Settlement patterns in the Kakadu wetlands: Initial data on site size and shape

For several decades the Arnhem Land escarpment in Kakadu National Park has been the focus of archaeological investigations. Examination of the rock art which can be found along the escarpment (for example Chaloupka 1984), and excavations in rockshelters (for example Schrire 1982; Allen and Barton 1989; Jones 1985) have documented the economic shifts which accompanied the formation of the vast wetlands during the mid to late Holocene. Initially it was suggested that people may have occupied the wetlands only on a seasonal basis (White and Peterson 1969), but there is now general agreement that people resided in the lowlands throughout the year (for example Schrire 1982; Jones 1985; Clarke 1987; Brockwell 1989). The view that humans permanently occupied the rich and ecologically varied plains country west and northwest of the escarpment has brought archaeological investigators to a consideration of the settlement system that was in place within the Kakadu wetlands during the mid to late Holocene period. Most of the wetlands remain archaeologically unstudied, and discussion of wetlands settlement has been based on a limited archaeological survey in the freshwater section of the South Alligator River carried out by Meehan et al (1985). In 1991 the present authors carried out a new survey of the Kakadu wetlands, and the preliminary results reveal that the model of site size and settlement structure put forward by Meehan et al (1985) is unable to accommodate the complex archaeological patterns which exist.