Challenging the 'offshore hypothesis' for fossiliferous chert artefacts in southwestern Australia and consideration of inland trade routes

With a peak in fossiliferous chert use around the Last Glacial Maximum, these findings have significant ethnographic implications supporting long distance trade to the east rather than local sourcing of lithic resources by isolated Aboriginal groups. These findings also have chronological implications relating to the use of Eocene fossiliferous chert as a chronological marker for Late Pleistocene to early-Holocene age deposits in southwest Western Australia, albeit with source accessibility following post-glacial sea-level rise still a main factor in the decline in chert use.