Antipodean Archaeology & the Wider World: Some personal reflections on the last 40 years

25 August 2009

Professor Peter Rowley-Conwy

Aspects of Australian archaeology have had widespread repercussions upon archaeology beyond the Antipodes. In this talk Professor Peter Rowley-Conwy explored a series of ways in which Antipodean archaeology has impacted upon archaeology elsewhere, particularly in Britain and Europe, focusing on three major areas: (1) prehistory and parallel issues which Australia and New Zealand have in common with Europe; (2) the last 250 years and the influence of Antipodean archaeology in the examination of initial contact between Europeans and indigenous peoples; and (3) current attitudes to the past, particularly in relation to who ‘owns' the past, and the repatriation or reburial of prehistoric remains and items.

Broad Topics: Arts and Social Sciences

Sub-topics: History & Archeology

Areas: ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences

Peter Rowley-Conwy was awarded his PhD from the University of Cambridge. He has held the positions of Research Fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge and Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Memorial University of Newfoundland. In 1990, Rowley-Conwy was appointed to a lectureship in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University, where he was promoted to Professor in 2007.

Rowley-Conwy's research has focused on hunter-gatherers and early farmers, in particular the nature of the transition between these cultural episodes. A specialist on faunal remains and their contribution to archaeology, he has published widely on European material, including in Scandinavia and Britain, and analysed the major faunal assemblage from Arene Candide in Italy. Since 2000 he has run the Durham Pig Project, which has examined pig domestication around the world by a variety of means. Professor Rowley-Conwy likes animal bones, plant remains, hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists and the history of archaeology.