What archaeological projects are you working on at the moment?
Three of the projects I am working on are: the ‘Eastern Sequence Project’, ‘Balmoral Beach in Port Jackson’ and ‘Humans, Climate and Fire Nexus’. While their aims are quite different, they all have a regional focus in eastern NSW.

The Eastern Sequence Project (ESP), with Dr Peter Hiscock, Archaeology & Anthropology at ANU, is re-evaluating changes over time in the stone artefact assemblages of the Sydney Basin from a technological viewpoint – that is, how tools were made, rather than their morphology or assumed function. The currently identified sequence that is commonly used, based on typological changes (i.e., types of artefacts), is called the Eastern Regional Sequence (ERS). ESP is exploring the validity of the ERS and reasons for regional variations in the sequence in a number of sites across the Sydney Basin.

‘Balmoral Beach in Port Jackson’ developed from my earlier Port Jackson Archaeological Project (PJAP). The deposit excavated in the rockshelter at Balmoral Beach proved to be the richest out of the sites excavated during the PJAP. It is rich in cultural remains – particularly stone artefacts, shells and animal bones, and this project will set the site in its regional context. It also has marked intra-site variability in the distribution of stone artefacts, flaking floors, the use of raw materials, and hearths, which are being explored.

For ‘Humans, Climate and Fire Nexus’, I am collaborating with Dr Scott Mooney, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, at UNSW, to investigate the anthropogenic influences on fire activity in the Sydney Basin. Part of the project is to document the local Holocene fire activity, for which Scott and his students are obtaining charcoal records from several swamps. We are then comparing them with the archaeological record from Upper Mangrove Creek and other excavated archaeological sites to see whether any correlations exist between the abundance of charcoal in swamp cores and changes over time in the numbers of Aboriginal sites and/or artefacts in sites.

Tell us about one of your most interesting archaeological discoveries.
One of the most interesting discoveries I made does not relate to a specific object I excavated, the age of a site, or to a particular site I found during a site survey. It was the realisation that so many Aboriginal sites still remain around Sydney Harbour/Port Jackson, its tributaries and the adjacent coastline despite the development of a major city with a population of some 4 million people. It was the fact that despite numerous sites being destroyed and disturbed over the last 200 years or so, many sites still remain – in addition to the well-known rock engravings, there are also many relatively undisturbed archaeological deposits and shell middens. Such sites can be investigated to provide much information about the way of life of the people who lived in this area before British settlement – e.g., where they camped, what foods they ate, what tools they made and how they made them, and what raw materials they used.

Tell us about a funny/disastrous/amazing experience that you have had while doing archaeology.

What’s your favourite part of being an archaeologist?
One of the things I like best about being an archaeologist is the variety of people one meets. Archaeology involves working with a whole range of research people with different skills and knowledge – researchers who are both inside and outside the discipline of archaeology. For example, I work with other archaeologists who specialise in analysing stone artefacts, as in the Eastern Sequence Project. My earlier Upper Mangrove Creek and Port Jackson projects focused on the way people related to their natural environment, and this required collaborating with people who have knowledge, for example, about soils and landforms (geomorphologists), changes in sea level (coastal geologists), vegetation patterns and plants with edible parts (botanists), animals and how they behave (zoologists) and past climatic and environmental changes (palaeoecologists). Numerous volunteers have also assisted in my fieldwork and analyses and these have included students as well as people from all walks of life. Working with all of these different people leads to interesting and sometimes exciting conversations.

Follow up reading:
Attenbrow V. 2002 Sydney’s Aboriginal Past UNSW Press, Sydney.

Attenbrow V.J. 2004 What's Changing? Population Size or Land–Use Patterns? The Archaeology of Upper Mangrove Creek, Sydney Basin. Terra australis No 21. Pandanus Press, ANU, Canberra.

Hiscock P. & V. Attenbrow 2005 Australia’s Eastern Regional Sequence revisited: Technology and Change at Capertee 3. British Archaeological Reports, Archaeopress, Oxford.