This book explores the people of the Kikori River Delta, in the Gulf of Papua, as established historical agents of intercultural exchange. One hundred years after they were made, Frank Hurley's colonial-era photographic reproductions are returned to the descendants of the Kerewo and Urama peoples, whom he photographed. The book illuminates how the movement, use, and exchange of objects can produce distinctive and unrecognised forms of value. To understand this exchange, a nuanced history of the conditions of the exchange is necessary, which also allows a reconsideration of the colonial legacies that continue to affect the social and political worlds of people in the twenty-first century.

There is evidence to suggest that the South Molle Island stone quarry in the Whitsunday Islands, central Queensland coast, has been used by the indigenous inhabitants of the region from at least 9,000 BP to the present. A comprehensive technological characterisation of the quarry has demonstrated that a range of manufacturing behaviours was conducted on-site, from the initial extraction of the raw material, through to the final stages of artefact retouch. This research has demonstrated that the antiquity of backed artefacts and the timing of high production rates of backed artefacts occurs earlier in the Whitsunday region than elsewhere in southern Australia. In the Whitsunday Islands backed artefact production has been shown to be present from the beginning of the Holocene and to have been an important technological element in the early Holocene. Another understanding of backing technologies in Australia can be developed in light of this recognition of regional variation.

This monograph takes a new look at various aspects of stone artifact analysis that reveal important and exciting new information about the past, and in particular Australian perspectives on lithics. The ten papers making up this volume tackle a number of issues that have long been at the heart of archaeology's problematic relationship with stone artifacts, including our understanding of the dynamic nature of past stoneworking practices, the utility of traditional classificatory schemes, and ways to unlock the vast amount of information about the strategic role of lithic technology that resides in stone artifact assemblages. The dominant theme of this monograph is the pursuit of new ways of characterising the effects of manufacturing and subsistence behaviour on stone artifact assemblages.