Aboriginal traditions of food: Investigating Holocene dietary changes in southern Australia

Australian Aboriginal culture is underpinned by long-term traditions connected with food – from procurement, to processing, consumption and eventual disposal. Food as an essential item could be seen as an output of the local environment, where any and all foodstuffs that can be sourced by an Aboriginal group comprise the basis of a “local” diet. Throughout this chapter, I consider that diet represents the long-term aggregate of food consumed over the course of decades, thereby accounting for the yearly cycle of food availability as the seasons changed, or shorter-term climatic effects (such as drought), which could have temporarily altered the availability of foodstuff. Diet should not be seen as static, but rather intrinsically connected and responsive to patterns that impact politics, culture and economy more broadly. Importantly, the complexities and subtleties surrounding any Aboriginal food system cannot be described by a simple framework listing the range of foods available within an ecosystem. Rather, continued cultural practices and social and oral knowledge, handed down through generations, combined with anthropological and archaeological investigations, allows insight into the complexities of the long-term food systems.