47,000 years of Aboriginal history destroyed in mining blast in Australia
Humans used the now-destroyed rockshelter throughout the last ice age until just a few decades ago.
Jordan Ralph
Adjunct Lecturer, Archaeology, Flinders University
I am an Adjunct Lecturer in Archaeology from the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University. I am also the Chief Heritage Officer at PKKP Aboriginal Corporation.
My research is about government interventions and how they have affected concepts of identity in a remote Northern Territory Aboriginal community. To gain archaeological insight into this, I am recording how people acquire, use, and discard material culture and how that changes over time.
I have been working as an archaeologist with people from Jawoyn communities near Katherine since 2010 and have conducted annual fieldwork in the region since that time. I lived in Barunga during 2016 and 2017 while undertaking data collection for my PhD thesis.
The focus of my Honours research was contemporary graffiti of Jawoyn Country, which explored responses to the Howard Government's Northern Territory National Emergency Response (Intervention).
Outside of academia, I have worked as a heritage consultant in parts of South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia.
