NEW PERCEPTIONS OF THE CHRONOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT OF ABORIGINAL FISHING IN SOUTH-WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Aboriginal fishing in south-western Australia was significantly affect ed by Late Holocene physical and biological changes along this region' s 1,600km-long littoral. About 4000 sp sedimentological processes, in part generated by climatic factors, altered coastal configurations and estuarine hydrologies, blocking marine lagoons from the sea and causi ng partial filling and seasonal barring of estuary floors and entrance s. These geomorphological changes affected most of the region's estuar ies, and intensified seasonal differences in their salinity levels, wh ich, combined viith seasonal barring, restricted movements of school f ish populations, thus compelling shifts in fishing strategies. Review of palaeogeographical and palaeontological data and investigation of f ormer tidal weirs, on the shores of now nearly tideless estuaries and relict marine bodies, gives insight into the chronology of fishing and into the ways this key subsistence activity may have been adapted to changes in estuarine and coastal conditions. The Late Holocene may be the period when south-western Aboriginal fishing gained the economic a nd socio-political importance that it had regionally during the period of European settlement.