WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

younger and smaller than the Lake Garnpung location, and only preserves human
tracks. It is comparable in age with a South Australian site inland from Clare Bay,
first described by Daisy Bates in 1914, which reveals numbers of human, kangaroo,
wallaby and emu prints impressed (not necessarily simultaneously) in carbonate
mudstone along the edge of a small swamp. This site has been dated to around 5000
years. At two localities in the Clare Bay swamp site, the presence of adults and
children are inferred (Belpario and Fotheringham 1990).
Fossil human tracks are rare in Australia. There are three occurrences documented in
the literature. The Dampier Coast site documented by Welch is the smallest of the
three. It is the only example yet found in Western Australia. Less clearly documented
accounts of human tracks along the Dampier Coast appear in the literature (Mayor
and Sarjeant 2001; CNN 1996; Long 2002).
Fossil human tracks are important for both scientific and symbolic reasons. Early
hominid tracks like the Pliocene Tanzanian Laetoli footprints provide important data
on the evolution of human bipedalism. The Pleistocene and Holocene human record
which the Dampier Coast tracks help to elaborate is very patchy. Documenting track
sites through human history can begin to reveal population data across a continent and
through time, to supplement other kinds of archaeological and historical evidence.
Tracks have the potential to reveal data which is hidden from those who only study
body fossils: about gait, anatomy, stature, size, population and speed. In other words,
they evoke 'the living behaviour of our ancestors' (Kim et al 2008; Webb et al 2006).
However, compared to the other documented track sites at Clare Bay and the
Willandra Lakes, the documented Dampier Coast human trackway on it own does
significantly build on the Pleistocene – Holocene archaeological record.
The fossil human footprint sites of the Dampier Coast have outstanding heritage
value to the nation under criterion (b) as one of only three documented human
track sites in Australia and the only documented evidence of human tracks from
the west coast of Australia.
WEALTH OF LAND AND SEA
Antiquity of macro-botanical record and evidence of plant use over 40,000 years
Archaeological excavations by O'Connor at Carpenters Gap (McConnell and
O'Connor 1997) showed that this site, near Windjana Gorge in the Napier Ranges,
were occupied from around 40,000 years to the present. The exceptional preservation
conditions at Carpenter's Gap 1 rock shelter [also known as Jambarurru to Bunuba
people (S. Pannell pers. comm. 5 May 2010 and Tangalma to the Unggumi: Playford
1960, 2007)] have conserved an extensive micro and macro-botanical inventory of
over 2,000 seeds and plant parts, dating from 39,220 ± 870 years ago to 650 ± 90
years (McConnell and O'Connor 1997). Nowhere else in Australia is there a
palaeobotanical record of comparable length or equivalent antiquity. In addition,
Carpenter's Gap 1 provides evidence of a continuous cultural presence from the
Pleistocene through the last glacial maximum (18,000–20,000 BP, also commonly
known as the last ice age), and into the Holocene (from about 10,000 years ago until
the present).
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