Understanding Isolation and Change in Island Human Populations through a study of Indigenous Cultural Patterns in the Gulf of Carpentaria (2004-2005)

This project aims to develop and test a set of hypotheses based on ethnographic archaeological and environmental evidence to explain the cultural differences between Aboriginal people of the North and South Wellesley and Sir Edward Pellew Islands Gulf of Carpentaria and to characterise the relative degree and nature of their isolation and cultural change over a 5000 year time-scale. These clusters of islands present three separate cultural-geographic contexts a triad of field laboratories facilitating micro-studies of the diffusion of cultural traits from a larger-scale mainland cultural complex to geographically isolated island cultures. In a broader theoretical framework these case studies have the potential to contribute to the renewed debate on how the reproduction of world culture occurs (or does not occur) through the processes of diffusion and cultural adaption or rejection of imported influences.