What archaeological projects are you working on at the moment?
My main research area is Torres Strait in northeast Queensland. I am working with a team of archaeologists and a number of local Torres Strait Islander communities to investigate long-term developments in their ancient and fascinating history. We are looking into what happened at the end of the Ice Age when around 8000 years ago rising seas flooded the region to transform mountain peaks into islands and how it came to be that over the last 3000 years Torres Strait Islanders became one of the most marine oriented peoples on the planet.

Tell us about one of your most interesting archaeological discoveries.
For me, archaeological discoveries are not about stumbling across ancient relics or excavating ancient objects. Despite what Indiana Jones may do, for me great discoveries relate to breathing life into ancient objects and working out what they meant for peoples of the past. As such, my most interesting discoveries occur in the lab, in my office, or sometimes at 3am in the morning when I’m lying in bed. A recent example comes from Torres Strait where you get large mounds of dugong bones. Some of these mounds represent 100s of dugongs and are 100s of years old. Conventional archaeological thinking would tell us that such sites are rubbish dumps from numerous dugong feasts. Yet after much heavy thinking and discussion with Elders, I realised that such sites were special ritual sites associated with dugong hunting magic. These bone sites reveal the deep and ancient spiritual connections Torres Strait Islanders have with their marine environment. These sites make me wonder how many ancient bone sites around the world have been misinterpreted by archaeologists as rubbish dumps! These results have just been published in the latest issues of the Cambridge Archaeological Journal and World Archaeology.

Tell us about a funny/disastrous/amazing experience that you have had while doing archaeology.
My most amazing experiences have occurred when working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Despite all my university training, Indigenous Australians have opened my eyes to another Australia and another way of looking at the world that I had no idea existed. What other job allows you to record stone tools at an ancient 1000 year old campsite in the morning and at lunch eat lizards with damper and a cup of tea? But archaeology also comes with its share of disappointments and frustrations. I will never forget the time when Elders introduced me to the desecrated burial crypt of an Aboriginal baby in the Central Highlands of Queensland (near Carnarvon Gorge). The baby was in an elaborately decorated bark coffin wrapped in a possum fur blanket and had been ritually placed into the small cave perhaps 200-300 years ago. I found it very difficult to understand how local whitefellas would periodically visit the grave and pull the coffin out so they could show their friends the baby’s bones!

What’s your favourite part of being an archaeologist?
Working with Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders; discovering how Indigenous Australians used different parts of Australia in the ancient past; contributing to an understanding of the ancient history of our country; and fieldwork with students (especially on the coast near the sea).

Follow up reading:
http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/ges/arch/