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Dr
Ian Lilley
What
is your current position?
I am an Associate Professor and Reader with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland. I am also Secretary of the World Archaeological Congress, on the Executive of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association and a past President and Secretary of the Australian Archaeological Association.
Where
did you study archaeology?
BA (Hons) University of Queensland, Brisbane and PhD Australian National University, Canberra
How
did you become interested in archaeology?
I became interested while studying human biological evolution and long-term cultural change in first-year anthropology at the University of Queensland. The University had no archaeologist on staff at the time, and I wanted to move to the Australian National University, but was told to wait a few months for the expected appointment of an archaeologist. I did, and never looked back.
What
archaeological projects are you working on at the moment?
I am wrapping up a 10-year project in coastal central Queensland, expanding a project in the eastern islands of Torres Strait and starting a project in the Loyalty Islands of New Caledonia with French colleagues. I continue to write about New Guinea and nearby islands, following up work I did there on and off for more than a decade in the 1980s and 90s, and write quite a bit about the role of archaeology in modern society.
Tell
us about one of your most interesting archaeological discoveries.
I was with Jim Specht on an Australian Museum project in the jungles of mountainous central New Britain, Papua New Guinea, when we and a Papua New Guinean heritage officer discovered the first Ice Age site in the island Pacific. It was only just Ice Age (about 11,000 years old) and within a few years other people had found sites dating back to about 35,000 years, but it was a great discovery at the time and a real Indiana Jones adventure into the bargain.
Tell
us about a funny/disastrous/amazing experience that you have had
while doing archaeology.
Where do I start? Once when I was working on some tiny islands off northeastern New Guinea I woke up in the dark after a weird dream about aliens landing on my house and destroying it. My (grass) house was shaking like crazy and there were all these very loud, inhuman noises surrounding me – needless to say I was ever-so-slightly completely freaked out! Grabbing a torch and my trusty machete, I leapt outside to discover that in the middle of the night people had arrived back from a trading expedition and tied up all these huge pigs they had got to the posts under my house. I guess they thought “better his place than ours”. All the terrified porkers were screaming and squealing and pulling at their ropes as hard as they could in different directions, trying to escape, and my house really was being pulled apart from under me! I helped eat one of those same pigs the next morning!
What’s
your favourite part of being an archaeologist?
I go to some absolutely extraordinary places and see things no-one has laid an eye on for thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of years. Working out where sites are, how best to dig them, and then what all the excavated material means is intellectually very challenging and requires me to know a little bit about a great many things in different fields of science and the humanities as well as a lot about archaeology itself. I am also on several international professional boards and committees, which helps me link up with colleagues from every part of the planet (and if I’m lucky, to visit them), which is also great fun. As my wife says, I’d do it for free if nobody paid me!
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