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Cloggs Cave

Buchan, Italy

Cloggs Cave is a limestone cave and rockshelter with significant Aboriginal archaeological deposits, located on a cliff along the Snowy River gorge near the town of Buchan, Victoria. The cave was within the country of the Krowathunkooloong (Krauatungalung) clan of the Gunaikurnai nation. The roof of

the rock shelter outside the cave is heavily blackened, evidently from campfires. A passage leads to an inner chamber with a high cathedral-like roof. Cloggs Cave was the first Pleistocene occupation site to be found with intact bone. Evidence of bones from megafauna and extinct marsupials was found to be dated between 27,500 and 24,500 years old, but were not associated with the human occupation layers. The first European known to have found the cave was Josephine Flood, when driving to another site in eastern Victoria. Her subsequent excavations within the dry floor of the rock shelter revealed extensive evidence of stone tool-making from the Australian Small Tool Tradition, with the basal layer dated to the last 1,000 years. Further inside the cave dates from the excavation showed the site was probably first occupied around 17,000 years ago, but appears to have been abandoned by 1,000...

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