When BHP Billiton proposed an extension to its Olympic Dam mine in northern SA, all the parties involved agreed that the archaeological survey/salvage program should be undertaken as a research-­oriented program. The archaeological mitigation and research study covered 600 km2 of sandridge and gibber plain desert, and resulted in the recording of >18,000 open sites, mainly stone artefact clusters, and the detailed study of 150 of those sites. Although most of the artefact assemblages relate to late Holocene occupation, deeper occupation layers were identified in a number of sites. Optical dates provide ages for the occupation layers and a record of dune history since the LGM. There are traces of ancient dunes back to ~140ka, and the present dunefield began forming ~50ka, with dune formation peaking during the LGM and ceasing by ~12-­‐10ka.

Palaeoclimatic evidence from other investigations in the region indicate that during the deglacoal there was a brief humid phase ~17-­‐15ka, followed by a return to more arid conditions with dune building, punctuated by short wet phases (~14-­‐11 ka). During the Holocene climatic conditions were more stable but still arid. When periods of occupation are compared with palaeoclimatic trends, it is apparent that people occupied this desert area in the late Pleistocene from ~18ka during episodic wet periods driven by southwesterly winds, and abandoned it during drier phases when the westerly wind belt had moved south of the Australian continent.