Box Gully archaeological site

The Box Gully archaeological site is an Aboriginal archaeological site on the shore of saline Lake Tyrrell, in the Mallee region of northern Victoria, Australia. The site consists of the remains of a small hunting camp, which has produced radiocarbon dates of between 26,600 and 32,000 years BP, making Box Gully one of the earliest known occupied sites of the region and the first documentation of pre-30,000 calBP Aboriginal occupation of the extensive area between the Murray River and the Tasmanian highlands. Located on the north western tip of the Lake Tyrrell lunette along an eroded water channel, the site has revealed hearth features, stone chipping debris, and butchered faunal remains of a variety of animals, including bettong, hare-wallaby, shingle-backed lizard, emu, and freshwater mussel. The site was probably a short term, late autumn-winter camp site, occupied seasonally over multiple occupations. Lake Tyrrell is the largest playa in the Murray Basin of southeast Australia. Optical dating of sediments within the transverse dune (lunette) sediments demonstrate aspects of the lakes history into the interglacial period, and show the highest lake level around 131,000 ± 10,000 yr ago, forming Lake Chillingollah, a megalake filled by increased winter rainfall, that persisted until around 77,000 ± 4000 yr ago. The remains of repeated small scale camping episodes were uncovere

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).