Rethinking boundaries: Tulas on Marra Country and the northern reach of a Holocene innovation

Drawing inspiration from the work of Tim Maloney and India Ella Dilkes-Hall, whose 2020 critical reassessment of tula diffusion in the southern Kimberley (Western Australia) revealed a more gradual, regionally mediated uptake than previously proposed, we report on a number of new tula occurrences in Marra Country, Limmen National Park (Northern Territory) and examine the associated technological and cultural implications. While archaeologists have acknowledged that the boundaries of artefact distribution zones are not fixed, their representation in distribution maps can inadvertently reify boundaries as discrete and accurate realities of the past. Here, we emphasise the perspective that archaeological ‘boundaries’ are more than rigid lines on a cartographic representation of known archaeological occurrences; instead, they reflect fluid ‘zones’ of interaction, transmission, and adaptation. In this paper, we aim, first, to place the Marra Country tulas within broader Holocene models of lithic technological information flow and, second, to examine their relationship with hardwood availability/craft production (after Maloney and Dilkes-Hall). This reassessment of lithic technological variability in the Top End raises important questions about the social and environmental factors that shaped the innovation and persistence of Australian stone artefact traditions.