Discovery of a site in the remote northern Kimberley region with evidence of an early axe production industry has shed new light on early Aboriginal occupation in Australia.

A team of archaeologists led by The University of Western Australia has discovered a site in the Drysdale River catchment has one of the earliest and securely dated sites for Aboriginal occupation in the North West at 50,000 years ago.

The site also has evidence for Aboriginal occupation during a cold and dry peak at the height of the Ice Age at 19,000 years ago when conditions were very different.

UWA Oceans Institute director and report lead author professor Peter Veth said the site had previously been described as a dune feature showing a break in Aboriginal occupation.

“Our work changed that view. This is actually a sedimentary (flood) feature built up over 50,000 years and it shows early, intermediate and more recent occupation by Aboriginal people,” he said.

“There is also a significant body of rock art in the region which suggests repeated occupation and symbolic engagement with these ancestral lands over many thousands of years.”

The research was conducted jointly with Kwini Traditional Owners and Rangers from Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation.

Senior Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation ranger James Gallagher said it was a very important site for Kwini people.

“The ranger team and Traditional Owners were a central part of this work and we are happy about the old dates and also the ones that show the descendants continued to use this land,” he said.

“The art through our country shows those complex relationships between people and land right up until today.”

Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage deputy director Sean Ulm said the find confirmed widespread occupation of the north Kimberley area 50,000 years ago.

“This research also highlights the urgent need to direct more archaeological research away from rock shelters to open sites, helping to redress a bias towards documenting Aboriginal activities undertaken in the deep past at rock shelter site types,” he said.

The research was funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage project Kimberley Visions: rock art provinces in northern Australia.