The Rite to know: Pushing for an archaeology of rituals in Central-East Polynesia
Seminar
The archaeology of ceremonial sites (marae) has been a focus of the discipline in Central-East Polynesia since the late 19th century. Pioneer work by K.P. Emory, then Y. Sinoto paved the way to studies in architectural variations and monumental typologies while more recent works aimed at refining…
Embodying the Western Maya Frontier: Bioarchaeological Evidence from Comalcalco and Moxviquil, Mexico
Seminar
People signal and contest identity in a variety of ways and have done so for millennia. This fundamental aspect of human societies can be examined across space and time to improve understanding of how and why it occurs. This seminar examines social identity on the western Maya frontier and centres…
Crossing the ‘Green Sea’: palaeoecological signatures of early maritime mobility and remote island colonisation in the tropical Indian Ocean.
Seminar
As humans have colonised new places, they often initiate dramatic environmental change, even in the distant past. On remote islands, where levels of endemism are high, species and environments are often particularly vulnerable to the effects of introduced species like humans, and the plants and…
Unsettling nature: Cross-cultural conversations about potential bioengineered conservation in the Torres Strait, Australia
Seminar
Applied over generations, a bioengineered gene drive promises to radically reduce invasive species’ populations through suppressed breeding. As this technology develops, synthetic biology (synbio) scientists have identified islands as potential environments in which to trial the release of approved…
An ordeal of peoplehood: representations of Indigenous collectivity in the 2023 referendum - POSTPONED
Seminar
Presenting themselves as sovereign peoples (and not just as citizens of Australia), Indigenous Australians struggle over therms in which to represent their collectivity. In 2012, I argued that their collective being has come to be rendered in two distinct idioms - 'population' and 'people' - that…
European Travellers to Greece and the Tomb of the Athenians at Marathon
Seminar
This paper traces the interpretations applied to the mound or soros on the plain of Marathon from the later eighteenth century through the nineteenth century by amateur archaeologists. These interpretations were based on flakes of obsidian found in the soil of the mound that were…
From Applied to Expert Social anthropology: Emerging Concepts, Terms, and Definitions
Seminar
Since the 1970s, applied social anthropology has developed into the field’s best-known and most widely adopted specialization. In the 2018 Global Survey of Anthropological Practices conducted by the World Council of Anthropological Associations, 17% of respondents identified themselves as applied…