Using satellite imagery to evaluate precontact Aboriginal foraging habitats in the Australian Western Desert

Abstract

Modern satellite imaging offers radical new insights of the challenges and opportunities confronting traditional Aboriginal ecology and land use in Australia’s Western Desert. We model the likely dynamics of historic and precontact desert land use using Earth observation data to identify the distribution of suitable foraging habitats. Suitability was modelled for an ideal environmental scenario, based on satellite observations of maximal water abundance, vegetation greenness, and terrain ruggedness. Our model shows that the highest-ranked foraging habitats do not align with land systems or bioregions that have been used in previous reconstructions of Australian prehistory. We identify impoverished desert areas where unsuitable foraging conditions have likely persisted since early in the last glacial cycle, and in which occupation would always have been rare. These findings lead us to reconsider past patterns of land use and the predicted archaeological signature of earlier desert peoples.