The Spring Ordinary Meeting of Convocation for 2019 was held on Friday 20 September in The University Club of Western Australia Banquet Hall.
Convocation was delighted to present Professor Peter Veth, Director of the UWA Oceans Institute and Professor of Archaeology, as our Guest Speaker for the Spring Ordinary Meeting of 2019.
Professor Peter Veth has carried out multi-decadal research on the archaeology of Aboriginal societies and their changing land and seascapes. This work has been carried out collaboratively with numerous communities, corporations and land councils for the purposes of strategic research, heritage management, native title and capacity building. He has held academic positions at JCU, the ANU and UWA. He has recently finished serving as the inaugural Kimberley Foundation Ian Potter Chair of Rock Art and is now the Director of the UWA Oceans Institute. Peter is Head of the Archaeology Section, Australian Academy of Humanities, sits on the ARC College of Experts and is currently carrying out work in the Pilbara and Kimberley.
UWA is part of a new Australian Blue Economy CRC which will focus on sustainable seafood and energy renewal in to the future. Australia also has some of the earliest and most continuous evidence for deliberate maritime travel, marine resource use and fishing technologies associated with the First Australians. Ongoing research in the wider region from Timor Leste, Borneo and North West Australia has located occupation sites with maritime economies dating back to 50,000 years ago. These records intersect with peoples’ oral traditions documenting deep histories of connection to lands which are now islands or submerged. In this lecture Peter will profile the research that he and his colleagues have carried out in North West Australia and the wider region.