Category Archives: Department Announcements

Announcements by the Department of Archaeology

Can we improve the Flinders Archaeology blog?

Since 2008 the Flinders Archaeology Department has run a blog, and for the past few years it has lived at https://flindersarchaeology.com/.

The blog was originally designed to provide a forum for students and staff to share information and to promote their experiences in doing and learning about archaeology. It has been a very successful endeavour, with almost 500 posts, 80,000 page views, some 978 email subscribers and on average 11-12,000 unique visitors each year. I suspect few other archaeology blogs around the world have statistics like this, and it’s something that we should be very proud of.

Unfortunately though, the blog is looking tired and there have been some questions raised about its purpose, audience and its relevance to students. For this reason, we are considering making some enhancements to the blog this year. We obviously need to do this carefully, and to ensure that we listen to users about what can be improved and what kinds of services the site should offer.

To this end, we are kicking off the project with a very quick survey and I ask all Flinders University archaeology students, ArchSoc members, staff, adjuncts, community members and industry partners to take 5 minutes to fill this form out. Once we have collated feedback, we will be holding a forum with interested volunteers to further discuss our plans before we begin to implement them over the rest of the year.

The survey can be accessed at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3L8LD87

 

An Anchor and Pisces Star: DEWNR Southeast Coast Shipwreck Survey, SA

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Survey Area. Google Earth. Accessed 02/12/14.

Date: 27 November–­4 December 2014

Staff/Volunteers: Amer Khan (DEWNR); Simon Carter (DEWNR); Guy Williams (DEWNR); Anthony Virag (DEWNR); Dr Brad Duncan (NSW Office of Environment and Heritage); Kurt Bennett (Flinders University Volunteer); Daniel Petraccaro (Flinders University Volunteer) and David Hanna (DEWNR).

This is our second blog on the archaeological study of newly identified shipwrecks at Carpenter Rocks in South Australia’s southeast. If you missed out on previous blog on the Hawthorn shipwreck; click here for the link.

Our next site of interest is a reported historic anchor located in Gerloff Bay at Carpenter Rocks. Abalone diver, Bryon Deak reported an anchor and general location to Amer Khan, the state maritime heritage officer. We launched Rapid, DEWNR’s research vessel at Buck’s Bay and anchored near the reported site. Amer and Brad geared up in dive gear on the boat and lead by Byron, they searched for the anchor. There was sadly no anchor identified from the survey. Increasing wind and ocean swells ceased the days dive activity all the team returned safely to Buck’s Bay.

Anthony guiding Brad and Amer who are diving near the possible anchor location. Photo courtesy of Daniel Petraccaro.

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Brad and Amer geared up for diving. Photo courtesy of Daniel Petraccaro.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Due to the more favourable weather conditions in the afternoon, Anthony, Kurt and Daniel later snorkelled the area. A survey search was undertaken but still no anchor. At the end of the day, the team decided that there was a high possibility the anchor was buried and a metal detector and air probe survey of the area was necessary.

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Eagleray swimming in gerloff bay. Photo courtesy of Daniel Petraccaro.

Due to good weather condition, the team decided to revisit gerloff bay. Daniel and Anthony snorkelled to the site location and placed a buoy while Amer and Kurt dived the potential targets. Amer and Kurt used a metal detector along multiple survey lines, but there was no sign of the anchor.

Our next plan was to record the shipwreck of the yacht Pisces Star, located at Cape Banks. The wreck is located 30 metres offshore in a strong tidal zone. We were able to take photos of the vessel, a GPS position and compass bearings. We would have liked to take measurements of the wreck but it was not possible due to the strong swell and the danger of a diver being caught in the strong currents.

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Pisces Star near Cape Banks. Photo courtesy of Anthony Virag.

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Recording the Pisces Star. Photo Courtesy of Anthony Virag.
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Looking out to the Pisces Star. Photo courtesy of Anthony Virag.

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Cape Banks lighthouse and Pisces Star to the right. Photo Courtesy of Anthony Virag.

Over the next couple of days, we will be recording the Pisces Star, revisiting gerloff bay, and hopefully looking for a wreck at Lake Bonnie.
Stay in tune for more updates.

Kurt Bennett and Daniel Petraccaro

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Join us for our first public lecture of 2012!

Flexibility, Fieldwork and Flinders Graduate Study

If you’ve read the current (July) edition of Engage: The Magazine of the Graduate Programs in Archaeology, Cultural Heritage Management and Maritime Archaeology, you’ll have seen the article on ‘Where does a Graduate Degree Take You?’.  In it, some of our graduated students discuss where they’re working now, what they’ve learnt since leaving university (including what topics proved to be most useful to them and why.  This part makes Alice very happy), and how their degree experience prepared them to work in the heritage industry (if you haven’t seen Engage yet, then make sure you read it at our website http://www.flinders.edu.au/ehl/archaeology/archaeology-digital-library/graduate-program-bulletins.cfm.  It contains all this and more).

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Welcome to the new Flinders Archaeology Blog!

Welcome everyone!

Many of you will be aware that for the past few years the Flinders University Archaeology Department has maintained a small blog. Late last year, we decided to move it to a new home here at Flindersarchaeology.com.  Although we’ve imported all of our old content, we’ve significantly changed the look and feel of the blog and it will be operated a little differently. In this post, we want to outline the purpose of the new site, highlight some of its key features and take some time to encourage you all to to think about how you might be able to contribute.

We have developed this site as an information hub for existing and potential students, community members, industry partners and others who have an interest in our activities. We hope that it will be of particular value to existing students who want to build their own online portfolio of work and for distance students who want to become more involved in the archaeology community at Flinders. Industry and community partners are also very important to us and so we hope that the new blog will allow you to find out more about our activities and to promote the projects and opportunities that you or  your organisation is involved in.

Your feedback and input is also very important to us. Commenting is entirely open and we welcome ideas or suggestions about particular articles or the site in general. You can contact us directly through our contact form, or you can share you thoughts and provide feedback using our Facebook and Twitter pages.

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Blog progress

This is a new site that replaces the former blog of the Flinders University Department of Archaeology. We’ve imported all of the old content and are in the process of checking for errors and building the new site. There are many things to fix….but we are working on it!

We hope to have a formal launch within a few weeks.

Archaeology staff voted in top ten at Flinders in nation-wide poll

It was no surprise to Flinders students to find that two staff members in the Department of Archaeology graduate programs were in the top ten at Flinders in the “Lecturer of the Year” awards. Dr Alice Gorman was ranked first at Flinders, with Associate Professor Heather Burke at eighth position across the entire university.

For the last four years, UniJobs in collaboration with Campus Daily have conducted the poll to find Australia’s best lecturers, as voted by students. This year was the biggest yet, with more than 72 000 votes cast.

“It’s so nice to feel that our students appreciate what we do” said Dr Gorman. “I would like to thank everyone who voted for us – it is a real honour”.

Both Dr Gorman and Dr Burke, as well as Professor Claire Smith, were in the top 50 in the 2007 Lecturer of the Year awards.

“I think this says a lot about the effectiveness of the Graduate Programs in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Management – we must be doing something right!” Dr Gorman commented.