Date/Time
Date(s) - 24/10/2024
11:30 am - 1:00 pm

Location
Burke Science Building (BSB) B139

Dr. Brandi MacDonald: Collaborative Research in Aboriginal Rock Art and Archaeological Science: Mining, Land Rights, and Deep Time Histories in the Alligator Rivers Region, Australia
Assistant Professor & PI
Archaeometry Laboratory at University of Missouri Research Reactor
MU Department of Chemistry

Ongoing archaeological research western Arnhem Land (Australia) has brought global attention to region and the findings have contributed to popular narratives on Aboriginal Australians as the “world’s oldest continuous living culture”. The region preserves Madjedbebe, one of the deepest temporal records of human occupation in Australia (65 kya), and a succeeding record that spans dramatic fluctuations in climate and sea level, habitat change, and megafauna extinctions. Outcomes from this research have highlighted the varied adaptive responses that humans developed to those ecosystem changes, including variations in social networks, mobility, and resource provisioning. Symbolic expression and storytelling by way of rock paintings are also ubiquitous across Arnhem Land, and are deeply intertwined with the long-term occupational history and contemporary worldview of descendant Aboriginal communities.

In this talk I will describe our ongoing project in partnership with the Mirarr Traditional Owners and local artistic community on mineral pigment provenance and traditional knowledge on the mineralogical and biological resources used to produce composite paints. This project, which has been co-developed amidst a complex and inescapable political conflict around industrial uranium mining and Aboriginal intellectual property and land rights, highlights how community-centered archaeological research can help repair disrupted relationships between living communities and their land and ancestors.

Upcoming Speaker Series:

Friday, October 25, 2024 – 3:30pm – 5:00pm
Location: LR Wilson Hall Rm # 1003
Dr. Rhonda Bathurst (Executive Director, Museum of Ontario Archaeology / Adjunct Research Professor, Western University)
Talk Title: Decolonizing Museum Spaces & Re-imagining Archaeological Stewardship

Wednesday, October 30, 2024 – 12:30pm – 2:00pm
Location: LRW Wilson Hall Rm # 3001
Dr. Stephen Berquist (Postdoctoral Research fellow, University of Warsaw. Center for Andean Studies / Research Association at Archaeology Centre of the University of Toronto)
Talk Title: Taming the Flow: Population movement, politics, and the production of hydropolitical knowledge in the Late Pre-Hispanic Andes.

Friday, November 15, 2024 – 3:30pm – 5:00pm
Location: LR Wilson Hall Rm # 1003
Dr. Alex Khasnabish (Professor of Anthropology, Mount Saint Vincent University)
Talk Title: Black Pills in Clown World: Anthropology at the End of the World

Friday, November 22, 2024 – 3:30pm – 5:00pm
Location: LR Wilson Hall Rm # 1003
Dr. Paul Szpak (Associate Professor of Anthropology, Trent University)
Talk Title: The Landscape of Llama Husbandry in the Andes before the Arrival of the Europeans

Friday, December 6, 2024 – 3:30pm – 5:00pm
Location: LR Wilson Hall Rm # 1003
Jacquie Fisher (CRM Archaeologist)
Talk Title: Full Circle? – How to Look at CRM Archaeology Through a Different Lens