From the Desert to the Sea: Managing Rock Art, Country and Culture. This Project will expand our understanding of Aboriginal settlement and land-use in north-west Australia by investigating how the mythological narratives of Australia’s deserts enable the transmission of knowledge in water-limited environments. Combining traditional ecological knowledge and novel scientific approaches (e.g. anthracology, remote sensing, oxygen-isotopes) will provide new insights into human behaviours at rock art ....From the Desert to the Sea: Managing Rock Art, Country and Culture. This Project will expand our understanding of Aboriginal settlement and land-use in north-west Australia by investigating how the mythological narratives of Australia’s deserts enable the transmission of knowledge in water-limited environments. Combining traditional ecological knowledge and novel scientific approaches (e.g. anthracology, remote sensing, oxygen-isotopes) will provide new insights into human behaviours at rock art site complexes. It will develop management regimes and formal certification for Indigenous rangers while building heritage capacity in these partner communities: enabling intergenerational, culturally appropriate knowledge transfer protocols are in place to ensure sustainable economic heritage futures.Read moreRead less
Rockshelters and Rock Art in the River Murray Gorge: New Data and Syntheses. This project, undertaken in partnership with the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation, aims to explore Aboriginal rock art and rockshelter occupation deposits in the Upper Murray River Gorge, South Australia. The project will conduct the first archaeological excavations of stratified rockshelter sites in this region in more than 50 years and record a threatened and rapidly diminishing corpus of rock art. The c ....Rockshelters and Rock Art in the River Murray Gorge: New Data and Syntheses. This project, undertaken in partnership with the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation, aims to explore Aboriginal rock art and rockshelter occupation deposits in the Upper Murray River Gorge, South Australia. The project will conduct the first archaeological excavations of stratified rockshelter sites in this region in more than 50 years and record a threatened and rapidly diminishing corpus of rock art. The cultural importance of the located sites will be considered in conjunction with their archaeological significance to produce meaningful narratives. New understandings about Holocene societal and environmental changes will be generated. Traditional owners will benefit from a range of socio-economic capacity-building measures.Read moreRead less
Indigenous foodways in colonial Cape York Peninsula. This project aims to trace historical Indigenous foodways in colonial Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, through a program of collaborative community-based archaeological and anthropological research. Food was a key medium for cultural exchanges between Indigenous peoples and settler-colonists. The analysis of foodways is known to provide unparalleled insights on daily life, as well as the development of both cultural values and social relations ....Indigenous foodways in colonial Cape York Peninsula. This project aims to trace historical Indigenous foodways in colonial Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, through a program of collaborative community-based archaeological and anthropological research. Food was a key medium for cultural exchanges between Indigenous peoples and settler-colonists. The analysis of foodways is known to provide unparalleled insights on daily life, as well as the development of both cultural values and social relationships. This has received limited attention in archaeological investigations in Australia. Results will provide greater insight into the history behind our current society.Read moreRead less
Reuniting cargoes: Underwater Cultural Heritage of the Maritime Silk Route. Beginning in the mid 1400s the Maritime Silk Route witnessed the largest known expansion of global trade. But the legacy of artefacts retrieved from this time has not been appropriately understood because the objects were mostly salvaged and dispersed without recording the archaeological details of their find-spots. Our multilateral consortium aims to discover the cultural value of the largest Southeast Asian ceramic col ....Reuniting cargoes: Underwater Cultural Heritage of the Maritime Silk Route. Beginning in the mid 1400s the Maritime Silk Route witnessed the largest known expansion of global trade. But the legacy of artefacts retrieved from this time has not been appropriately understood because the objects were mostly salvaged and dispersed without recording the archaeological details of their find-spots. Our multilateral consortium aims to discover the cultural value of the largest Southeast Asian ceramic collections in Indonesia and Australia with archaeological science. By employing and enhancing international conventions, the project will generate new knowledge about this decisive epoch in world history and build capacity to preserve the underwater cultural heritage of our region for future generations.Read moreRead less
Diving into the Desert. Indigenous and Future Floodplain Management. This project aims to discover how Indigenous communities managed cycles of drought and flood in the Lake Eyre Basin, and to learn from this to manage Australia’s inland rivers sustainably. By integrating archaeology – done underwater, on land and from the air – with Indigenous knowledge and environmental and flow modelling, the project expects to uncover a deep history of Indigenous environmental engineering in one of the worl ....Diving into the Desert. Indigenous and Future Floodplain Management. This project aims to discover how Indigenous communities managed cycles of drought and flood in the Lake Eyre Basin, and to learn from this to manage Australia’s inland rivers sustainably. By integrating archaeology – done underwater, on land and from the air – with Indigenous knowledge and environmental and flow modelling, the project expects to uncover a deep history of Indigenous environmental engineering in one of the world's last unregulated desert river systems . The project's outcomes – an Australian National Maritime Museum touring exhibition plus written, audio and 3D immersive communications – seek to benefit Australia's cultural life and flood mitigation, and to protect the Mithaka Aboriginal Corporation's culture and country. Read moreRead less
Aboriginal rock art and cultural heritage management in Cape York Peninsula. The Laura Sandstone Basin of Cape York Peninsula hosts one of the richest bodies of rock art in Australia and the world. It documents the life-ways of generations of Aboriginal Australians from their original settlement, through major environmental changes, to European invasion. This vast area, much of which is now jointly managed as National Parks by Traditional Owners, remains virtually unexplored archaeologically. Th ....Aboriginal rock art and cultural heritage management in Cape York Peninsula. The Laura Sandstone Basin of Cape York Peninsula hosts one of the richest bodies of rock art in Australia and the world. It documents the life-ways of generations of Aboriginal Australians from their original settlement, through major environmental changes, to European invasion. This vast area, much of which is now jointly managed as National Parks by Traditional Owners, remains virtually unexplored archaeologically. This project aims to record this unique rock art so that its testimony remains for future generations. This will provide a framework for its sustainable management and findings will have profound implications for our understandings of the cultural behaviour and dispersal of the earliest modern humans to colonise Australia.Read moreRead less