New England's History
New England's History
Discussions on the history and historiography of Australia's New England
Interesting piece in The Conversation (6 October) by Kathryn Allen, Alison O'Donnell, Benjamin I. Cook, Jonathan Palmer and Pauline Grierson, "Megadroughts helped topple ancient empires. We’ve found their traces in Australia’s past, and expect more to come" . The article includes a link to a 2016 paper that I had not seen that attempts to construct a 1013 year rainfall chart for the Williams River in the Hunter Valley - Carly R. Tozer, Tessa R. Vance, Jason L. Roberts, Anthony S. Kiem, Mark A. J. Curran a
Attempts to reconstruct Aboriginal history over the long period of human occupation of Sahul then the later Australian continent including my own for the broader New England tend to focus on broader trends such as the impact of the Last Glacial Maximum and the subsequent emergence of the Holocene. While this is inevitable, it is easy to ignore the significant impact on Aboriginal life of major changes within periods including long mega droughts and subsequent wet periods.
New England's History
New England's History