Location

School of Archaeology and Anthropology
The Faculty of Arts
The Australian National University
Building 14, Ellery Crescent

Basic facilities

The School has a variety of field equipment used for teaching and individual fieldwork purposes. A reasonable range of excavation gear from trowels, brushes, shovels, picks, sieves through to survey equipment including GPS, compasses, tapes, range poles, dumpy levels and theodolites are available for use.

The School has 4 vehicles, two of which are 4WD, available for fieldwork use to people with an ANU driving authority and approval for use from the Head of School.

Availability of support staff

Related staff

Professor Peter Bellwood
Mr Ian Farrington
Dr Peter Hiscock
Professor Matthew Spriggs

Location

School of Archaeology and Anthropology
The Faculty of Arts
The Australian National University
Building 14, Ellery Crescent

Basic working facilities

Wet Laboratory:
A separate wet lab, similarly equipped to the Quarantine Laboratory with large washing sink, oven, balances, etc., also exists on the lower ground floor for general use.

Dry Laboratories:
Several areas with large table and bench space, balances, maggy lamps and microscopes are available to staff and postgrads for dry laboratory work.

Computer Facilities:
Several of the laboratories are equipped with computers. Software includes SigmaScan Pro and MapInfo Pro. One machine is equiped with a graphics tablet, Adobe Illustator and Streamliner.

Availability of support staff

Mr Dave McGregor

Related staff

Professor Peter Bellwood
Mr Ian Farrington
Dr Peter Hiscock
Professor Matthew Spriggs

Location

Department of Archaeology and Natural History
Reasearch School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
H. C. Coombs Building 9, Fellows Rd

Equipment available

A Multiwave-microwave Digestion System (MMDS) that will be used to process pollen and phytolith samples. Microwave digestion significantly reduces sample processing time, costs and hazards. Processing sediment samples by conventional means takes 1-2 weeks whereas with MMDS, sixteen samples can be processed and mounted ready for analysis within 1 hour. Standard processing uses large volumes of concentrated acid in open beakers over heat whereas MMDS is a closed system with considerably reduced chemical use and considerably reduced potential hazards as well as costs.

A Ground-penetrating Radar which can detect structural or architectural features, burials, metal, and sub-surface disturbances such as garbage pits even where nothing is visible on the surface, thereby avoiding unnecessary disturbance of the surface. The advantages of accurate sub-surface mapping or imaging include:

• locating deeply buried archaeological sites where only an approximate location is available
• better assessment of total site extent, structure and contents prior to excavation, thereby ensuring research results that are better matched to research questions
• detecting features such as human burial sites, which may be culturally sensitive to Indigenous people thus ensuring they are not inadvertently disturbed during excavation reducing field time.

A Magnetic Susceptibility Meter and Software
This allows analysis of archaeological sediments in situ to detect major changes in depositional history and assist in understanding the nature and processes of site formation.

A Hammered Livingston Corer
The hammered Livingston corer can be used on sandy sediments and stiff clays that cannot be retrieved using traditional techniques. It also has the advantage that it is very portable.

State of the art GPS mapping systems
The OmniSTAR Ranger Mapping System is accurate to within 1 metre making it ideal for surveying field boundaries, archaeological sites, villages and other work that requires maps or plans to a scale of 1:1000. The Survey data obtained can be downloaded directly from the system to a laptop in the field in formats (Shape files) currently used by our GIS software (ArcView 8.0) to create maps.

Other small items of surveying equipment and recording equipment include Laser rangefinders and X Scape Area Calculators and video cameras. Other basic items for fieldwork and camping are also available and stored in the Department's garage and storage cupboard.

Availability of support staff

Training in the use of this equipment will be provided prior to its use to ensure that it remains in good condition and that the users get the maximum benefit from it. For more information, contact:

Dr Sue O'Connor
or Ms Gillian Atkin

Location

Department of Archaeology and Natural History
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
H. C. Coombs Building 9, Fellows Rd

Basic working facilities

A large room and a small workshop are available for sorting dry material (lithics, bone, pottery, residues, etc.). There is also a balance room and a photocopy room, which contains a photocopier, laser printer, colour printer, scanner and computer. The Department also has a Quarantine Laboratory.

Availability of support staff

Contact the Head Technician:

Ms Gillian Atkin

Location

School of Archaeology and Anthropology
The Faculty of Arts
The Australian National University
Building 14, Ellery Crescent

Size and diversity of comparative collections

The collection is of mammalian bones, catalogued separately. Casts of fossil primates and fossil hominins will be catalogued shortly. There are two bins of wet specimens.

Indices or other references to collection contents

There is a catalogue of mammal specimens, available from Professor Colin Groves , or you may download the PDF file here . Please note that the numbers in this catalogue are accession numbers and the faunal nomenclature follows Groves ('Primates' and 'Australasian marsupials' chapters in Don E.Wilson and DeeAnn Reeder (eds) 1993. Mammal species of the world, Smithsonian Institution Press).

Basic working facilities

Located on the lower ground floor of the A. D. Hope Building in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, the laboratory has two large work tables a fume cupboard and sink. A small annex room contains a computer with a 3D digitiser attached and associated software. Anthropometric measuring equipment is also available as well as microscopes and electronic balances.

Availability of support staff

Mr David McGregor

Related staff

Professor Colin Groves

Location

Department of Archaeology and Natural History
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
H. C. Coombs Building 9, cnr Garran and Liversidge Sts

Overview

The ceramics lab was created to provide a secure area for the analysis and sorting of prehistoric ceramics from across the Pacific. Three projects are currently in progress in the lab - the largest involves the analysis of an assemblage of Lapita pottery from Kamgot, New Ireland in PNG, the second is from a nearby island of Tanga, and the third is from the Republic of Palau in Micronesia. The lab is mainly used for the formal analysis of ceramics whereby the archaeologist measures form, decoration and fabric of pottery assemblages. The shared use of the lab is designed to encourage discussion between projects, such as the various techniques used in formal analysis, and also comparison of results and interpretations.

Basic working facilities

The ceramics lab is located centrally on the first floor next to the Sedimentary and Phytolith Laboratories. The equipment provided for the formal analysis of ceramics includes a balance, two binocular microscopes, one of which has a camera attachment for detailed photographs of pottery designs and inclusions. A digital camera is also available for instant photography. The room also has storage facilities, a sink, and various smaller pieces of equipment.

Related staff

Ms Stephanie Garling
Ms Sarah Phear
Dr. Glenn Summerhayes

Basic working facilities

Archaeology is based on information won from the materials of past events and human actions, whether in the form of artefacts, organic remains or the deposits that seal them. Materials analysis has an essential role in revealing information from these primary forms of data.

The materials analysis aspect of archaeological research is supported at the ANU, and by association with CAR, in several ways. Temporal information is a vital dimension in any archaeological endeavour. The existing dating facilities at the ANU have an extended reach from millions of years ago to the recent past using radionuclides of an appropriate half-life. ESR and OSL dating are also available to match and extend beyond the range of radiocarbon, the mainstay of archaeological research.

CAR members have employed this wide range of dating facilities for exploring the human presence and environmental history of the region extending from Asia to the remote Pacific Islands. The facilities for AMS dating at ANSTO, and facilitated by ANU's membership of AINSE supplement those at ANU. ANSTO's contribution to archaeological research has been a long and productive association with the ANU archaeolgists, but especially for the chemical analysis of artefacts.

The identification of the geological sources of artefacts, from ochres to obsidian and pottery, has been instrumental in defining the way these objects moved as possessions or goods at different times during the past few thousand years. Information on the range and direction of transactions in these items has been derived from chemical analysis of their raw materials

Facilities for this work at ANU include SEM-EDAX, XRD, and XRF among others, and more recently the powerful laser ablation ICPMS system. Ion Beam Analysis through PIGME-PIXE has been undertaken with grants from AINSE at ANSTO for many years. The context in which artefacts are deposited can yield information on the environmental history of the time and this is also derived through materials analysis of deposits.

The facilities for materials analysis at ANU are excellent and can underpin important advances in archaeological science. This prospect is a particularly important one for CAR in the contribution that it can make by establishing links between archaeologists and the research units involved in materials science at ANU.

Glossary

AINSE - Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering
ANSTO - Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
ESR - Electron Spin Resonance dating
ICPMS - Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry
OSL - Optical Stimulated Luminescence dating
PIXE - Particle Induced X-ray Emission
PIGME - Particle Induced Gamma Emission
SEM-EDAX - Scanning Electron Microscopy- Energy Dispersive X-ray Analysis
XRD - X-ray Diffraction
XRF X-ray Fluorescence

For more information, contact:

Mr Wal Ambrose

Location

Department of Archaeology and Natural History
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
H. C. Coombs Building 9, Fellows Rd

Size and diversity of comparative collections

This lab houses a large pollen reference collection. This consists of pollen from several thousand genera, mainly from Australasia, mounted onto microscope slides. This large slide collection is organised by family, however it can also be accessed by a card index organised by genus

Some years ago a portion of the reference collection was photographed. These photographs are mounted on cards and arranged alphabetically by family. In recent years examples from all of the major Australasian families were digitised to form a pollen database. This will eventually be available online. A number of staff members also have their own personal reference collections from different parts of the world.

At present there is no phytolith or diatom reference collections held by the Department, though once again some individual staff members and visitors have their own personal collections.

Indices or other references to collection contents

The laboratory houses its own library of biological textbooks including floras for Australia and other areas of interest including South-East Asia, the Indo-Pacific region, New Zealand and Europe. There are numerous key texts concerned with pollen processing and analysis, as well as a PhD thesis collection from research that has been conducted in this facility.

Basic working facilities

This lab is used for pollen, phytolith, diatom and charcoal analyses. It currently has six microscopes with several set aside for specific tasks. All microscopes cover the 100x to 1000x magnification range. The Zeiss axiophot is the most recent acquisition and is used for capturing digital and standard print or slide images. There are several lesser quality Zeiss microscopes that are used for routine counting and analysis. There is also an Olympus BH2 for with cross-polarising filters used primarily for phytolith work. The laboratory is also equipped with two computers and a scanner.

The Pollen lab has contact with many other universities and institutions both in Australia and worldwide. Current collaborations include the following projects:

• BIOME6000: Reconstruction of global environments, with Professor S. Harrison, Max Planck Institute of Geoecology, Jena Germany.
Glacial environments of New Guinea, with Dr Peterson, Monash University, Dr Prentice, University of New Hampshire, Dr Hantoro, LIPI Geoteknologi, Bandung and Dr S. Haberle, RMAP, RSPAS.
• Peatlands of montane NSW, with Dr P. Kodela, Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney, Dr R. Good, New South Wales National Parks, Mr A. Wade, ActewAGL.
• Sphagnum and Australasian peatlands, with Dr J. Whinam, Tasmanian National Parks and Wildlife Service.
• Tropical peatland and fire, with Dr U. Chockalinggam, CIFOR, Indonesia.

Work done by the staff of the lab has also been incorporated into archaeological papers in the past few years. A couple of examples include:

• Nunn, P. D., Ollier, C., Hope, G., Rodda, P., Omura A. and Peltier, W. R. Late Quaternary sea-level and tectonic changes in northeast Fiji. Marine Geology 187: 299-311.
• Peterson, J., Hope, G., Prentice, M. and Hantoro, W. Mountain environments in New Guinea and the last Glacial Maximum 'warm seas/cold mountains' enigma in the west Pacific warm pool region. In P. Kershaw, B. David, N. Tapper, D. Penny and J. Brown (eds) Bridging Wallace's Line: The environmental and cultural history and dynamics of the SE-Asian-Australian region. Advances in Geoecology 34, pp. 173-188. Germany: Catena Verlag GMBH.

Availability of support staff

The head of the laboratory is Professor Geoff Hope (ph 6125 3283)

He is supported by Gillian Atkin (Head Technician) (ph 6125 4342) and Dominique O'Dea (Research Assistant) (ph 6125 4361).

Related staff

Dr Simon Haberle
Mr Ben Keaney
Dr Mike Macphail
Dr Janelle Stevenson

Location

Department of Archaeology and Natural History
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
H. C. Coombs Building 9, Fellows Rd

Basic working facilities

The Northern Australian/East Timor laboratory houses a variety of archaeological collections from sites across this region. Excavated assemblages from Carpenter's Gap 1 contain remarkably preserved organic materials dating back to 42,000 BP which include macrobotancics as well as faunal remains from terrestrial and riverine environments providing a unique opportunity to examine changes in subsistence and environment over the timespan of human occupation in Australia. The excavated assembage from Carpenter's Gap 1, 2 and 3 shelters also contain rich stone artefact assiblages.

Other excavated assemblages from the Kimberley region, Australian arid desert zone and from East Timor are also stored in this lab. These assemblages are available for students who wish to use them for research projects or for comparative purposes.

The lab also contains a good comparative ethnobotancial reference collection which is predominantly composed of northern Australian plants.

Related staff

Dr Sue O'Connor
Professor Matthew Spriggs

Location

Department of Archaeology and Natural History
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
H. C. Coombs Building 9, Fellows Rd

Basic working facilities

The Phytolith Laboratory is one of the smaller laboratories in the Department. It was originally used as an annex, and is therefore adjacent to, the Chemistry Laboratory. The Phytolith Laboratory is considered a one person laboratory and is therefore used on a roster basis. It is well fitted out with two large fume cupboards and ample bench and storage space. There is also a large wash-up sink and de-ionised water is on tap. See also General Laboratories, School of Archaeology and Natural History for Phytolith Laboratory space.

Equipment

At the end of one bench is a furnace that is capable of reaching temperatures of up to 1100 degrees centigrade. This furnace is mainly used for ashing phytolith samples for reference material. On the same bench is an bench centrifuge that takes 8 tubes of up to 50mls volume.

The laboratory is equipped with appropriate glass and plastic ware for phytolith processing. There is a boiling water-bath in one of the fume-cupboards for chemical extraction and a vortex mixer. A vacuum pump system is attached to one of the smaller sink units for syphoning off samples.

Slide-making is usually done in the lamina flow cabinet situated in the Pollen Preparation Laboratory.

A newly refurbished Olympus microscope is situated in the Microscopy Laboratory. This microscope is dedicated to phytolith work and has been specially fitted with polarising filters.

A state of the art micro-digestion unit for speedy and economical phytolith extraction has recently been ordered for use in the Phytolith Laboratory.

Availability of support staff

Ms Gillian Atkin

Related staff

Dr Doreen Bowdery
Mr Matiu Prebble Ms Mary Clare Swete-Kelly

Location

Department of Archaeology and Natural History
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
H. C. Coombs Building 9, Fellows Rd

Basic working facilities

The Pollen Preparation Laboratory is large, well lit, modern, air-conditioned and is used almost exclusively for the preparation of pollen samples. The laboratory was recently refurbished and specifically designed and fitted out for this type of work.

The laboratory has ample bench-space including a large central bench. Along one wall are two large fume-cupboards of 1.8 and 1.3 metres. One of the fume-cupboards is dedicated solely to Hydrofluoric acid use so laboratory users do not have to work around this dangerous chemical. The laboratory is fitted with adequate drawer and cupboard space for chemical, glassware and sample storage.

The laboratory is an approved quarantine facility so samples from outside Australia can be processed. There are two main sinks as well as smaller sinks within the fume cupboards. There is de-ionised water on tap, which is fed from a header tank within the roof cavity. Because of the dangerous nature of the work laboratory users are generally given exclusive use of the laboratory on a roster basis.

The laboratory is maintained by the laboratory manager who overseas the cleaning and tidying and provides chemicals and equipment for users. In the interests of occupational health and safety it has been a policy that the only the laboratory manager handles hydrofluoric acid and students and staff will have this step of the processing done for them. Advice and assistance with pollen preparation techniques is readily available. See also Microscopy Laboratory (for Pollen Reference Collection).

Equipment

In one of the fume-cupboards there is an 8 place centrifuge that takes tubes of up to 50 mls in volume. In the same fume-cupboard there is a vortex mixer and a 16 hole boiling water-bath. This enables all steps in the procedure to take place within a fume-cupboard. The second fume-cupboard holds up to 32 plastic beakers in specially designed safety racks for treating samples with hydrofluoric acid. This enables up to 64 samples to be at some stage of processing at one time. There is adequate glass, plastic and centrifuge ware for lab users as well as filtration equipment. There is a fridge/freezer for samples and a 'flammables' storage cupboard.

In a separate, adjoining room there is a lamina flow cabinet, microscope and hotplate for slide-making and examination. There is also extra bench space with a balance and ultrasonic water-bath.

Availability of support staff

Ms Gillian Atkin

Related staff

Dr Simon Haberle
Professor Geoff Hope
Mr Ben Keaney
Dr Mike Macphail
Ms Dominique O'Dea
Dr Janelle Stevenson

Location

School of Archaeology and Anthropology
The Faculty of Arts
The Australian National University
Building 14, Ellery Crescent

Basic working facilities

The School has a quarantine laboratory for storing and working on material that has been imported under a quarantine permit. The laboratory is on the lower ground floor of the A. D. Hope building and is equipped with wash bays, drying cupboard and drying oven, lab sieve sets, balances and maggy lamps. This laboratory has restricted access and detailed records of the movement and treatment of all material in and out of the laboratory must be kept. See also General Laboratories, Department of Archaeology and Natural History, for Quarantine Laboratory.

Availability of support staff

Mr Dave McGregor

Location

Department of Archaeology and Natural History
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
H. C. Coombs Building 9, Fellows Rd

Basic working facilities

The Sedimentology Laboratory is a large square laboratory with bench, shelf and cupboard space round the sides and a large central bench for sampling. The laboratory has 2 large sinks with sediment traps. De-ionised water is on tap from a header tank in the roof. On one side of the main laboratory there is a separate constant temperature room with sink, sediment trap and adequate bench space and shelving.

Equipment

In the main laboratory we have two large capacity ovens for drying samples as well as an incubator for lower temperatures. A small furnace with a maximum teperature up to 1100 degrees celsius is available in an adjacent laboratory. The main sedimentology lab has a refrigerated, large capacity Hareus Cryofuge 5000 S for centrifuging bulk samples. This centrifuge has an 8 litre maximum capacity. There is also a purpose built cupboard containing a mechanical sieve shaker and a full set of Endicotte sieves. A sample splitter is also available.

There is adequate glass and plastic ware available for sedimentological analysis and chemicals are available on request. Other equipment available in the laboratory include 2 side-arm shakers, Ultra Turrax, Dumax mechanical stirrers, water-bath and ultrasonic probe. There is also a binocular microscope on one of the benches. In the constant temperature room is a Horiba Centrifugal Automatic Particle Analyser along with analytical glassware and a digital Sartorius balance. There are also settling cylinders available for manual particle size analysis.

The Sedimentology Laboratory and constant temperature rooms are available on a roster basis and rarely have more than two people working in them at any time.

Availability of support staff

There is no technical support for these laboratories but technical advise is available. The general upkeep of the laboratories is overseen by the Head Technical Officer, Ms Gillian Atkin.

Ms Gillian Atkin
Head Technical Officer
ph: 6125 4342

Location

Department of Archaeology and Natural History
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
H. C. Coombs Building 9, Fellows Rd

Size and diversity of comparative collections

The zooarchaeology collection in the Department includes reference collections to Pacific and Australian fish, shellfish, sea mammals, reptiles, mammals and birds. The strengths of the collections are the fish and shellfish collected over decades of field research throughout the Pacific. Tropical and sub tropical species are the focus with only some temperate species from Australian waters being included.

The fish collection is mounted for easy reference and includes over 290 species comprising 39 families. A wide range of shellfish taxa are represented (see below). The mammal collection is mainly of Australian marsupial fauna and introduced species such as the dog, rat, goat/sheep, and cattle. Weaknesses of the collections are the sea mammal, reptile, bird and landsnail faunas. Major species from these groupings are represented, but they can not be considered exhaustive.

In addition to this core collection the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, The Faculty of Arts, also holds a mammal reference collection in their Biological Anthropology Laboratory.

Indices or other references to collection contents

The fish collection and its methodology has been published by Barnett. A database listing the contents of the collection has been compiled and is held on file in the Department.

Shell reference collection

The shell reference collections in the Department of Archaeology and Natural History, RSPAS, are the product of years of accumulation of reference specimens from a wide range of field areas. In line with the focus of research in the Department, the main biogeographic focus is the tropical Indo-Pacific, however there are also specimens from subtropical Australia, and temperate specimens from Australia and New Zealand. Specimens are both archaeological and modern.

At the moment, the shell collections are being standardised, updated taxonomically and supplemented. A focus is being put on making the collections user-friendly to beginners, and to this end, all specimens will be accessioned and recorded in a central database. In addition, Katherine Szabó is working on a publication that aims to assist archaeologists in shell identification. This will concentrate on a number of commonly-encountered families from within archaeological deposits, and consider how they can be accurately identified. There is also an effort being made to expand the collections out from marine gastropods and bivalves. The updated collection will include a number of landsnail specimens from the tropical Pacific and Island Southeast Asia, as well as cephalopod (squid, cuttlefish, etc.) remains.

Basic working facilities

Located on the ground floor of the Department, the laboratory comprises a large working area able to accommodate three working projects or approximately five people, with a computer terminal and email connections. Microscopes, scales and lights are available from the department's stores.

Availability of support staff

Currently the only support staff available is Ms Lyn Schmidt, the Departmental Research Assistant (ph 6125 2121). Lyn is available to answer questions and provide access to the collections for researchers. In addition academics and research scholars working in the department, depending on their availability, can answer queries in regards to their fields of expertise.

Related staff

Professor Atholl Anderson
Dr Ken Aplin
Dr Geoffrey Clark
Professor Colin Groves
Mr Tom Heinsohn
Dr Sue O'Connor
Ms Lyn Schmidt
Ms Katherine Szabó

This round of applications for analytical services for the year 2007 will require applications to reach Sally Brockwell (CAR Administrator) no later than 5pm Friday 25 May:

Sally Brockwell
RSPAS
Coombs Building 9
ANU
Email:

The application will consist of this form and an attached list giving details of individual samples to be submitted, both counter-signed by the student's supervisor in the case of graduate student members of CAR. If the supervisor is unavailable (on overseas study leave for instance) then the counter-signature of Dr Geoff Clark, Convenor of the Graduate Program in Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology, will be sufficient. The Convenor can be contacted in:

Department of Archaeology and natural History
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Coombs Building No. 9
ANU
Tel: x52215
Email:

After the Committee has met to decide on allocation of funding in this round, members will be contacted soon afterwards with details of their allocation and the procedures to be followed for the submission of samples.

Any other questions should be addressed to:

Dr Simon Haberle
Archaeological Analysis Fund Committee
Email:

Download Application Form

APPLICATION FOR ANALYTICAL SERVICES