Before white settlers arrived, Australia's indigenous peoples lived in houses and villages, and used surprisingly sophisticated architecture and design methods to build their shelters, new research has found.

Dwellings were constructed in various styles, depending on the climate. Most common were dome-like structures made of cane reeds with roofs thatched with palm leaves.

Some of the houses were interconnected, allowing native people to interact during long periods spent indoors during the wet season.

The findings, by the anthropologist and architect Dr Paul Memmot, of the University of Queensland, discredits a commonly held view in Australia that Aborigines were completely nomadic before the arrival of Europeans 200 years ago.

The belief was part of the argument used by white settlers to claim that Australia was terra nullius - the Latin term for land that belonged to nobody.

Dr Memmott said the myth that indigenous Australians were constantly on the move had come about because early explorers made their observations in good weather, when indigenous people were more mobile than at other times.

Many of the shelters the Aborigines built were dome structures. In the rainforest area around Cairns, in Queensland, where there was heavy rain for much of the year, people would occupy such villages for up to a year, he said.

The villages had to be near a staple food source, such as rainforest trees, from which Aborigines could harvest nuts. "Some of the nuts were poisonous, but the Aborigines developed a way of leaching the poisons out of them by burying them in mud for a period of time," he said.

"This source of nutrition allowed them to remain put instead of forcing them to go off hunting."

Dr Memmott also found evidence of dome housing on the west coast of Tasmania, with triple layers of cladding and insulation.

In western Victoria, Aborigines built circular stone walls more than a metre high, constructing dome roofs over the top with earth or sod cladding.

Missionaries drew on Aboriginal technology for buildings, using tree bark for roofs and walls, and grass thatching for gables, as well as reeds and animal hides, he added.

Very little indigenous architecture in Australia remains after local authorities burned or bulldozed the structures in the belief they were health hazards.

Dr Memmott's evidence, collected over the past 35 years, comes from oral histories, explorers' diaries, paintings and photographs. It is published in Gunyah, Goondie and Wurley, the first book to detail Australian Aboriginal architecture.

Dr Memmott said he hoped continuing research in the area would not only clear up the historical record but also help architectural designers working on current housing problems.