Aboriginal sites of Victoria form an important record of human occupation for probably more than 40,000 years. They may be identified from archaeological remains, historical and ethnographic information or continuing oral traditions and encompass places where rituals and ceremonies were performed, occupation sites where people ate, slept and carried out their day to day chores, and ephemeral evidence of people passing through the landscape, such as a discarded axe head or isolated artefact.
Victorian Aboriginal sites include shell middens, scarred trees, cooking mounds, rock art, burials, ceremonial sites and innumerable stone artefacts. These stone flakes represent the tools Aboriginal people used, such as knives, spear points, scrapers and awls, and the waste material left behind when they were made. Commonly referred to as stone artefact scatters such sites can be found on the surface or exposed by ploughing or erosion, or through careful archaeological excavation.