SEMINAR: ARCHAEOLOGY SEMINAR SERIES Semester one 2012

The problematic term Anthropocene denotes the current interval where human activity is affecting global climate, but when did it start - during the Industrial Revolution or much earlier with the global spread of agriculture? If the Anthropocene began with agriculture, what happens to the Holocene? The periods would be co-terminus. Furthermore, is the term applicable to Australia? The use of the term Anthropocene was debated at length at the Quaternary Research Association meeting in the UK in January and at the Australasian Quaternary Association (AQUA) meeting in New Zealand in February. I attended both meetings and will summarise the discussions while inviting comments from the audience. Quaternary Studies are rarely pursued in WA due to the antiquity of the bedrock geology and the paucity of places where organics survive for any length of time. One can count the long palynological records for WA on the fingers of one hand, for example; while our understanding of faunal change over time is equally patchy. Furthermore, most of the archaeological record appears to date to the Holocene, sensu lato. This may explain why AQUA has never been held in WA and the organisation has very few WA-based members, none of whom actually attend the biennial meetings. The value of joining AQUA and gaining a continent-wide understanding of the Australian Quaternary record will be illustrated in this talk.