divergent regional art traditions in the Pleistocene which suggest that there was symbolic differentiation of populations early in the process of colonisation. Early Australians were already differentiating themselves by the symbolic structuring of their relationships with the environment and each other. There is also evidence for widespread use of composite and complex tools such as edge-ground and waisted stone axes ´ (Schrire, 1982; Groube et al., 1986) and shell adzes (Szabo et al., 2007). There are flakes from stone axes dated to before 35,000 BP or earlier from northern Australia (Morwood and Trezise, 1989; O’Connor, 1999). If it is accepted that these artefacts indicate conceptualisation of artefact form, it is clear that the modern colonisers of the southern arc created material expressions of symbolic behaviour and that the spatial and temporal distribution of symbolic markers coincides with the first evidence for modern people in that part of the southern arc. 6. Discussion It has been suggested recently by Brumm and Moore (2005), O’Connell and Allen (2007) and Franklin and Hapgood (2007) that the evidence for symbolic artefacts associated with the colonisation of Australia is slight compared to the record for the colonisation of Europe by anatomically modern humans. Brumm and Moore (2005, Table 2, p. 162) illustrated their argument by summarising the Author's personal copy J. Balme et al. / Quaternary International 202 (2009) 59–68 65 numbers of sites, and the number of these sites that contain evidence for art, ornaments and style in lithics (ground edged axes being the only identified style), for five Pleistocene time tranches. Table 1 draws on these data and includes an extra column expressing the number of sites containing material evidence for symbols as a percentage of the total number of sites in each time period. There are two points to be made from this evidence. The first is that these numbers may be underestimates. Although the total number of sites containing symbolic evidence increases through time, the percentage of these sites in each time tranche decreases, thus the figures for the earliest period of colonisation are not as low as it may seem. In addition, our earlier discussion identified eight sites in Australia that are older than 40 ka, four of which preserve evidence for symbolic behaviour. If we are correct in our argument about the early production of regionally distinctive art, then many rock art sites should be added to the list. The numbers are also likely to be underestimated because of the likelihood that, as in ethnographic times, much of the ornamentation used by Australian Aboriginal people was made from perishable material such as hair and plant. Thus it may well be that the major difference between the expression of symbolic behaviour associated with the colonisation of Australia and Europe is the relative lack of particular styles in stone artefacts in Australia rather than a lack of use of symbolic markers per se. We still have very few sites representing this early period and such sampling issues may become clearer as more evidence is uncovered. The second point to be made is that symbolic conceptualisations connected with planning depth and information flow may be inferred for the southern arc from less tangible evidence. This includes pre-LGM evidence for long distance sea voyaging outside of Africa; such evidence comes from the settlement of Sulawesi (Glover, 1981; Bulbeck et al., 2004), the islands of Maluku, Gebe and Sahul (for a summary of sites, dates and stone industries, see Moore and Brumm, 2007) and movements east into Island Melanesia (for a summary of sites, dates and stone industries see O’Connor, 2006a; Moore and Brumm, 2007). On early voyages into island Melanesia, people carried obsidian and live animals in their watercraft (Allen and Gosden, 1991; Torrence et al., 2004). Thus it can be said that the colonisation of the arc, provides clear evidence of symbolic conceptualisations but little evidence of symbolic markers before the colonisers arrived in Australia. Why might that be so? The presence and abundance of symbolic markers might depend on the presence of situations in which such communications are necessary. Davidson and Noble (1992) explained the early appearance of personal markers as part of a system for identification of people with shared conventions in a situation in which communication involved the use of arbitrary but conventional signs, that is to say, language. Although this may be an ultimate explanation for some symbol-use, more proximal explanations are linked to arguments about increases in population density because, for example, there was a greater chance of meeting unfamiliar people for which that information might be useful (Kuhn et al., 2001; Stiner, 2002). Some combination of the two is undoubtedly necessary, given that no other primate engages in symbolic behaviour whatever their population density. The fact that there is a higher proportion of sites containing evidence for Table 1 Number and percentage of sites preserving evidence for the use of symbolic artefacts, based on data presented by Brumm and Moore (2005, Table 2). Time period >40 ka 40–31 ka 30–21 ka 20–11 ka Total number of sites 4 18 31 96 Number of sites with symbols ?1 3 4 8 Percent with symbols 25 17 13 8 symbolic markers (as defined by Brumm and Moore, 2005) early in Australia’s colonisation rather than later, might suggest that there is not a straightforward link between use of markers and the numbers of markers and population density. On the other hand, the evidence for divergent regional traditions of art in the Pleistocene suggests symbolic differentiation of populations may have occurred relatively early in the process of colonisation and establishment. The difficulty of dating such traditions means that the symbolism embedded in that art has not been studied in detail and is only now being incorporated into broader discussion of their import for initial colonisation. Symbolic markers have meaning only to those who use them so members of other groups may recognise the existence of those marks but not necessarily the information embedded in them. The crucial point to be made, however, is the theoretical position that the rapid colonisation of the southern arc indicates that it was colonised by people engaged in complex information exchange systems, who displayed planning depth and conceptualisation and these attributes were all bound up with the development of language. 7. Conclusion What are the consequences for arguments about the colonisation of the southern arc following the crossing of the Bab-elMandeb Strait by a small number of people? First, the presence of evidence interpreted as indicating fully modern behaviour – propositional meaning, information flow, planning depth, and conceptualisation (Noble and Davidson, 1991) d indicates that a capacity already existed to reflect on the consequences of actions. This can be manifested in many different ways: creative technical skill; association of meaning with complex action patterns; flexibility in the options for interaction; rapid adjustment to new resources. In practice these may be manifest in the archaeological record through increased artefact variation and regional patterning (Vanhaeren and d’Errico, 2006), appearance of socially constructed roles (Conroy, 1993; Balme and Bowdler, 2006; Adovasio et al., 2007; Kuhn and Steiner, 2006), and variation in the way such patterning is manifest in different regions (O’Connor and Veth, 2005; Davidson, 2006). It is through more sensitive analyses of these styles that archaeologists seeking to understand the colonisation of the southern arc and Australia might link the colonisation process with the symbolic conceptualisations of the pioneers. Most importantly, and apparently at variance with the patterning in earlier times, there is no requirement that the emergence of propositional thought and symbolic construction of the world should produce a particular pattern in the archaeological record. It would have created patterning, but that patterning should not be the same from one population to another. The flexibility that derived from fully modern cognition and the use of arbitrariness and convention in symbolic communication explains the apparent paucity of evidence for symbol-use following the Howieson’s Poort stage in southern Africa (Soriano et al., 2007) and in the early archaeological records of Australia (Brumm and Moore, 2005) and North America (Speth, 2004, 2006), despite earlier indications in both regions, and an abundance of evidence in later prehistory (Davidson, 2007b). The archaeological record of the southern arc shows that the people who occupied Wallacea and Sahul were infinitely adaptable, in a manner implied by the fully reflexive cognition described by Noble and Davidson (1996) or Barnard et al. (2007). They do not appear to have been constrained by the selective pressures of island biogeography and depauperate faunas that confronted H. floresiensis (Veth, in press). 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