Holocene suite of stone tool types comprising backed blades and flakes, unifacial and bifacial points and small adze flakes. Tools with regional distributions include Bondi points, geometric microliths, Pirri points and tula adzes. All except the Bondi points and geometric microliths were still in use as stone components of wooden weapons and tools at the time of European contact, and the exceptions were not recognized as artefacts by Aborigines. Earliest dates for most of the small tools are around 3000 bc, although adze flakes first appeared possibly 2000 years earlier. Debate centres on the question of whether the tradition developed locally or was introduced from Indonesia, where there are technological parallels in the microliths of southwestern Sulawesi from 4000 bc (seeToALiAN).
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied