2025 Golson Lecture: Archaeological poetics, archaeological practice: reflections on archaeologies of cross-cultural exchange, creative practices and community-based repatriation through the lens of the Groote Eylandt Project

By serendipity more than anything, the 35 or so years of intermittent research on Groote Eylandt have been a mirror to profound transitions in the ways that archaeology in Australia is practised, conceptualised and communicated.  The Groote Eylandt project has always, at its heart, been concerned with cross-cultural exchanges,  interactions and creative practices both past and present. In this lecture I will reflect on these over-arching archaeological themes and discuss how these frameworks continue to transform interpretations of the archaeological record. 

​​​​​​​Please join us for networking and refreshments after the lecture. 

About the Speaker

Annie Clarke is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, Museum and Heritage Studies at the University of Sydney. Across her career she has held lecturing positions at Charles Sturt University, the ANU and the University of Sydney as well as post-doctoral Fellowships at the North Australia Research Unit in Darwin and the ANU in Canberra. Her projects have included archaeobotany in Kakadu National Park, long term community-based research on Groote Eylandt primarily with members of the Yantarrnga clan, Ursula Frederick and currently Steve Skitmore, collections research focused on 19th and early 20th century collections from PNG with Robin Torrence, Jude Philp and many others, and a long-term research collaboration with Sally Brockwell both in Kakadu and on the recent Heritage of the Air project lead by Tracy Ireland.  From 2013-2016 Annie was part of the Quarantine Project with historians Alison Bashford and Peter Hobbins and archaeologist and artist Ursula Frederick.  The book from that project, ‘Stories from the Sandstone: Quarantine Inscriptions from Australia’s Immigrant Past’, jointly authored with Peter Hobbins and Ursula Frederick was awarded the 2017 NSW Community and Regional History Prize.