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AASV Lectures and Other Activities

Scroll down to view up to date details of the 2005 AASV Lectures Series


2006 AASV Lecture Series

Lectures are held on the third Thursday of the month between March and November. Meetings begin at 6.30PM and members are very welcome to join the committee and the speaker for a meal afterwards in Carlton. Members are welcome to bring guests to lectures.

The Society continues to invest in the future of archaeology by inviting students from Monash University, the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University to talk about their work.

Lectures are held in the Discovery Centre Lecture Theatre at Melbourne Museum, Nicholson Street, Carlton. Entrance is opposite the Royal Exhibition Building.

Thursday 18 May
Graeme K. Ward, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra, and Mark Crocombe, Kanamkek-Yile Ngala Museum, Wadeye, Rock-paintings of the Wadeye-Fitzmaurice region (Northern Territory, Australia) – dating and regional relationships

The Wadeye-Fitzmaurice River region – part of the Daly River Aboriginal Trust lands on the western side of Australia's Northern Territory – is poorly known and little researched. It lies between the two well-known rock-art provinces of Arnhem Land (northeastern Northern Territory) and the Kimberley region of northern Western Australia.

We report results of a project to record rock-markings at Indigenous Australian cultural heritage places near the major settlement of Wadeye and along the Fitzmaurice River. Detailed recordings of rock-markings were made, and accounts of their contemporary significance collected; direct-dating results are available for a sample of paintings at major sites. The common styles and motifs have clear relationships with adjacent areas. Less frequently found motifs show relationships with regions to the southwest (Keep River ‘Karlinga’ and the ‘Gwion’ figures of the Kimberley region).

20 April
Monash University Postgraduates
Richard Long The New Kingdom of Dakhleh Oasis

Ben Suelzle Interrelationships between Qustul and Hierakonpolis during Egypt’s Protodynastic period

Thursday 16 March
Louise Hitchcock, Lecturer, The University of Melbourne, Myceneans - Sea Peoples and the End of the Bronze Age

Louise Hitchcock,. A UCLA graduate with extensive experience in the region of Aegean Bronze Age Archaeology, including time as Parsons Fellow at the American School in Athens, a Fulbright Fellow in Cyprus, an Educational and Cultural Resources Fellow in Jerusalem, as well as excavation work in Egypt, Syria, and Crete. She is author of Minoan Architecture: a Contextual Analysis and co-author with Donald Preziosi of Aegean Art and Architecture.



AASV Lecture Archive 2005

Thursday 17 November
The Archaeological and Anthropological Annual General Meeting will be held at the Royal Society of Victoria Hall on Thursday 17 November 7.00PM


Guest speaker: Professor Mike Morwood, University of New England, The Hobbits of Flores: The context of discovery

Please note that the Annual General Meeting is held at the Royal Society of Victoria building at 9 Victoria Street. The building fronts onto Victoria Street opposite the Exhibition Gardens. The Annual General Meeting is a special occasion with a tradition of an excellent lecturer followed by an excellent dinner. 2005 promises to well and truly fulfill that tradition. Only an anchorite on Mars could have been unaware of the amazing discoveries made by the team headed by this year’s speaker, Professor Mike Morwood. Mike will give a second public lecture at Museum Victoria on Friday November 18 which will follow on from his AASV talk. Guests are welcome to both the AGM lecture and the dinner. Please consider joining the committee. It is not an onerous task and having more hands lightens the load. Booking and nomination forms are at the end of this Bulletin.

A note from the speaker about the talk:
"Last year our team of Australian and Indonesian researchers reported the discovery of a tiny, new human species on the Indonesian island of Flores - termed Homo floresiensis and nicknamed 'Hobbits'. Media and general public reaction to the discovery and the implications have been quite extraordinary. This lecture will outline the context of the find in Indonesia and as an outcome of a large research project concerned with a number of significant issues in the archaeology, paleontology and environmental history of the region."

About the speaker:
Mike Morwood obtained his PhD from the Australian National University in 1980 and after as short stint as a Research Archaeologist with the Queensland Government took up a lectureship at the University of new England, where he is currently a Professorial Fellow. Mike has previously undertaken Australian research projects in S.E. Queensland, the Central Queensland Highlands, North Queensland, South East Cape York Peninsula and the Kimberley, as well as in the Soa Basin of Central Flores in East Indonesia. In collaboration with the Indonesian Geological Research and Development Centre, he is completing a project: Astride the Wallace Line: 1.5 million years of human evolution, dispersal, culture and environmental change in Indonesia' . This has been funded by the Australian Research Council for 4 years.

His recent publications include papers in Nature and Science on the Indonesian findings, and a book Visions from the past: the archaeology of Australian Aboriginal art.

Thursday 20 October
Dr Ian J. McNiven, Senior Lecturer, Programme for Australian Indigenous Archaeology, School of Geography & Environmental Science, Monash University Managing Wildlife with Archaeology: Putting the Torres Strait dugong hunting debate into perspective
 
Dugongs are marine mammals considered vulnerable to extinction, hence the current debate on whether current Torres Strait Islander hunting of dugongs is a sustainable practice.  Recent archaeological research in Torres Strait reveals a 2500 year history of dugong hunting. Ian will present the results of this research and discusses confronting implications for modern management of dugongs.

Thursday 22 September
The University of Melbourne Postgraduate Students

Simon Connor, PhD candidate in Geography and Archaeology at the University of Melbourne, Environment and society in the prehistoric southern Georgia, Caucasus

Simon has been studying the ancient landscapes and environment of the Caucasus for the past 4 years. Despite many years of archaeological excavation by other workers in the Caucasus region, very little work has been done to link cultural shifts with environmental changes. In this talk, Simon will present palaeoenvironmental data from southern Georgia, and will discuss their implications for prehistoric archaeology.

Catherine Longford, Honours graduate in Botany from the University of Melbourne, The Archaeobotany of Sos Höyük, eastern Turkey

Catherine's presentation is based on her Honours thesis, submitted this year, which was awarded the final year Botany Prize, one of several she has collected in the course of her undergraduate studies. Catherine has worked on archaeological projects in Turkey, Australia, the United Kingdom and most recently in the Republic of Georgia. She plans to return to the University of Melbourne to undertake her PhD, possibly on the palaeobotany of Turkey and/or Georgia.

Thursday 18 August
La Trobe University Postgraduate Students
 
Sarah Hayes is conducting her historical archaeology research on the artefact assemblage excavated from the Viewbank Homestead site near Melbourne. Viewbank Homestead was a large house occupied in the nineteenth century by a wealthy doctor, Robert Martin, and his family. The assemblage of around 20,000 artefacts provides a good opportunity to look at some aspects of nineteenth century middle class lifestyles.
 
Matthew Barker An Archaeological Investigation of Ballistics Material from the Former Police Garage, Russell St, Melbourne

Matthew is applying standard forensic ballistic methodology to an assemblage of early twentieth century spent bullets and cartridge cases excavated from the former police garage site, Melbourne Gaol, in Russell Street.  He will present the results of his historical investigation, and will arrive at a theory for firearms discharge at this City locality.

Thursday 21 July
Tom Richards, Aboriginal Affairs Victoria, Archaeological excavations at Cape Bridgewater,Portland

Thursday 16 June
Dr James Peterson, Director, School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University and Lucia Lancellotti, PhD student, Monash University Re-examination of the demise of the Minoan settlement of Palaikastro on the eastern coast of Crete

Dr James Peterson has an interest in the application of terrain analysis in reconstructing archaeological landscapes. His latest collaboration has been with Lucia Lancellotti and Lynette Peterson in landscape reconstruction of part of Bronze-Age Crete. Lucia Lancellotti is researching archaeological landscapes in a changing environment from the Late Bronze Age to the Roman period in west central Sardinia.

Thursday 19 May
Dr Gocha Tsetsekhladze, Department of Archaeology, The University of Melbourne, Gold-rich Colchis: Myth and Reality

In May we travel to the Black Sea with Georgian born Dr Gotcha Tsetsekhladze. In Greek mythology Colchis (the eastern Black Sea littoral - modern-day western Georgia) was the final destination of the Argonauts in Jason's search for the Golden Fleece. According to myth, Colchis was rich in gold. Some modern scholars accept this. The lecture will explore the evidence in order to paint a more accurate picture of Colchis at the supposed time of the Argonauts. Many golden objects have been excavated in Colchis, but all date from much later, after the Greeks had already established colonies there. The lecture will be richly illustrated.

Thursday 21 April
In April we have the first of our lectures given by postgraduate students. We have an opportunity to hear first hand accounts of current research about life in the Western Desert and the arcane sounding ‘frog amulets’.

Caroline Hubschmann, PhD candidate, Monash University, Egypt's Western Desert in the Late Period

Joylene Kremler, MA candidate, Monash University, Ancient Egyptian frog amulets

Thursday 17 March
Dr Louise Hamby, ARC Post Doctoral Fellow (Industry), School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University and Lindy Allen, Senior Curator, Museum Victoria Anthropological and Aboriginal perspectives on the Donald Thomson Collection: Material Culture, Collecting and Identity'.

In this talk, Louise and Lindy will draw upon recent fieldwork in Arnhem Land working with Yolngu as part of an ARC funded Linkage Project. The papers discuss the intrinsic value placed on photographs taken by Donald Thomson and images of objects collected by him in Arnhem Land between 1935 and 1943. The inherent ephemeral nature of both images and memory is challenging in the context of research on cultural heritage collections yet the images have increasingly become an invaluable research tool in drawing Yolngu into discussions of social and cultural processes of the past. Lindy will explore a series of images of camps at Gatji taken between late 1936 and early 1937 and the nature of collective memory versus individual or personal memory meaning in gaining an understanding of past events and practices. Louise will discuss the use of photographs as a methodology to gain access to knowledge about items of body adornment, particularly a single string worn by both men and women.


Exclusive Viewing - Mummies: Ancient Egypt and the Afterlife

Members of the Archaeological and Anthropological Society of Victoria are cordially invited to attend a private viewing of Melbourne Museum’s newly installed touring exhibition.

More than 600 beautiful and often rare objects from Egypt comprise the exhibition, co-produced by the Australian Museum, Sydney, and the National Museum of Antiquities, Netherlands.

The show examines the spiritual beliefs of this ancient civilisation by following the death of Keku - a wealthy Egyptian woman of 2,700 years ago - in her journey through the underworld to eternal life.

Dr Colin Hope, Director, Centre for Archaeology and Ancient History at Monash University, will be in attendance.

Where:Melbourne Museum, Carlton Gardens

Date: Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Time: 6.00-8.00PM

Cost: $20.00 for members and $25.00 for non-members

Refreshments include wine, soft drinks and cheese platters

Please RSVP to Dr Ron Vanderwal on 03 8341 7367. Numbers are limited, so be early.


AASV Lecture Archive 2004

Thursday 4 November
Dr Mike Green Pacific Voyaging is bad for Your Health: Perspectives on the biological origins of Polynesian people

Mike is currently Head, Indigenous Cultures Department at Museum Victoria and has worked with Indigenous communities in Australia, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand for over 20 years. He undertook field research into prehistoric patterns of biological variation in Papua New Guinea in the middle to late 1980’s for his PhD. More recently Mike has been responsible for the investigation and repatriation of ancestral Aboriginal skeletal remains on behalf of the Victoria Archaeological Survey (predecessor to Aboriginal Affairs Victoria (AAV)); he has lectured in biological anthropology at the University of Otago (NZ); he has had management roles at La Trobe University; and most recently he was part of an AAV management team responsible for the delivery of cultural heritage services to Victoria’s Aboriginal community.

Annual General Meeting - Thursday 18 November at 7.00pm
The 2004 Annual General Meeting will be held at the Royal Society Hall, 7 Victoria Street, Melbourne. The Guest speaker for 2004 is Gary Presland and his talk is titled Melbourne: Natural history and archaeology


Thursday 7 October

Thursday 2 September- The University of Melbourne Postgraduate Students


David Collard, MA student School of Art History, Cinema, Classics and Archaeology, The University of Melbourne Late Bronze Age Cypriote Bathtubs and the “Sea Peoples”

Thursday 5 August - La Trobe University Postgraduate Students


Alister Bowen, Postgraduate student Department of Archaeology LaTrobe University, Early Chinese Fish-Curing Activities in Victoria
Anne Ford, Postgraduate student, Department of Archaeology LaTrobe University, States and stones: stone tool production during the Erlitou culture

Thursday 1 July
Alan Burns, Heritage Officer, Goolum Goolum Aboriginal Cooperative The role of the Aboriginal Cultural Officer

Thursday 3 June
Dr Philip Batty, Senior Curator, Indigenous Cultures, Museum Victoria Episodes of first contact between the Pintubi people of Central Australia and Europeans: 1932 to 1984

The Pintubi people of Central Australia were among the last Aborigines to make contact with Europeans. The most recent encounter occurred in 1984 when a small family of Pintupi appeared at a remote location on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert. Prior to this event, other groups of Pintupi had encountered Europeans at various locations over the proceeding fifty years. For the most part, the Pintupi abandoned their nomadic way of life and migrated to permanent settlements in and around their traditional lands. Dr Philip Batty will explore these differing episodes of 'first contact' from 1932 through to 1984.

Thursday 6 May
Dr Mike Green, Head, Indigenous Cultures, Museum Victoria Prehistoric cranial variation in Papua New Guinea

Thursday 1 April
Monash University Postgraduate Students Ashten Warfe, Studying the Holocene prehistory of Dakhleh Oasis (south central Egypt) problems, priorities and pottery. Paul Kucera, Dakhleh Oasis: constituents of a Roman frontier in Egypt’s south western Desert.


Thursday 4 March

Dr Nicole Stern, Department of Archaeology, La Trobe University The archaeology of Homo ergaster: recent research at a one and a half million year old site in northern Kenya.


AASV Lecture Archive 2003

Thursday 6 March
Dr Peter Kershaw, Department of Geography, Monash University, The time of arrival of people in Australia: evidence from palaeo-ecological records in Indonesia and the Northern territory of Australia

Thursday 3 April
Monash University Postgraduate Students

Thursday 1 May
Dr Alan West, Honorary Associate, Museum Victoria, The Lake Tyers Aboriginal Community: Assimilation policy and practice in the 1950s and 1960s.

Thursday 5 June
Jeremy Smith, Heritage Victoria, Digging up the secrets of Little Lon

Thursday 3 July
Allan Main, The Black Sea and its Civilisations

Thursday 7 August - La Trobe University Postgraduate Students
Lynne Dore, Heritage War Sites as tourist destinations: the Gallipoli Battlefield
Alex Ariotti, Qaser-el Buleid; Nabatean/Roman fortified homesteads on the Dead Sea Plains

Thursday 4 September - The University of Melbourne Postgraduate Students
Jo Richmond, The textile industry in early Bronze Age Anatolia
Elizabeth Winton, Chemical characteristics of ancient Anatolian ceramics

Thursday 2 October
Dr Leah McKenzie, Heritage Victoria, Ancient Civilisations of Iraq

Thursday 6 November
Dr Ron Vanderwal, Museum Victoria, Subsistence and ceremony in in the Gulf of Papua

Thursday 27 November - 2003 Annual General Meeting
Dr Patrick Greene, Chief Executive Officer, Museum Victoria The Preservation and Presentation of European Archaeology

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