The unknown ‘Ice Age’ artists of Borneo. This project aims to shift the focus of the search for art’s origins onto important new horizons. Who were the first artists? When and why did it become second nature for humans not simply to exist within the natural world, but to encode it with images of things both real and imagined? The discovery of cave paintings in Sulawesi and more recently in Borneo dating to at least 40,000 years ago has altered our understanding of the origins and spread of the f ....The unknown ‘Ice Age’ artists of Borneo. This project aims to shift the focus of the search for art’s origins onto important new horizons. Who were the first artists? When and why did it become second nature for humans not simply to exist within the natural world, but to encode it with images of things both real and imagined? The discovery of cave paintings in Sulawesi and more recently in Borneo dating to at least 40,000 years ago has altered our understanding of the origins and spread of the first painting traditions. This project will build upon these breakthrough discoveries by constructing the first detailed portrait of the cultural and symbolic worlds of the unknown artists of Pleistocene Borneo. By doing so, it will further our knowledge about the process of the emergence of figurative art, one of the most fundamental cultural developments in the evolution of humankind.Read moreRead less
Understanding Japan's human-centred environmentalism. Japanese environmental activism has influenced attitudes and policymaking on the environment in Japan and worldwide for half a century. This project will demonstrate the strengths and limitations of Japan’s human-centred environmentalism and will encourage us to reconsider the tension between human satisfaction and environmental protection.
Mapping China's urban crisis: the politics of land and resettlement. This project aims to examine the spatial, political, and social restructuring of the urban margins of Chinese cities by unravelling complexities and tensions involved in the recent rural settlement transition, during which numerous villages were demolished and converted into arable land.
Chinese trade and diplomacy in South-East Asia from the 9th to 19th century common era. China’s trade in porcelain to South-East Asia over the past millennium provides the longest, continuous, market record for a product. The contrast between official Chinese control and what the archaeology reveals the traders really did, displays the limits of state power and the role of trade as another path in China’s diplomatic engagement with SE Asia.
A multifaceted study of Tangsa: a network of linguistic varieties in North East India. Our world's linguistic and cultural heritage, the product of human evolution, is being lost rapidly due to globalisation and modernisation. This project will record the linguistic diversity of the Tangsa people of North East India, thereby increasing our knowledge of an important regional neighbour and of our human society and history.
Unlocking the missing Millennia of mainland Southeast Asia. This project will reveal the prehistoric transition from Neolithic to Bronze Age in South and Southeast Asia, the missing Millennia of the archaeological record. Sophisticated linguistic analyses, facilitated by innovative computational methods and bioinformatics, reconstruct the languages, migrations, and societies of the region’s oldest cultures
Traffic in women and girls in the Asia Pacific region, 1865-1940. This project will offer a critical analysis of historical narratives on the traffic in women within Asia Pacific networks. It will position Australian history at the forefront of international research on transnational history, informed by race and gender studies and considers parallels with today’s human trafficking debates.
Resource security trade and the development of urbanism in the pre-Classical world. Long distance trade in bulk foods, such as grain, is a key strategy for overcoming food insecurity in the modern urbanised world, yet we know relatively little of its history and role in the emergence and stability of the world’s first cities and states. Developing new archaeological techniques, this project explores the history of trade in bulk grain in southwest Asia from the Neolithic to Iron Age and its role ....Resource security trade and the development of urbanism in the pre-Classical world. Long distance trade in bulk foods, such as grain, is a key strategy for overcoming food insecurity in the modern urbanised world, yet we know relatively little of its history and role in the emergence and stability of the world’s first cities and states. Developing new archaeological techniques, this project explores the history of trade in bulk grain in southwest Asia from the Neolithic to Iron Age and its role in stimulating socio-economic change and mediating food insecurity in a period of rapid climatic and political change. In revolutionising our view of ancient food trade it will provide an example from the past to help inform contemporary debates about the efficacy of a key economic strategy in moderating fluctuations in food supply.Read moreRead less
Divergent pathways to tropical agriculture in Australasia and Wallacea. The project aims to address a major question in world archaeology: why did some people develop agriculture, while others did not? It plans to establish plant macrofossil and microfossil reference collections for three wet tropical regions: highland Papua New Guinea, Moluccas in eastern Indonesia, and western Arnhem Land in Australia. It then plans to use previously excavated archaeobotanical assemblages to establish robust p ....Divergent pathways to tropical agriculture in Australasia and Wallacea. The project aims to address a major question in world archaeology: why did some people develop agriculture, while others did not? It plans to establish plant macrofossil and microfossil reference collections for three wet tropical regions: highland Papua New Guinea, Moluccas in eastern Indonesia, and western Arnhem Land in Australia. It then plans to use previously excavated archaeobotanical assemblages to establish robust plant-use chronologies for these regions. In this way, the project seeks to develop capacity for tropical archaeobotany within Australia and to revolutionise concepts of plant exploitation, domestication and cultivation in tropical Australasia and Wallacea during the Holocene (last c.11 500 years).Read moreRead less
Human dispersals and the early peopling of East Asia and Australasia. This project will address the most important question of contemporary human evolution research - the origin of modern humans - targeting evidence from ancient fossil humans through virtual anthropology techniques, human ancient DNA sequencing, and cultural evidence in the vital but poorly known East Asia region, focusing on China.