I have over 33 years cultural heritage management and community consultation experience across Australia, with a focus on Western Australia and in parts of Asia. I am actively involved in the professional archaeological community where I am a full member of the Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists. I am the past President of the Australian Archaeological Association and the Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists. I regularly present papers at international and Australian conferences and am currently a Honorary Research Fellow and a PhD Student at the University of Western Australia, Archaeology Department. 

Adjunct

PhD Candiate

My thesis focus' on long-term marine adaptations from the northern Carnarvon bioregion of north-west Australia and is part of the larger ARC Barrow Island Archaeology Project (BIAP). Recent dating of the archaeological record from Boodie Cave on Barrow Island, Pilbara positions early shellfish assemblages as some of the earliest yet recorded for modern humans outside of Africa. This bioregion provides a unique window into the evolution of maritime societies spanning over 50,000 years incorporating extant and new archaeological data sets from Barrow Island, the Montebello Islands, Cape Range and the contemporary Ashburton coastline. Concurrent studies of human mobility, archaeozoology, isotopic studies of fauna, lithic technological organisation, micromorphology and palaeoclimate from BIAP provides an ideal framework within which to consider the role of marine resources within the economy of dynamic desert coastal foragers.

Building on this critical mass the proposed study explores the theoretical dichotomy between the “Gates of Hell” vs “Gardens of Eden” aquatic adaptation models (after Erlandson, 2001). A major research question is whether the coastlines of the northern Carnarvon Bioregion always been productive and reliable for coastal foragers or, conversely, only productive during periods when the shelf morphology was procumbent or solely after sea level stabilisation? The unique window offered by multiple near- and off-shore sample points in this bioregion also allows for a range of specific questions to be addressed, including: 1) the nature of early marine adaptations by colonisers on northern Australia; 2) the effects of sea level change on maritime desert societies and economies during the Last Glacial Maximum; 3) human responses to post-glacial sea level change and islandisation; and 4) the nature of Holocene maritime adaptations with a focus on shell mounds versus shell scatter records along the current north-west coast.

Desert archaeology, archaeomalacology, experimental archaeology

Coastal Adaptations - Barrow Island

Yirra excavations

Desert Peoples Project - Prof Peter Veth Laureate