History and archaeology - Our Australian Research Council (ARC) projects

Program	Project summary	Lead researcher	Research team
Special Research Initiatives	A history of domestic violence in Australia, 1850-2020. The project aims to investigate similarities and differences in women's lived experiences of domestic violence across ethnic, cultural and class contexts; to historicise its cultural representations and their impacts; and to identify and assess policy and legal measures to constrain domestic violence. Its significance lies in its goal to address a persistent threat in Australia. Expected outcomes are the first book-length history of domestic violence in Australia, articles, direct sector engagement and a digital database to build future research capacity. Its anticipated benefit is new analysis that assists policy makers, service providers, the media and public to understand historical processes that have shaped Australian gender relations.	Associate Professor Catherine Kevin	Associate Professor Catherine Kevin; Professor Ann Curthoys; Dr Zora Simic
Special Research Initiatives	Slow digitisation, community heritage and the objects of Martindale Hall. This project aims to investigate how community history, heritage, and cultural collections can be better preserved and made accessible through slow digitisation techniques. The project will generate new interdisciplinary knowledge about Martindale Hall, SA, the historically significant objects it contains, and digitisation. Expected outcomes include a new method that embeds digitisation in historical and cultural knowledge, and assists organisations to make sustainable decisions about when and how to digitise. Benefits include improved public access to significant cultural heritage assets, return on investment for local history organisations, and protection of cultural heritage places and objects by the communities that care for them.	Associate Professor Jane Haggis	Associate Professor Jane Haggis; Dr Tully Barnett; Professor Heather Burke; Professor Penelope Edmonds; Professor Claire Smith; Emeritus Professor Margaret Allen; Dr Anna Kotarba
Discovery Projects	Before Cook: Contact, Negotiation and the Archaeology of the Tiwi Islands. The narrative of culture contact in Australia is dominated by British colonisation, yet Indigenous Australians in Northern Australia had a much earlier connection with global explorers and traders. We aim to conduct the first systematic maritime and terrestrial archaeological investigations of the Tiwi Islands, alongside the study of material culture, oral history and archival materials associated with early Dutch explorers, British colonists, and Macassans. This multi-disciplinary approach will broaden our understanding of long-term race relations in Australia, the past presence of foreign visitors to Northern Australia, develop cultural heritage public policy and consolidate Tiwi cultural identity and history into the historical record.	Dr Daryl Wesley	Dr Daryl Wesley; Associate Professor Wendy Van Duivenvoorde; Emeritus Professor Michael Smith; Professor Peter Monteath; Professor Rachel Popelka-Filcoff; Dr Kellie Pollard; Dr Fanny Veys; Dr Mirani Litster; Dr Widya Nayat
Discovery Projects	Resilient humanitarianism: the League of Red Cross Societies, 1919-1991. This project aims to advance the concept of resilient humanitarianism through a historical investigation of one humanitarian body, the League of Red Cross Societies, from its inception to the end of the Cold War. Global humanitarian crises abound due to ongoing conflict and natural disasters but nation states, bodies such as the United Nations and humanitarian organisations seem incapable of offering lasting solutions to intractable situations. This project will use rarely accessed archives and an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the evolution of humanitarianism, voluntary action and global civil society during the 20th century. This historical analysis can inform humanitarian policy, debates and practice of the present and future.	Professor Melanie Oppenheimer	Dr Rosemary Cresswell; Professor Melanie Oppenheimer; Professor Susanne Schech; Dr Romain Fathi; Professor Russell Wylie
Discovery Projects	Investigating the impacts and future of land rights and land restitution. This project aims to develop new understandings of the effects of land rights on Aboriginal communities and the nation. The era of gaining rights has, for many, transitioned into a time of restitution and seeking economic and cultural futures for younger generations. It remains to be seen what these futures will be, how they will align with or challenge national interests, and what hopes younger Aboriginal people have for country. This project aims to uncover future aspirations, engaging with Yanyuwa claimants, the first group to lodge a land claim under the Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act 1976, and land rights professionals. The project aims to reveal intercultural understandings of land rights and the future for Australian lands and waters.	Professor Amanda Kearney	Professor Amanda Kearney; Associate Professor John Bradley
Discovery Projects	Ochre archaeomicrobiology: a new tool for understanding Aboriginal exchange. This project aims to identify the origins and movements of Australian archaeological ochre through the development of a novel tool combining genomic and chemical analysis. The geographic distribution of Australian ochre is closely linked to Aboriginal creation stories, while its physical distribution by people is evidence of cultural cooperation. Using this new archaeomicrobiological technique, the project aims to answer significant questions about past human behaviour, in terms of trade, cultural interactions, territoriality and colonisation. The method also has the potential to benefit traditional owners by contributing to repatriation projects. The collaborative detailed recording, sampling and analysis of ochre sources on traditional lands will also assist Aboriginal communities to manage this important aspect of their cultural heritage.	Professor Rachel Popelka-Filcoff	Dr Shanan Tobe; Professor Rachel Popelka-Filcoff; Professor Claire Lenehan; Professor Claire Smith; Associate Professor Amy Roberts; Professor Robert Edwards
Discovery Projects	How archaeology can transform living in space. This project aims to investigate human engagement with material culture in the extreme environment of space by applying archaeological methods to the habitation design of the International Space Station. The project will use NASA data to record astronaut interactions with objects and spaces over time. The project expects to remedy deficiencies in previous psychological and engineering design research by taking a deep-time perspective on how a culture develops in a microgravity environment. The results are intended to identify how humans adapt to space technology and can be applied in the future design of long duration space missions to maximise both survival and efficiency.	Associate Professor Alice Gorman	Associate Professor Justin Walsh; Associate Professor Alice Gorman
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award	An international environmental history of the 'world ocean', 1950s-2000s. This project aims to investigate the ways in which states, international organisations, and international communities have engaged with the world ocean as a natural environment from the 1950s to the 2000s. In the context of current environmental and geopolitical challenges for the ocean, this project will analyse how these actors built institutions, communities, and territories in and for the ocean environment as a foundation for generating knowledge and claiming power, rights, and resources. By understanding the structures and origins of contemporary ocean ideas, spaces, and institutions, this project aims to benefit current efforts to create resilient ocean environments and communities at the international scale.	Dr Alessandro Antonello	Dr Alessandro Antonello
ARC Future Fellowships	Tracing connection and change in deep-time landscapes. This project aims to develop new insights into Australia's past by telling the story of Aboriginal people's long-term connections and changing relationships with prominent places. Building on new discoveries in the northwest arid zone, the project will conduct archaeological research at landforms in the eastern Pilbara. The project will analyse rock art and excavated materials from key sites to learn how they acted as beacons through time to structure and shape people's movements, encounters and connections with others. This is expected to promote Indigenous connection with cultural heritage, help facilitate cultural education programs in remote areas, and offer new insights into the relationship between cultural heritage and Indigenous health and well-being.	Associate Professor Liam Brady	Associate Professor Liam Brady
ARC Future Fellowships	Early human dispersal: identifying the key environmental drivers. This project aims to investigate if environmental or human evolutionary processes drove the dispersal of early humans eastwards from Africa into Southeast Asia and beyond into Australia. The project will examine archaeological sediments using an Earth-science approach, providing direct links between cultural and environmental records. The project will reveal the types of environment that were favored by early humans and provide a greater understanding of the role of environmental change on the colonisation of new environments.	Associate Professor Michael Morley	Associate Professor Michael Morley
Linkage Projects	Interrogating the Riverland's colonial frontier. This project aims to deliver the first comprehensive study of the colonial frontier in South Australia's Riverland, a region that was the scene of nationally significant colonial endeavours coupled with violence towards Aboriginal people. While previous studies have focused on discrete events from the historical record, this project will to use a multi-layered strategy to explore this past and present. By coalescing archaeological, anthropological and oral history evidencethis project expects to generate meaningful narratives for and with Aboriginal descendants. These insights should substantially contribute to understandings about the colonial frontier in Australia and globally.	Associate Professor Amy Roberts	Associate Professor Amy Roberts; Associate Professor Michael Morrison; Professor Heather Burke; Dr Ian Moffat
Discovery Projects	Monarchy, democracy and empire: German imperial policy before 1914. This project aims to improve knowledge of the history of constitutional monarchy as a political form outside of Britain. It asks who drove Germany's global imperialist foreign policy prior to World War One and how they did so. By studying the contest for power between the German monarch and other arms of the state and society, the project will establish the effects of political change on the German Empire. Laying bare the tension between the royal prerogative and the constitutional state prior to 1914, this project explains how the struggle between the principles of monarchy and democracy was reflected in the history of Europe's imperial rivalries.	Professor Matthew Fitzpatrick	Professor Matthew Fitzpatrick
Discovery Projects	Managing migrants and border control in Britain and Australia, 1901-1981. This project aims to historicise the creation and control of suspect migrant communities and the restrictions on the further immigration of members of these groups by the British and Australian authorities from 1900-81. The project aims to scrutinise the creation of 'suspect communities' and the policies of surveillance, community control and restricted entry. The expected outcome is to show that such policies and practices did not prevent Britain and Australia from becoming multicultural societies by the 1970s. This will provide a greater understanding of how Britain and Australia's border control systems have evolved since 1900 and how past historical policies relate to contemporary practices.	Associate Professor Andrekos Varnava	Associate Professor Andrekos Varnava; Associate Professor Marinella Marmo; Dr Anastasia Dukova; Dr Andonis Piperoglou
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award	Decolonising the archives of Aboriginal domestic history. This project aims to investigate an undocumented history of Aboriginal domestic service in South Australia. It will create new knowledge about historical assimilation-based policies, particularly those that targeted girls for removal from their families, and that enabled indentured domestic labour. This work will improve understandings of local, national and international colonial histories.	Dr Natalie Harkin	Dr Natalie Harkin
Discovery Projects	The deep history of Sea Country: Climate, sea level and culture. This project aims to investigate the records of the now-submerged Pilbara coast (50,000 to 7000 years ago). Nearly a third of Australia's landmass was drowned after the last ice age, and sea-level change displaced generations of people. Submerged landscape archaeology will help reveal past sea-level rise, population resilience, mobility and diet. The project integrates cultural and environmental studies and material analysis, and adapts a method from the world's only confirmed submarine middens. It will use marine and aerial survey techniques to investigate physical and cultural submerged landscapes. This project expects to influence heritage and environmental management and the marine heritage sector.	Associate Professor Jonathon Benjamin	Professor Sean Ulm; Associate Professor Jonathan Benjamin; Professor Jorg Hacker; Professor Geoffrey Bailey; Professor Mads Holst; Dr Michael O'Leary; Professor JO McDonald
Discovery Projects	Contemporary Indigenous relationships to rock art. This project aims to understand the roles and meanings of archaeological heritage in the lives of Indigenous people today. Archaeological investigations typically rely on objects, images and places as evidence of past human activity, but these "artefacts" could also tell us about present-day relationships between people and their archaeological heritage. The project will examine how Aboriginal people from the south-western Gulf of Carpentaria engage with rock art, one of the most visual aspects of the archaeological record. By focussing on the cultural re-working of relationships to rock art, this project aims to provide new understandings to inform national and Indigenous futures, and support progressive advancements in land and sea management.	Associate Professor Liam Brady	Professor Amanda Kearney; Associate Professor Liam Brady; Associate Professor John Bradley; Dr Karen Steelman
Discovery Projects	Beyond Empire: Transnational religious networks and liberal cosmopolitanisms. This project aims to study religion as a dimension of international affairs between 1860 and 1950. It will examine the contribution of faith-based activity, networking and thought to global governance and peace building institutionalised in the United Nations, universal human rights and humanitarianism that shaped the second half of the twentieth century. The project will explore the emergence of these faith-based cosmopolitanisms at the interstices of multi-faith, multi-cultural and multi-racial webs of connection and their significance for Australian, regional and global history. This could show how secular and inter-faith activisms can produce cosmopolitan visions of practical co-existence.	Associate Professor Jane Haggis	Emeritus Professor Margaret Allen; Associate Professor Jane Haggis; Professor Fiona Paisley; Professor Clare Midgley
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award	Rock art as a proxy for environmental change. The project aims to identify fauna in rock art in the Warddeken Indigenous Protected Area, NT, an area with no Pleistocene palaeontological fauna record. Rock art in Arnhem Land preserves information about past fauna species unavailable archaeologically beyond the Late Holocene. This repertoire has been vastly under-exploited as a source of data about changing human-animal relationships past and present. The research will augment zoological methods with insights from Aboriginal people. Securely identifying and dating fauna species in rock art is expected to enhance understanding past human-animal relationships. Potential benefits include enhancing international significance of Australia's rock art and informing debates on megafauna extinctions, climate, and environmental change in Australia.	Dr Daryl Wesley	Dr Daryl Wesley
Discovery Projects	The Archaeology of the Queensland Native Mounted Police. This project plans to conduct a systematic archaeological study of the Queensland Native Mounted Police. While previous studies have focused on policing activities as revealed by the historical record, this project will combine material, oral and historical evidence from a range of sites across central and northern Queensland to understand more fully the activities, lives and legacies of the Native Police. This project aims to provide an alternative lens through which to understand the nature of frontier conflict, initiate new understandings of the Aboriginal and settler experience, and contribute to global studies of Indigenous responses to colonialism.	Professor Heather Burke	Professor Heather Burke; Professor Bryce Barker; Associate Professor Lynley Wallis; Dr Noelene Cole; Ms Elizabeth Hatte; Dr Larry Zimmerman
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award	The Drumbeat of Human Evolution: Climate Proxies from Rockshelter Sediments. This project aims to trial new techniques for extracting environmental information from the sediments contained within archaeological rock shelters. Homo sapiens evolved during a period of dramatic climate variation, which almost certainly influenced human development and global dispersal. High-resolution climate records are rarely available for Pleistocene archaeological sites and so it is challenging to quantify the degree of behavioural response to environmental change. This project aims to apply novel geophysical and geochemical techniques to provide new climate records for Indonesia and South Africa, facilitate correlation with other climate archives and thus create a means of directly evaluating the degree of environmental influence on human behavioural evolution.	Dr Ian Moffat	Dr Ian Moffat
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award	New light on Cambodia's Dark Age (1350 - 1750). This project aims to conduct the first systematic archaeological investigations of Cambodian Middle Period capitals on the banks of the Mekong and Tonle Sap arterial rivers between 1350 and 1750. Whilst the decline of Angkor is one of the most significant events in the history of Southeast Asia, we do not have a precise date for the event that involved the relocation of many hundreds of thousands of people. By determining when the Kings of Angkor moved to the southern capitals we will clarify the end of Angkor, retrieve Cambodian history from a perceived Dark Age, and reveal critical linkages between the celebrated Angkorian past and modern and contemporary Cambodia.	Dr Martin Polkinghorne	Dr Martin Polkinghorne
Discovery Projects	The history and mechanisms of modern migration: the British case 1780-1914. The roots of modern migration reside in fundamental agrarian changes which always occur when modern societies embark along the road to industrialisation (such as in Britain in the industrial revolution). These structural changes in the rest of the world are the generic sources of most of Australia's immigrants, past and present. This project investigates the fundamental causes of very long term migration flows which remain largely unexplained.	Emeritus Professor Eric Richards	Emeritus Professor Eric Richards