Department of Archaeology, Classics and History

Somewhere in the early history of stone tool-making, researchers believe the unique ability of humans to transmit knowledge began to differentiate them from other animal species.

A $1 million dollar Australian Research Council funded project will enable a research team led by UNE’s Associate Professor Mark Moore to pinpoint the moment in time where the basic ability to imitate evolved into the ability to create collective knowledge, through examining the stone tool record.

Lead researcher: A/Prof Mark Moore

The antiquity of the dingo, its cultural importance and ecological impact are among the most vexed issues in rural and regional Australia today. Whether to conserve the dingo as a native species or exterminate it as an invasive pest hinges on its origins and heritage, as well as the role it has traditionally played in the landscape.

A research team will collect well-preserved bone samples from caves and conduct morphological and genetic analyses, and genome sequencing on the ancient dingo skeletons. The will be carbon-dated and have collagen extracted for isotopic and genetic analyses.

This new genetic analysis will help determine the variability and origins of the dingo species.

Lead researcher: Dr Melanie Fillios

Using historical and archaeological methodologies, this research project is examining the use of unfree labour in workshop-based settings. In collaboration with the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority (PAHSMA), the project is based upon an archaeological excavation of the Port Arthur penal station (1830-77) workshops. This complex housed the station’s convict artisans, working as shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters, wheelwrights. The work ranged from simple production tasks, to complex manufacturing in different mediums. This research aims to understand more about the people, processes and products.

The project is part of a wider and ongoing research project into convict labour which has been running since 2017. This ARC-funded collaborative project – Landscapes of Production and Punishment: the Tasman Peninsula 1830-1877 – has involved researchers from UNE, PAHSMA and the University of Liverpool (UK) using archaeological and historical evidence to examine how landscape and space affected the labour experience of convicts incarcerated at a number of stations – Port Arthur included.

More on the project blog.

Researcher: Dr Richard Tuffin, Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

Our researchers are engaged in long-term research projects dealing with medieval and early modern European social and religious history, illuminating the foundations of the modern world and exploring topics such as the history of the medieval Hussites, heresy, religious identity anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic propaganda in early modern Europe and the history of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions.

Lead researchers: Professor Thomas A. Fudge and Dr Francois Soyer

Dr Piers Kelly has an Australian Research Council DECRA-funded project commencing in 2022, titled ‘Message sticks: Long-distance communication in Indigenous Australia’. Message sticks are marked wooden objects that were once used throughout Indigenous Australia to convey important information between communities.

The intended outcome of this project is to answer a central question: What role did message sticks play in Indigenous long-distance communication? Drawing on archival evidence and original fieldwork in the Top End, the project aims to be the first empirically grounded study of message sticks as a practice. The project expects to define message sticks as a class of material culture, explain their communicative dynamics, generate new cross-cultural insights, and strengthen collaborations between research institutions, museums and Indigenous cultural organisations.

Updates on the project can be followed at Piers' blog, Brave New Worlds, or via Twitter: @perezkelly.

Lead Researcher: Dr Piers Kelly.

The UNE Museum of Antiquities is moving its 3,000 ancient artefacts onto an open access online platform (Pedestal 3D).

This project will improve accessibility of the unique collections, to benefit learning and research at UNE and beyond. The technology allows for very detailed colour and texture scans, and objects can be viewed closely, enhanced, measured accurately and manipulated for viewing at all angels, for an improved user experience.

View the collections here.

Project leader: Dr Bronwyn Hopwood

We produce and publish the Journal of Australian Colonial History (JACH). The journal produces one volume annually, each consisting  between 7–10 scholarly articles, plus book reviews and research notes, on a wide variety of subjects including convict history, bushranging, Aboriginal-settler relations, nineteenth century legal and medical developments, colonial nationalism and republicanism, colonial literature, imperial history, biography, and various aspects of Australia's early social, economic and political history.

JACH has a broad and expanding readership and is currently held in numerous Australian and overseas libraries. Most contributors are from Australian institutions, though works have been published by overseas scholars from the University of Edinburgh, King's College London and California State University, and by independent scholars from Britain and South Africa.

Editor: Associate Professor David Andrew Roberts

Read the current and past copies of the JACH.

Convict Landscapes: Locating Australia’s Convicts, 1788-1868

This project is spatially locating places, spaces and events related to Australia's convict past. The project's first output was a GIS-based mapping experience of the Port Arthur penal station, produced in collaboration with Port Arthur Historic Site. A map of convict Van Diemen's Land has just been created, with work underway on mapping the rest of Australia.

View the project website.

Lead researchers: Dr Richard Tuffin and Professor Martin Gibbs