Trent Fortnightly Online

Archeologist gives talks on Australian past

        John Mulvaney, one of Australia's most distinguished prehistorians, gives six public lectures called Encounters in Place, about Australia's environment and its human past, at Trent University beginning Sept. 30.

        As this year's Ashley Fellow, he will give the following lectures at 8:15 p.m. in Trent's Peter Robinson College dining hall at 751 George St.N.:

  • Sept. 30 Origins: Arnhem Land -- Environment, Uranium and Aboriginal Cultural History
  • Oct. 7 Antipodean Wildernesses: Case Studies from Two World Heritage Regions -- Tasmanian Rain Forests and the Continent's Arid Inland
  • Oct. 9 Land Takers: First Australians and European Colonists in Central Australia
  • Oct. 28 Across the Sea: First Australians and Indonesian Fishermen on Tropical Coasts
  • Nov. 1 The Keeping Place and Restitution: Who Owns the Past? An Address to Open the Symposium Endangered Traces

        Mulvaney is known in Australia as an expert on Aboriginal culture and a very public intellectual. Beyond the Australian National University, where he taught prehistory for 20 years, he chaired the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, was Australia's delegate to the UNESCO committee on world heritage, participated in a national inquiry on museums and was, until very recently, honorary secretary of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In his 1975 book The Prehistory of Australia, he dated the Aboriginal presence in Australia at 40,000 years, four times earlier than previously believed. Mulvaney has written 14 other books on Australian prehistory, Aboriginal and European contact, Australian Aborigines in England, Baldwin Spencer and the humanities and Australian environment.

        The Ashley Fellowship was established in 1976 with a bequest from Charles Allan Ashley to bring a distinguished scholar to Trent each year to deliver a series of public lectures and to participate in seminars with students and faculty.
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