2009
2008
2007
Honorary Life Members

2009 ASHA Awards

R. Ian Jack Award for Best Honours Thesis

Sarah Kelloway, University of Sydney

King of Irrawang:  Chemical analysis of colonial ceramics

This project explores the value of chemical characterisation of local colonial ceramics for future studies in their archaeological context.  Earthenware sherds from the Irrawang pottery were analysed using a suite of chemical techniques.  This created a chemical reference group for future comparative and raw sources research, allowing some insight into manufacturing processes at Irrawang.

Judy Birmingham Award for Best Historical Archaeology Heritage Report sponsored by Comber Consultants

 Anne Mackay, Richard Mackay and Liam Mannix (Godden Mackay Logan) and Liz Holt (International Conservation Services)

The Rocks DIG Site:  Sydney Harbour YHA and the Big Dig Education Centre Archaeological Heritage Management Plan

The AHMP provides a comprehensive guide for the multidisciplinary team involved in the conservation, adaptation and interpretation of the Dig Site in the Rocks, Sydney as a youth hostel and education centre.  Drawing on previous work, the AHMP succinctly summarised the nature and significance of the archaeological remains and offers clear guidance for their protectuion during construction works, plus techniques for ensuring their long-term conservation.

Martin Davies Award for Best Public Archaeology Initiative

Edward Higginbotham, Edward Higginbotham and Associates, in association with Belgenny Farm Trust, Camden Park Environmental Education Centre and Camden High School

Test-Excavation of "The Small Miserable Hut", Belgenny Farm, Camden, NSW

The Belgenny Farm Trust commissioned Edward Higginbotham to undertake test excavations in 2008 at the frist residence of the Macarthur family at Camden.  The excavation located the 3 building shown  on the 1840 Estate Plan, of of which was identified as the early hut.  The dig involved the participation of Year 11 students at Camden Public School who created a website for the project and the excavation results will be used to expand the education programs of the Camden Park Environmental Education Centre.

Ilma Powell Honourary Life Membership Award for Distinguished Service to ASHA

Dr Aedeen Cremin

Aedeen served on the ASHA committee from 1991 to 1994 and was president from 1997 to 1999. She has been guest editor of the journal and edited, with David Carment, the full-colour hardcover book 1901: Australian life at Federation: an illustrated chronicle (published by the Society in 2001). In addition, she has made an outstanding contribution to Australasian historical archaeology. She co-authored Australia's Age of Iron with Ian Jack (1994), Experience archaeology with Louise Zarmati (1998). As Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney she mentored many historical archaeology students who are working in the field today.

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2008 ASHA Awards

R. Ian Jack Award for Best Honours Thesis

Linda Terry, University of Queensland

Caboonbah Homestead: Big Rock or Little Britain

Using the documentary and artefactual resources of the Caboonbah Homestead Archaeological Project the thesis examines the Britishness of the family of Henry and Katherine Somerset in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Situating the study within a comparative theory of ethnicity and employing Bourdieu's concept of habitus Linda establishes that the ethnic construction of Britishness in rural Queensland was as much a product of the colonial experience as it was of the British homeland and demonstrates that the Somerset family were able to accommodate both the competing and complimentary ethnicities of being both British and Australian. 

Maureen Byrne Award for Best Postgraduate Thesis

Lindsay Smith, Australian National University

Hidden Dragons: The Archaeology of Mid-to-Late Nineteenth-Century Chinese Communities in Southeastern New South Wales 

This PhD thesis investigates and combines all the elements that comprised mid-to-late nineteenth-century overseas Chinese settlements in rural southeastern NSW, and to compares them with each other at sub-regional, regional, national and international levels. It demonstrates that they conformed to a highly codified hierarchical pattern of community organisation in both a physical and perceived landscape. The data collected is unparalleled in its detail and extent, including site survey across southeastern NSW and numerous excavations at hut, oven and temple sites in settlements throughout the region. The historical research provides relevant information for understanding the nature of the overseas Chinese community in colonial rural Australia, while the theoretical framework reveals new insights into that community.

Judy Birmingham Award for Best Historical Archaeology Heritage Report (sponsored by Comber Consultants)

No nominees 

Martin Davies Award for Best Public Archaeology Initiative

Penny Crook, Laila Ellmoos and Tim Murray, La Trobe University

Exploring the Archaeology of The Modern City Project Databases

This entry comprises a two-disc set of two databases prepared by the authors while conducting research for the Exploring the Archaeology of the Modern City Project between 2001 and 2005. The database files, artefact images and accompanying guides were also released for download from the project's website. The databases provide a much-needed tool to link archaeological and historical information in a dynamic, searchable and user-friendly environment. They draw together, for the first time, large datasets including artefact catalogues from some of Sydney's major urban excavations, an archive of nearly 5000 photographs of artefacts and residency information for four city blocks in the Rocks. This serves the needs of archaeologists, historians, and heritage managers undertaking site-specific or neighbourhood research.

Graham Connah Award for Best Publication

Rodney Harrison, Open University

Shared Landscapes: Archaeologies of Attachment and the Pastoral Industry in New South Wales

This book has two primary concerns-that pastoral heritage and history needs to be understood as shared between Aboriginal and settler Australians, and the introduction of landscape-based models for understanding, assessing and managing the archaeology and heritage of pastoralism in Australia. Shared Landscapes provides two detailed case-studies that result from a collaborative and multi-disciplinary approach to cultural heritage research in NSW. Working closely with local communities, and drawing on the results of archaeological, historical and anthropological research methods, it presents a new model for understanding historical archaeology and heritage throughout Australia and in other settler societies.

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Inaugural 2007 ASHA Awards

R. Ian Jack Award for Best Honours Thesis

Lisa-Maree Campbell

Bound by Bricks or a Working Man's Paradise: The Archaeology of Labour Organisation in a Shale Mining Company Town

The thesis presents an analysis of domestic archaeological evidence, including brick quality and settlement layout, to understand the archaeological signature of labour organisation at Joadja, NSW.  The thesis challenges conventional interpretations of industrial places as static and unpeopled by using the domestic archaeological record to reveal social structure and organisation in a mining town.  The thesis also develops and presents a new methodology for the analysis and interpretation of bricks, demonstrating how bricks can be used to investigate questions about social structures and labour organisation. 

Maureen Byrne Award for Best Postgraduate Thesis

Angela Middleton

Te Puna: The Archaeology and History of a New Zealand Mission Station, 1832-1874

This thesis documents the interpersonal relationships between missionaries and Maori over nearly 50 years.  It is an exploration of history and archaeology which uses material objects to throw new light on gender, class and racial tensions in early colonial New Zealand.

Judy Birmingham Award for Best Historical Archaeology Heritage Report (sponsored by Comber Consultants)

Ainsworth Heritage

Evans Head Memorial Aerodrome: Archaeological Management Plan

This report has contributed to the discipline by applying the principles and theory of historical archaeology to a relatively unique type of World War II temporary air defence site, in order to establish the site's archaeological significance and ensure that this significance is protected in the likely future development of the site.  This archaeological management plan is the first time that AMP principles have been applied to a WWII aerodrome and thus it may become a benchmark study in archaeological approaches to temporary WWII sites in Australia.

Martin Davies Award for Best Public Archaeology Initiative

(Two winners)

The Mill Point Archaeology Project

The MPAP examines the site of a late 19th-century timber milling settlement on the shores of Lake Cootharaba on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.  This project has raised awareness and understanding of historical archaeology in Australia through interactions with visitors, school groups, local community groups and the media.  It has generated a sustainable project with strong interest and support from key local community stakeholders which will enhance the knowledge, protection, and management of the site.  Opportunities provided for archaeology students to gain hands-on experience and undertake research at the site will provide ongoing benefits to the discipline.

Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority

Port Arthur Public Archaeology Program

This award recognises 30 years of leadership in public archaeology.  Port Arthur introduced archaeological field schools in the 1980s and has run them in conjunction with a public archaeology program since 2001.  It is the longest-running such program in Australia and has provided thousands of visitors the chance to experience archaeology.  At the same time, it has shown hundreds of student volunteers the value of public archaeology.

Ilma Powell Honorary Life Membership Award for Distinguished Service

R. Ian Jack

By training and practice a historian, Ian was also an early ASHA member.  He was one of the first practitioners of industrial archaeology in Australia, and with Judy Birmingham and Denis Jeans published two important texts on colonial technology, Australian Pioneer Technology (1979) and Industrial Archaeology in Australia (1983).  In his position of Dean of Arts at the University of Sydney in the early 1970s Ian played a further key role in the development of the field by facilitating the introduction of the first undergraduate subject in the area, which was coordinated by Judy Birmingham and to which Ian also contributed.  Ian has continued to research and publish in many aspects of Australia's industrial heritage, including work on the iron industry (Australia's Age of Iron, written with Aedeen Cremin) among others.  

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Honorary Life Members

Judy Birmingham

John Mulvaney

Graham Connah

R. Ian Jack