The antiquity of marine fishing in southeast Queensland: new evidence for pre-2000 BP fishing from three sites on the southern Curtis Coast

Abstract

The antiquity of marine fishing in southeast Queensland has been debated since the mid-1980s. Walters has argued that systematic marine fishing was only adopted in the last 2000 years as a response to the marginality of terrestrial landscapes fringing the coast, while Hall, McNiven, Ross, and Ulm, among others, have maintained that fishing was always an integral component of coastal settlement, but that a variety of taphonomic processes and recovery problems under-represent fish remains dating to before the late Holocene. Zooarchaeological data from shell midden deposits on the southern Curtis Coast at the northern end of the southeast Queensland bioregion shed new light on this debate, with fish remains recovered from three deposits dating prior to 2000 BP and up to 4000 BP. Implications for understanding the antiquity of marine fishing in the wider region are considered and directions for future research identified.