Ancient Crossroads

Dr Clarkson works with local assistants to recover artefacts from sieves

Who would have thought the best place to find out when people first came to Australia would be in India, but for University archaeologist Dr Chris Clarkson, it makes perfect sense.

“India is the crossroads between Africa and Australia for modern humans,” Dr Clarkson said. “It really is the stepping stone for modern humans coming to Australia 50 to 60 thousand years ago.”

But rather than using genetics to map the early settlement of Australia, Dr Clarkson, from the University’s School of Social Science, is taking a unique angle – he is looking at stone tools. “By looking at stone tools from early sites between Africa and Australia, like those we have found in India, I am trying to understand when and how people came to our part of the world,” he said.

“Just as we can trace human lineages through our genes, stone tools might also help trace migrations as people carry the technology with them. This is because people pass on the knowledge of how to make stone tools from generation to generation, creating cultural lineages like those we see in genes. So if we can find similar technology in Africa, India and Australia at this early time, we may be able to trace the movement of people through these areas, and understand more about their early lifestyles.”

Dr Clarkson said his approach was also redefining how people analysed stone tools. “Previous stone tool research has relied on typology, an old method that simply classifies tools according to what they look like, rather than how they were made,” he said. “I have developed a new system based on 3D computer analysis that examines both the way they look and the ways they were made. This gives us a much more accurate way of comparing tools from different sites, regions and time periods.”

He said the area of India his research was focused on was the Kuronool district in Andra Pradhesh, where the archaeological dig was unearthing stone tools found around a former freshwater lake that had quickly filled up with volcanic ash. “This ash comes from a massive volcanic eruption in Sumatra, about 74,000 years ago,” he said.

“The ash is found all over India and even turns up in the Greenland Ice Cores. It was the biggest eruption in more than 2 million years. Our excavation will help work out what impact the eruption had on human evolution, and whether it might have caused a population collapse or a human migration event out of Africa to India and Australia.”

By digging down five metres, he and his colleagues from Cambridge and Karnataka Universities are able to get a rough picture of life before and after the eruption, and to find out whether modern humans turn up in India before or after the ash fall.

Excavating deep ash deposits in Andra Pradhesh         Photos: courtesy Dr Chris Clarkson

Story author: Andrew Dunne

• FUNDING:  ARC, The University of Queensland, British Academy Larger Grants Scheme, Natural Environment Research Council/Environmental Factors in the Chronology of Human Evolution & Dispersal programme, and the Leakey Foundation
• RESEARCHER: Dr Chris Clarkson
• EMAIL: c.clarkson@uq.edu.au

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