Archaeology Actually

Kia ora, رَمَضَان كَرِيم (Wishing a generous Ramadan to all those observing!) I am part of the way through a two-month stay in Muscat, Oman, where I am collecting data for my PhD. At the start of this month I attended the First International Conference on the Archaeology of the Oman Peninsula and presented some of the recent work of the 'La Trobe University Archaeological Research in Oman' (LARiO) project. The conference, which was hosted at the Sultan Qaboos University campus in Muscat,  marked the golden jubilee (50th anniversary) of the Journal of Oman Studies , the peer-reviewed scholarly journal of the Sultanate of Oman's Ministry of Heritage and Tourism .  Presenting at the First International Conference of the Archaeology of the Oman Peninsula, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, 1 February 2026. Photo: Roman Garba. In a great move for the profile of research in Oman, it was announced during the conference that the Journal of Oman Studies was becoming a Gold Open Acces...

Kia ora, Those of you that have previously visited this blog have likely noticed a repeated theme - human origins - a long held interest of mine. You possibly also have noticed that it has been a while since I last posted. In the last couple of years there have been some major changes in my life. I decided to finally take the step to pursue my interest in human origins further by moving to Melbourne, Australia to undertake a PhD at La Trobe University. The focus of my PhD research, now into its second year, is on the early archaeological record of the southern Arabian Peninsula (specifically, the modern Sultanate of Oman) and the role of this region in 'Out of Africa' human dispersals, and is being undertaken as part of the LARiO (La Trobe Archaeological Research in Oman) project - an international and interdisciplinary research collaboration. This project is co-directed by my principal PhD supervisor at La Trobe University, Dr Matthew Meredith-Williams , and is currently being...

Kia ora, Update (June 2025): Since this post was originally published in 2023, the preprint paper it refers to has gone through the peer review process and has now been published in the journal Science .  In April 2020 I published a post to this blog entitled " New Insights into Human Origins - Part 1 ", in which I discussed a research paper that had reported the sequencing of enamel proteins from an ca. 800,000 year old hominin  tooth recovered from the Gran Dolina cave in the Atapuerca mountains in Spain. These proteins were about twice as old as what was then, and still is, the oldest hominin DNA ever sequenced. As I explained in that 2020 post: " Proteins are biomolecules consisting of chains of organic compounds called amino acids that are assembled using information encoded in DNA, so the more similar two species' DNA is, the more similar we would expect the composition of their proteins to be. Proteins slower rate of degradation compared to DNA presents the ...

Since this post was first published in 2022 I have permanently deactivated my Twitter/X account but have chosen to leave this post up, albeit without many of the photos it once included.   Kia ora, Last week (November 21-24) the New Zealand Archaeological Association 's 2022 Conference was hosted  by the University of Otago and Tūhura Otago Museum in Ōtepoti Dunedin. The theme of this year's conference was "Archaeology and the Climate Crisis", and the conference programme included a themed session of papers focused on the impact of climate change on archaeology and potential responses from the archaeological community, as well as an evening public panel discussion on this topic that included archaeological, climate science and indigenous (Māori) perspectives.  In an attempt to try something new on this blog, this post includes the story of the conference as told through social media (well, ok - mainly through my Twitter account). The full conference programme, incl...

Kia ora, Earlier this year, ahead of the start of  construction of a new six-storey building on the University of Otago's Christchurch campus , a team from our archaeological research and consultancy unit at the University, Southern Pacific Archaeological Research (SPAR) , undertook an  archaeological salvage excavation on the site. The excavation was one of the conditions of an archaeological authority for the construction works that had been granted to the University by  Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga .   In New Zealand, these authorities are a legal requirement where there is reasonable cause to expect that earthworks will affect archaeological evidence associated with pre-1900 AD human activity. In the present instance, the site is located on Oxford Terrace in Christchurch along the Avon River, right in the heart of the earliest occupied part of the  Canterbury Association's  Church of England settlement (which was founded in 1850 AD). Archaeologi...

Kia ora, New Zealand Archaeology Week 2022 is underway! New Zealand Archaeology Week, now into its sixth year, is an annual week of nation-wide public talks, exhibits, and other events aimed at increasing public awareness and appreciation of archaeology and of New Zealand's own archaeological record. Events are run by a range of amazing individuals and organizations and coordinated by the New Zealand Archaeological Association (NZAA). Over the last couple of years New Zealand Archaeology Week has been forced to adapt to the present pandemic world. In 2020 it was forced entirely online as New Zealand experienced its highest level of COVID-19 related restrictions. Thanks to the success of those earlier restrictions, New Zealand was enjoying a pre-Delta variant respite this time last year and New Zealand Archaeology Week 2021 saw the return of several in-person events alongside original online content from the NZAA and various content partners. With the Omicron variant now widesprea...