Revealing the diversity of Aboriginal life in the Sydney region, this study examines a variety of source documents that discuss not only Aboriginal life before colonization in 1788 but also the early years of first contact. This is the only work to explore the minutiae of Sydney Aboriginal daily life, detailing the food they ate; the tools, weapons, and equipment they used; and the beliefs, ceremonial life, and rituals they practiced. This updated edition has been revised to include recent discoveries and the analyses of the past seven years, adding yet more value to this 2004 winner of the John Mulvaney award for best archaeology book from the Australian Archaeological Association. The inclusion of a special supplement that details the important sites in the Sydney region and how to access them makes the book especially appealing to those interested in visiting the sites.

This monograph represents a new step in Australian archaeology. It presents a detailed quantitative, technological analysis of flaked stone artefacts, of a kind not published previously in Australia. The detailed nature of the analysis reflects the measurement of a large number of variables on each specimen, as well as the use of those measurements in an extended study of the archaeological patterns. The monograph deals with only one archaeological assemblage: the stone artefacts from Capertee 3, a site excavated in the Blue Mountains immediately west of Sydney. This volume develops and tests models of artefact variation and production to an extent not seen before in Australia. More importantly, the analysis of data involves the statistical interrogation of quantitative measurements and is designed to reveal the magnitude and direction of morphological variation within the assemblage. The technological approach adopted allows for the first time in Australian archaeology an evaluation of the nature of changes in the manufacture of retouched flakes in a sequence spanning the entire Holocene. This evaluation enhances current understanding of cultural change in Holocene eastern Australia by allowing the testing of a number of propositions about the rate and uniformity of change in archaeological assemblages. In particular these analyses initiate a review of models of the Eastern Regional Sequence by creating a record of the stoneworking processes in one of the key archaeological sites that define the purported Eastern Regional Sequence.