Tracing connection and change in deep-time landscapes

This project aims to develop new insights into Australia’s past by telling the story of Aboriginal people’s extraordinary long-term connections and changing relationships with prominent places. The project builds on new deep-time discoveries in the northwest arid zone by conducting archaeological research at highly prominent and
distinctive landforms in the eastern Pilbara. The project aims to analyse rock art and excavated materials from key sites to learn how these places acted as beacons through time to structure and shape people's movements, encounters and connections with others. This project is expected to contribute new data on Aboriginal connections to Country and assist with developing future tourist industries in the Pilbara.

By providing a framework to explore long-term connection and change to place, the project contributes to national conversations around how best to promote and manage the deep-time story of Australia’s history and heritage in education and tourism-based contexts. The project has economic benefits for Aboriginal people through the
delivery of archaeological data for Aboriginal-owned, sustainable cultural tourism models based around their connections to Country. The project’s social benefits include promoting Indigenous connection with their cultural heritage, helping facilitate cultural education programs in remote areas, and offering new insights into the relationship between cultural heritage and Indigenous health and well-being.