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Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology pp 1–17Cite as

Bradshaw (Gwion) Figures: Initial Observations Drysdale River, Kimberley 1986/88

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State of Knowledge and Current Debates

The Region

The Drysdale River is one of the largest rivers in the Kimberley region of north-west Australia. It rises near Mt Hann and flows north some 400 kilometers to Napier Broome Bay in the Timor Sea (McGregor and Chester 1992) (Fig. 1). It was first made known to Europeans in 1886 by Charles Burrows who came upon the river while seeking pastoral lands for the Victorian Squatting Company (Schmiechen 1992; Rainsbury 2009). The river valley covers 16 000 square kilometers – with a permanent population of around ten people – mainly cattle station owners, managers and employees. The country the river flows through is isolated, diverse, and for large sections extremely rugged, impassable to vehicles, and difficult on horseback. Like the other major Kimberley rivers, it is subject to massive fluctuations in water flow driven by the annual wet season monsoons. During the “wet” from November to April, up to 1400 millimeters of rain falls in the...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities and Creative Arts (Archaeology), Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Joc Schmiechen

Authors
  1. Joc Schmiechen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joc Schmiechen .

Section Editor information

  1. Departament de Prehistòria, Història Antiga i Arqueologia, ICREA/Universitat de Barcelona/SERP, Barcelona, Spain

    Inés Domingo Sanz

  2. "CONICET - AIA - UBA Asociación de Investigaciones Antropológicas", Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Danae Fiore

  3. Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Ewa Dutkiewicz

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Schmiechen, J. (2019). Bradshaw (Gwion) Figures: Initial Observations Drysdale River, Kimberley 1986/88. In: Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_3406-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_3406-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51726-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51726-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference HistoryReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities

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