[Aqualist] ARC Success for 2017 round

[Simon Haberle]

Dear colleagues,

The ARC announced the outcomes of a range of schemes today. Quaternary research in Australia (including archaeology) has seen excellent success across a range of universities, states and research topics. I’ve listed all the successful proposals (at least those I could find given the new online reporting system). 13 DPs, 2 Indigenous DPs, 5 DECRAs, 6 Future Fellowships and 2 LIEF grants were awarded. Congratulations to all.

Regards, Simon Haberle

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DISCOVERY PROJECT

The Australian National University

Associate Professor Michael Ellwood; Professor Philip Boyd; Dr Leanne Armand; Professor Dr Steven Wilhelm; Professor Benjamin Twining
How iron is cycled in Southern Ocean waters.
This project aims to probe the Southern Ocean phytoplankton’s ability to take up and retain iron, using iron isotope tracer techniques. The Southern Ocean regulates Earth's climate, but the supply of iron to Southern Ocean surface waters is low, restricting the ability of phytoplankton to flourish and draw down carbon dioxide. The results are expected to reveal survival strategies of phytoplankton in this iron-poor environment and their potential ability to adapt to environmental change. This knowledge could be used to develop models to manage this climate-sensitive region.
$348,000.00


Macquarie University

Dr Kira Westaway; Professor Simon Haberle; Associate Professor Yingqi Zhang; Professor Russell Ciochon
Unravelling the mystery of the mighty ape's last stand.
This project aims to study the fate of primates in southern Asia, where evidence for megafaunal extinction is rare. Why Gigantopithecus blacki, the largest ever primate, disappeared is unknown, while humans in the region survived. This project will model dating techniques across sites to identify a precise extinction window and compare behaviour and past environmental conditions to determine why the ape failed and man persevered. Outcomes will generate a new understanding of past environmental change as a driver of megafaunal extinction in comparison with human adaption and survival.
$262,5003

Dr Leanne Armand; Professor Simon George; Professor Simon Belt; Dr Philip Heraud; Professor Chris Bowler; Professor John Beardall
Diatom lipids to reveal sea-ice history in remote Antarctic regions.
This project aims to understand seasonal Antarctic sea-ice extent using molecular, geochemical, elemental and genomic characteristics of specific marine phytoplankton (diatoms). Little is known of the seasonal sea-ice variation and the position of the summer sea-ice extent a million years before satellite records, but this information is critical to determining air-sea gas exchange and ecosystem food web regulation. This project will unite geochemical and biological approaches to provide the data to improve past Antarctic ecosystem and climate models where sea-ice data is missing. Studying diatom biomarkers in deep sea cores from Australia’s Southern Ocean will redefine knowledge of Antarctic climate and provide data necessary to improve global ecosystem and climate models.
$407,443


The Flinders University of South Australia

Dr Jonathan Benjamin; Professor Sean Ulm; Professor Peter Veth; Professor Jorg Hacker; Dr Michael O'Leary; Professor Geoffrey Bailey; Professor Mads Holst
The deep history of Sea Country: Climate, sea level and culture.
This project aims to investigate the records of the now-submerged Pilbara coast (50,000 to 7000 years ago). Nearly a third of Australia’s landmass was drowned after the last ice age, and sea-level change displaced generations of people. Submerged landscape archaeology will help reveal past sea-level rise, population resilience, mobility and diet. The project integrates cultural and environmental studies and material analysis, and adapts a method from the world’s only confirmed submarine middens. It will use marine and aerial survey techniques to investigate physical and cultural submerged landscapes. This project expects to influence heritage and environmental management and the marine heritage sector.
$597,000.00


The University of Sydney

Professor Alison Betts; Professor Frantz Grenet; Dr Michele Minardi; Dr Makset Karlibaev
Shifting the foundations of Zoroastrian history: A fresh focus on Khorezm.
This project aims to explore the importance for Zoroastrianism of images of Avestan gods in Uzbekistan. Zoroastrianism is an ancient religion, but little is known of its early development. Recent finds of massive six-metre-high murals of Avestan gods decorating the royal ceremonial centre of Akchakhan-kala in Khorezm provide evidence of early formal Zoroastrian practices, in a region not considered a centre of early religious development. The project will study this data and its implications for later religious beliefs, drawing particularly on evidence for burial practices in the early Islamic period and indigenous tribal practices. The project aims to enhance understanding of one of the world’s significant religions.
$437,000.00

Professor Roland Fletcher; Dr Dan Penny; Dr Martin Polkinghorne; Dr Damian Evans; Associate Professor Christophe Pottier; Dr Mitch Hendrickson; Professor Miriam Stark; Ms Louise Cort; Associate Professor Ashley Thompson
Urbanism after Angkor (14th-18th century).
This project aims to understand changes after the breakdown of low-density urbanism in Cambodia. Recognising the emergence of urban forms after the demise of Angkor challenges the global “Collapse of Civilisation” trope, and redefines the Middle Period of Cambodian history (15th-19th century). This project proposes that continuity, renewal, variety and adaptation are as apparent in Cambodia’s middle period as loss and failure. Applying landscape archaeology to this ‘dark age’ of Southeast Asian history embeds the demise of low-density urbanism and the development of towns in an environmental context. Identifying adaptive pathways after ‘collapse’ could have implications for urbanism in the tropics.
$787,945.00


The University of New South Wales

Professor Chris Turney; Professor Alan Cooper; Associate Professor Alan Hogg; Dr Konrad Hughen; Professor Dr Raimund Muscheler
Testing the mechanisms and effects of abrupt and extreme climate change.
This project aims to resolve the timing, rate of change, mechanisms and effects of past abrupt and extreme global climate change. These are uncertain for abrupt and extreme warming events in the recent geological record, due to difficulties comparing terrestrial and marine palaeoclimate and faunal records on radiocarbon timescales with independently dated ice cores over the last 50,000 years. By using yearly-resolved tree ring records, the project will discover when, how and what effect abrupt and extreme change had on global climate and species/ecosystems.
$980,500.00


The University of New England

Professor Martin Gibbs; Associate Professor David Roberts; Professor Hamish Maxwell-Stewart; Professor Barry Godfrey; Dr David Roe; Dr Jody Steele; Ms Susan Hood
Landscapes of production and punishment: The Tasman Peninsula 1830-77.
This project aims to explore the physical effect of convict labour on landscape and convict bodies. It focuses on convict labour at Port Arthur and on the Tasman Peninsula, Tasmania, 1830-77. The Tasman Peninsula presents a rare opportunity to develop and test methodology for examining convict labour management and control, and the systems of production in which they were engaged. This project will study the punitive, economic, technological, organisational, legal and social forces that shaped convict labour and where they laboured. This should deepen the management, interpretation, public outreach and education tools of these sites.
$495,068.00


Monash University

Dr Liam Brady; Dr Amanda Kearney; Associate Professor John Bradley; Dr Karen Steelman
Contemporary Indigenous relationships to rock art.
This project aims to understand the roles and meanings of archaeological heritage in the lives of Indigenous people today. Archaeological investigations typically rely on objects, images and places as evidence of past human activity, but these "artefacts" could also tell us about present-day relationships between people and their archaeological heritage. The project will examine how Aboriginal people from the south-western Gulf of Carpentaria engage with rock art, one of the most visual aspects of the archaeological record. By focussing on the cultural re-working of relationships to rock art, this project aims to provide new understandings to inform national and Indigenous futures, and support progressive advancements in land and sea management.
$361,625.00


La Trobe University

Associate Professor Andrew Herries; Dr Justin Adams; Professor David Strait; Dr David Fink; Dr Renaud Joannes-Boyau; Dr Colin Menter; Dr Jessie Birkett-Rees
Evolving landscapes of our early South African ancestors.
This project aims to reconstruct the early evolution of our genus, from 2.6 to 1.8 million years ago. This was a time of faunal and environmental change, the extinction of apelike human ancestors (Australopithecus), the speciation of a specialised human genus, Paranthropus, and the origin of our own genus, Homo. This project will study South African cave sites, the surrounding karst, and the oldest known Homo ergaster fossil to model changing dietary patterns and landscape use by hominins. This project expects to reconstruct the early evolution of our genus and to address how species reacted to changing environmental conditions and increasing aridity.
$328,000.00

Associate Professor Andrew Herries; Dr Matthew Meredith-Williams; Dr Jayne Wilkins
Acheulian to Middle Stone Age transition at Amanzi Springs, South Africa.
This project aims to excavate and date the Amanzi Springs archaeological complex. From 600 to 300,000 years ago, Acheulian stone tool technology, defined by large generalised cutting tools, changed to a Middle Stone Age industry dominated by smaller, specialised technology (points/blades). This transition is poorly defined throughout Africa due to lack of layered archaeological sites at high resolution that can be dated. The project will provide a detailed record of changes in technology across the Early to Middle Stone Age transition. The project could increase our understanding of the climatological, ecological and biological processes that shaped our shared ancestry.
$199,968.00


University of Tasmania

Professor Gustaaf Hallegraeff; Professor Andrew McMinn; Adjunct Professor Hendrik Heijnis; Dr Christopher Bolch; Dr Julien Sourer
Improved management of coastal plankton systems by ancient DNA technology.
This project aims to assemble comprehensive long term Australian plankton records spanning 50 to 1000 years, by applying ancient DNA technology to dated sediment depth cores. Long-term data for Australian coastal and estuarine waters are sparse, so cannot be used for management of fisheries, tourism or urban development. Long-term records are essential to understand how disruptive algal and jellyfish blooms, introduced species and increased human use of coastal resources affect dynamic plankton ecosystems. This project’s findings are expected to explore cyclical patterns, define range expansions and understand and manage how dynamic coastal ecosystems respond to multistressor anthropogenic change. Findings will improve understanding of how dynamic marine environments retain their biodiversity values and critical ecological functions.
$439,000.00


The University of Western Australia

Dr Pauline Grierson; Dr Edward Cook; Dr Grzegorz Skrzypek
Annual rainfall variability and extreme drought over the late Holocene.
This project aims to understand long-term rainfall variability for Australia by developing a network of extended, high resolution rainfall records from tree rings. How anthropogenic changes to the atmosphere have influenced changing rainfall patterns across Australia is unclear. By extracting climatic information from tree growth rings across a latitudinal gradient from the subtropical north to the south coast of western Australia, the project will extend hydroclimatic records by several centuries, to identify the frequency and extent of extreme droughts across the continent. Outcomes are expected to provide appropriate context for evaluating and adapting to climate change, allowing climate modellers, agricultural producers and other industries to improve forecasts of likely change for risk management.
$485,000.00


DISCOVERY INDIGENOUS

The University of Melbourne

Dr Michael-Shawn Fletcher
Managing fire and ecology in northern Australia.
This project aims to understand how fire affects the northern Australian savannah. European arrival changed how fire was used in Australia. This project will use ecology, palaeoecology and model development to develop pre-European ecological baselines in northern Australia and to reconstruct changes in plant cover in response to changes in fire regime. By understanding the effect of fire, the project will support the effective maintenance of the ecological integrity and biodiversity of the savannah landscapes.
$372,474.00

Dr Michael-Shawn Fletcher; Dr Maarten Blaauw; Dr Agathe Lisé-Pronovost; Adjunct Professor Hendrik Heijnis; Dr Joel Pedro; Dr Dominic Hodgson
Effect of climate boundary changes on the Southern Westerly Winds.
This project aims to produce high quality data on how the Southern Westerly Winds (SWW) respond to largescale changes in climate boundary conditions over multiple glacial-interglacial cycles. Because the SWW are key drivers of Southern Hemisphere climate, Southern Ocean circulation and global carbon dioxide concentrations, it is important to understand how they respond to changes in boundary conditions. Uncertainty about how they do so limits attempts at accurate predictive climate modelling. This project will test conceptual models of SWW dynamics and provide essential boundary conditions for predictive climate models. The project intends to simultaneously build and support a research capacity and global network, and advance Australia’s knowledge and contribution in the area of global climate dynamics.
$355,000.00


DECRA

The Australian National University

Dr Michelle Langley
Australia's living technologies: Bone tools from first peoples to contact.
This project aims to study Indigenous Australian technologies made from animal bone and tooth to provide insights into pre-contact Australia and the development of human ingenuity. The project will use modern analytical techniques to examine Australia’s ancient bone tool industry, and apply use wear techniques to deduce the cognitive, social, and technological processes behind their manufacture and use. This project expects to contribute to knowledge of Australian and world prehistories of colonisation, environmental interaction, social interaction and innovation, and supply a material culture-based perspective on the cultural behaviour of humans’ earliest ancestors.
$358,752.00

Dr Ursula Frederick
Visualising archaeologies: Art and the creation of contemporary archaeology.
This project aims to investigate contemporary archaeology method and theory, specifically the proposition that art practice can create and communicate archaeological knowledge. Connecting contemporary Australian society with its material past is part of developing ideas about place, identity, and community. Using qualitative research and art practice-based studies, the project will trace the emergence of art-archaeology collaborations and investigate the application of visual methods in representing Australia’s rich heritage. Through the visualisation of archaeology and heritage, the project seeks to further understand how the past is mediated in the present. This will enable better engagement in public discussions about what Australia is as a society and how it values its heritage.
$335,427.00

Dr Catherine Frieman
Conservatism as a dynamic response to the diffusion of innovations.
This project aims to investigate how resistance to new and foreign practices and technologies can be a dynamic response to rapid cultural change, rather than a failure to innovate. The project will examine the underlying factors that influence innovation adoption and rejection. It will examine settlement structure and ritual activities in later prehistoric Cornwall, which was simultaneously a key node in the prehistoric economy and a periphery, with a distinctly local material culture and way of life. The intended outcome is a model of innovation and conservatism, linking the uptake of new ideas and technologies to participation in local and more widespread networks of contact and exchange. This project will increase the profile of Australian research in archaeology and technology on the world stage.
$360,724.00


The University of New South Wales

Dr Ben Shaw
Archaeology of long-term cultural adaptation in the Papuan islands.
This project aims to explore the antiquity of human settlement in the Massim islands of eastern Papua New Guinea and investigate the long-term adaptive strategies prehistoric people used to live in changing island environments. Ecological constraints shaped indigenous cultural identities as sea levels fluctuated and island sizes varied after initial colonisation of Sahul (Ancient New Guinea-Australia). This project will examine how exchange networks facilitated settlement of resource impoverished island ecosystems. The anticipated outcome is to incorporate empirical data into a theoretical framework of adaptive cultural plasticity to develop a temporal-spatial model for human settlement in the Massim, New Guinea and Sahul with multi-disciplinary benefits for understanding climatic and human effects on flora, fauna and ecology.
$365,516.00


The Flinders University of South Australia

Dr Daryl Wesley
Rock art as a proxy for environmental change.
The project aims to identify fauna in rock art in the Warddeken Indigenous Protected Area, NT, an area with no Pleistocene palaeontological fauna record. Rock art in Arnhem Land preserves information about past fauna species unavailable archaeologically beyond the Late Holocene. This repertoire has been vastly under-exploited as a source of data about changing human-animal relationships past and present. The research will augment zoological methods with insights from Aboriginal people. Securely identifying and dating fauna species in rock art is expected to enhance understanding past human-animal relationships. Potential benefits include enhancing international significance of Australia’s rock art and informing debates on megafauna extinctions, climate, and environmental change in Australia.
$359,586.00


FUTURE FELLOWSHIP

The Australian National University

Associate Professor Neville Abram
Quantifying and mitigating changes in Australia’s rainfall belts.
This project aims to understand how past climate changes affected Australia’s rainfall belts, and to reverse recent changes in rainfall belts. Australia’s climate belts are moving, but it is unclear if the effects on tropical and temperate rainfall will be permanent. This project will use past climate records and palaeoclimate databases to assess how natural and human-induced changes during the past millennium affected Australia’s rainfall zones, and specialised climate model simulations to determine whether greenhouse gas reduction could mitigate future rainfall changes. The outcomes are expected to inform policy and mitigation strategies to secure Australia’s precious water resources.
$933,054.00


Griffith University

Dr Adam Brumm
Extinct hominins and early humans on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
This project aims to research the archaic hominins of Sulawesi and discover when and why they became extinct. Recent discoveries of ancient stone tools on Sulawesi show that an archaic and as-yet unidentified hominin species inhabited this remote Indonesian island before modern humans arrived around 50,000 years ago. This project will search for the earliest traces of habitation, attempt to uncover the Sulawesi hominins’ fossil record, and look for evidence of hominin-modern human interaction on this island. This project is expected to illuminate a previously unknown chapter in the human story.
$833,000.00

Dr Julien Louys
Sumatra’s role in ancient human movements and evolution.
This project aims to test whether humans moving through Southeast Asia used a savannah corridor, facilitating their migrations into Sumatra and Java, and examine the effect of rainforests on human movements and evolution. This will be accomplished by examining ecological proxies from vertebrate remains found in established and newly identified fossil sites in Sumatra. These results are expected to provide a new understanding of the environmental context of human evolution in Asia, and identify routes ancient people took as they moved south through Asia and into Australia.
$652,000.00

University of Wollongong

Dr Alexander Mackay
The evolution of landscape use among modern humans.
This project aims to understand the evolution of humans’ adaptive landscape use. The dispersal of modern humans from Africa occurred relatively late in our evolutionary history, which suggests a complex pattern of behavioural evolution in our species. Flexible systems of landscape use underpin human adaptation to different environments resulting in our late expansion and modern global distribution. The project will use a configuration of archaeological and environmental information recovered from around the Doring River, South Africa. The project is expected to open a new avenue of research into the evolution of human behaviour, and address key scientific and general-interest questions about humanity’s emergence.
$863,000.00


The University of Western Australia

Dr Julie Trotter
Deep-sea coral ocean-climate records of the last glacial and recent eras.
The project aims to predict the ocean carbon dioxide sink’s long-term capacity and future trajectories of global warming and increasing carbon dioxide. This project will use geochemical proxies encoded in the skeletons of deep-sea corals in the Perth Canyon, Tasman seas, and Antarctica, in the heart of the ocean-climate system, to reveal continuous long-term records of environmental change at annual-decadal resolution for our recent past (hundreds to thousands of years) and the Last Glacial Maximum. These records are expected to provide a more accurate understanding of Earth’s long-term responses to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions and global warming.
$776,000.00


The University of Queensland

Associate Professor Christopher Clarkson
Archaeological investigations at ancient sites in Kakadu National Park.
This project aims to re-examine two well-known sites (Malangangerr and Ngarradj) in Kakadu, an iconic World Heritage area and home to some of the oldest and richest archaeology in Australia. Little excavation has been carried out there in recent decades, and almost none using modern high resolution recovery techniques. This project will re-excavate Malangangerr and Ngarradj to determine whether other sites have a similar antiquity and record of early complex behaviour. This project could enhance understanding of Aboriginal culture in Kakadu, Australia's unique cultural heritage, the nature and timing of modern human dispersal, and how early Indigenous peoples responded to social and environmental change.
$965,000.00


LIEF

The University of Adelaide

Dr Lee Arnold; Adjunct Professor Nigel Spooner; Associate Professor Gavin Prideaux; Professor Robert Hill; Professor Alan Collins; Associate Professor Jeremy Austin; Dr John Tibby; Dr Trevor Worthy; Professor Patrick Hesp; Dr Rachel Popelka-Filcoff; Dr Mark Hutchinson
A regional optical dating facility in Australia.
This project aims to establish an open access, end-user friendly optical dating facility in Australia. This will address shortcomings in the capacity and geographical coverage of the existing national geochronology infrastructure and enable Australian researchers to reconstruct past records of climate change, human evolution, ecological vulnerabilities, natural and man-made hazards and environmental disturbance over historical to near-million-year timeframes. This project is expected to increase commercial demand for geoscience services and lead to better understanding of Australia’s natural heritage and its long-term vulnerabilities.
$290,000.00


The Australian National University

Associate Professor Cressida Fforde; Professor Daryle Rigney; Associate Professor Gavan McCarthy; Professor Paul Turnbull; Associate Professor Steve Hemming; Dr Michael Pickering; Professor Paul Tapsell; Dr Charles McKeown; Professor Dr Robin Boast; Mr Lui David; Mr Wesley Morris; Ms Honor Keeler; Mr Lawrence Rankine; Dr Larissa Förster; Dr Blake Singley
Networked knowledge for repatriation communities.
This project aims to build a digital facility that supports the repatriation of Indigenous human remains. Repatriation contributes to reconciliation and Indigenous healing and wellbeing, and has been the most important agent of change in the relationship between Indigenous peoples, museums and the academy over the past 40 years. Successful repatriation requires and produces research materials diverse in type, geography and accessibility. Within an Indigenous data-governance framework, this project will gather, preserve and make accessible a critical and extensive record of repatriation information worldwide. The project is expected to support repatriation practice and scholarship and improve the opportunities of repatriation for social good.
$1,231,000.00