Below the Sky, above the Clouds

Abstract

Abstract The High Country of the Australian Great Divide is a distinctive landscape that covers a large portion of southeastern Australia. After fifty years of research, we still know little about the nature and antiquity of Aboriginal archaeological sites and landscapes across the High Country. This article examines the archaeology of montane (1100–1400 m above sea level), subalpine (1400–1850 m), and alpine (>1850 m) landscapes, and the interpretative frameworks employed by previous researchers. It suggests that reference to neither subsistence economies nor climate change by themselves suffices to explain Holocene occupational patterns and trends across the High Country. Rather, a consideration of Aboriginal named places and pathways, cosmologies and stories, and relations between territorial estates and kin, as documented in ethnohistoric texts and through current Aboriginal knowledge, allows for a richer, more cultural understanding of the occupation of the High Country.