Shaun Adams
I am an archaeologist specialising in Australian Indigenous prehistoric sites. I spend much of my time conducting remote fieldwork in north QLD. I specialise in isotopes, GIS and identifying bones.
Location Australia
Activity
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Shaun Adams replied to Shirley Foale
They use gypsum to make mourning caps. In Australia it is known as the desert rose. It is an evaporative crystal largely from the desert. It is also used as white paint. It is highly sought after because the colour is so vivid and bright.
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Shaun Adams replied to David Brown
Good work David!
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Shaun Adams replied to Karen J
Check out Leichardt Karen. They never found any trace of his expedition.
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I’m not sure they were scared Suzi. The people of the islands were fierce warriors. They defended their territory well. I think that is why they approached the English. Guns were a defining factor in these early days. Plus the non-stop supply of Europeans. The first waves of colonisation would never of survived without the constant top-up from the English tank.
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There has been many studies of the rock art. You can find some accounts on google scholar. There are also ethnography’s written by Roth and Hale/Tindale if you would like to see pictures of the islands.
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It sounds like they are talking about encountering fauna doesn’t it. They don’t seem to see the Aba Wurriya as human. Our nation kept this up well into the 20th Century. And only just a month ago when they decided to prohibit people from walking Uluru 1000’s flocked to do it before the ban. Australia is still very much a rascist colony. That is why some of us...
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Hi Nora, Wurriya doesn’t mean Flinders. It is the Tradition name for the island. Our translation means people of that island. The one we call Flinders.
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Oh and another interesting story is that when the first overland explorers come through they saw him in the camp, but he ran away. They recorded it in their travel diaries.
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Supposedly they had to keep him chained up on the way back to France because he kept trying to escape. Also, they say he had children in Princess Charlotte Bay. He may have descendants there to this day.
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Shaun Adams replied to Karen Rusten
@KarenRusten I’m also happy to help with this Karen. I’ll talk to Rob and see if we can help with something.
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Shaun Adams replied to Helen Segebarth
Thanks for learning with us Helen. I sure you will really enjoy A Question of Time. Rob and Prof. Rainer Grun have put a lot of effort in. Cheers
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Shaun Adams replied to martyn fellender
Thanks for joining us Martin.
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Shaun Adams replied to Marek Wojcik
We’ll make sure you let Rob know you want another. He loves making them!
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Shaun Adams replied to Gordon West
That is great Gordon. It can be complicated but I feel that there is a true sense of achievement when you get your head around it. Thanks for coming along with us and don’t be afraid to let Griffith University know how good Rob is at putting these MOOCS together. All the best
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Shaun Adams replied to Lorna Gleasure
Thanks Lorna. All the best with your future studies :)
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Shaun Adams replied to Isidora Dumitrov
Thank you Isidora. It was great to have you onboard. Good luck with the next A Question of Time MOOC. I hear Prof. Grun and Rob have put an excellent course together.
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Shaun Adams replied to Ilaria Villa
Nice work Ilaria. We need to get Rob to help us make more MOOCs I reckon. Keep an eye out, he might do one on his time as a classical archaeologist next!
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Shaun Adams replied to Ciaran Parker
Cheers Ciaran. Thanks for joining in
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Shaun Adams replied to David Brown
@DavidBrown thats great David. Thanks so much for joining the course. Go to your local museum and start volunteering if you want to be an archaeologist! All the best mate
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Shaun Adams made a comment
Thanks all for joining in. Was great to get to know some of you and hear your thoughts on our research. Keep an eye out for our studies in the future :)
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Shaun Adams made a comment
I am glad so many people have enjoyed our bioarchaeology journey. As archaeologists we have to draw conclusions on people’s lives from one piece of a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle. Working with biological material can mean we don’t always have the best preservation, but the stories we can delve into are rooted in science and can offer robust data. This 500 piece...
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Yes it is a complex picture over a long time scale. Sometimes we think we know what life was like. But really we pull together ideas from our own biases and recorded histories rather than being objective. I’m glad you enjoyed it Peter.
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Reconnect is the key word here.
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Large scale or deep time depth?
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Shaun Adams replied to Peter Buck Rogers
Thanks for the insight Peter I didn’t know this.
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Shaun Adams replied to Marek Wojcik
Yes we use aerial photographs a fair bit Marek.
I worked on the Nullabour Plain with some palaeontologists once. They were searching for sinkholes to large underground chambers of bones. From the surface you could pretty much trip over on before you saw it. They were just flat until the hole. That’s how they accumulated so many unfortunate fossils. Anyhow,...
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Shaun Adams replied to Gordon West
I think you would be correct Gordon. In this landscape we are recording quarries that are 100’s of metres long. LIDAR may be a good approach if we can secure the funds.
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Shaun Adams replied to Isidora Dumitrov
Great work Isidora! Not enough good GPR folk about. You may excel here.
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Shaun Adams replied to Cindy van Dreumel
Yes a truly punishing result. I think one of them survived for a while. Their dig tree site is very close to here.
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Shaun Adams replied to Ciaran Parker
It was a gift to be involved in this work Ciaran. And now you are too.
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Shaun Adams made a comment
Hi All, thank you so much for exploring the past on the Flinders Islands with us. I have 2 papers coming out soon that expand on this research and involve a dietary isotope component.
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@DavidBrown great point David. The way we view the dead today is a recent phenomenon. Before science, and christianity many most likely felt a continuing connection with the dead. As an archaeologist/anthropologist we must step away from our modern biases if we are to comprehend what past people thought. Really good work.
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Interesting Gordon there was a big cyclone ‘Cyclone Mahina’ that destroyed the Australian Pearling Fleet In 1899. Originally we thought it was people from this incident.
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Hi Sharon, Michael and his student tried this as an “experimental archaeology” project with pig skulls. However, the pig skulls were too hard and the skin too thick, it didn’t work very well.
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I agree Georgia
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Our aDNA results show that she has the same genes as other Australian Aboriginals. But her exact origin we may never know. She could come from the mainland adjacent, the rainforest or further inland.
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Sorry Rachel do you mean the spread in the O isotopes? It relates to local climate, drinking water and seasonal effects like “Amount Effect”
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Hi John, the 300-500 range is the margin for error. This is after calibrating the dates. So 400 +-100.
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Good work Martin!
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Good work Joseph. And they may have married but are a few years apart. The isotope signatures relate more to their place of juvenile residence. So where they grew up.
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It does look like it doesn’t it. The only other option is that they moved there during a short period of overlap when the dentine was forming but the enamel had ceased.
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There is still many people that steal, sell and collect remains. It’s a sad and horrifying tale really but nonetheless it continues. We don’t want to remove these remains. They are the last left. Some are kept behind iron bars but that just doesn’t feel right either. So we try to educate people about how important they are as a spiritual link to those still...
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This is my main concern Teleeha. These remains are still actively stolen. It is very sad. It remains one of few places in the area where traditional burial places remain. We always make sure we never reveal the location of the remains, to preserve them.
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Good work Marisa, all very valid points.
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Shaun Adams made a comment
There seems to be many people very interested in the contact history here. Me too. So I thought I would pass on another great story. It is of the young French cabin boy named Narcisse who was shipwrecked near the Flinders Islands and was brought up with the Indigenous people. It’s a sad ending but makes you appreciate this magical part of the world and it’s...
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Very true Shirley. We are programmed to notice “the different” through our evolution. I’ve been working in the islands for a while now and there are social protocols for how you enter the islands, let people know you are there, initiate contact and then leave. If these protocols weren’t followed it would usually end in death. Old Mr King should count himself...
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Yes totally agree. It doesn’t paint a good picture of the colonisers really. Even though old Mr King was trying to portray himself in the best light! But it is crucial to be unbiased in our assessments here. We need to take what we can from these observations and assess it critically.
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I also really love reading these stories Lisa. Before this recording the ship the Frederick ran aground nearby. No one ever saw the sailors again. Perhaps the Aba Wurriya had the last laugh on that encounter.
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Yes that is true Charles. It is the first recorded contact between the people of the Flinders Islands and Europe. It illustrates the multi-disciplinary nature of these studies and highlights how our views have changed since colonisation.
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Shaun Adams replied to Christiane Guinot
That is great Christaine. The full paper can be found here if you want to read more: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11759-018-9354-x
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Shaun Adams made a comment
Radiocarbon dating has revolutionised our industry. Another amazing application of isotopes. These days can also fall back on OSL, TL, cosmogenic and ESR dating. Cosmogenic is really cool: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_exposure_dating
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Shaun Adams made a comment
I will add one interesting point that came up when discussing genetics with a colleague last week. Supposedly they have now gathered enough baseline data to be able to use DNA to produce a series of facial traits. So a facial reconstruction using DNA. How amazing.
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Good points Amelia. the information we can gather on individuals is dependant on the information we already have as baseline data. It is the same with craniometrics and isotopes Im afraid.
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Yes our global diet does change this somewhat. But drinking water seems to be the defining factor. That is generally a local source. And yes teeth show juvenile life while bones show adult life, and can also show if we were buried where we grew up.
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Great wrap-up Elizabeth.
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Great point Dale. It is much more difficult today. However, a study in Utah using hair from barber shops showed that people's hair aligned with their local drinking water. That seems to be the main input, so if you drink local water then it still works. Albeit at a coarser level.
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Turnover rates are important to note Teleeha. Thanks for bringing them up. Do you remember tye study of king Richard. They used isotopes and turnover rates to view changes in diet throughout his life: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440314002428
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Very true Joseph. Isotopes have been used successfully in Europe and the US to Provenance murder victims.
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Yes. And the mountain rock will have a different Strontium signature to volcanic and lowland sedimentary landscapes. Plus due to orography there will be different rain-out effects that will alter Oxygen isotopes. Isotopes are awesome.
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Very good point Sue. These techniques are most useful when discerning prehistoric populations.
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Yes it can be done to a degree, but don't forget that there is plenty of variation in out species. And pathology can also confound results.
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Shaun Adams replied to Teleeha Thomas
Hi Teleeha, thanks for your input here. Did the police identify the remains as Aboriginal? If so this is bad form. I posted this earlier because I think it is a great example of the sphere we work in through these investigations and how race relations have affected anthropology in the states. Have a look: https://archive.archaeology.org/online/interviews/blakey/
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Shaun Adams replied to Mette Lang
Fascinating. When was the city founded? Was that the old church grounds?
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It is more a biological anthropology approach to archaeology.
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Shaun Adams replied to Marisa Giorgi
Sorry I only just saw this Marisa. Once the remains were handed back to the they were no longer recorded on any database. They were mentioned in a later report but there was no mark on the database. There could be a few reasons for this. One is distrust of the government recording the site, considering that some were originally burials that were exhumed in the...
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Shaun Adams replied to Georgia W
I known some people who worked on this site. I hear the lead lined coffins sealed a little too well haha. A bit iccy.
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Wow very interesting Elizabeth. How old are the remains? Do the modern inhabitants look like the ancient ones? I will need to look into this.
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Nice work Georgia. I will add: is there an grave goods associated with the remains? Specifically gypsum, shell or stone.
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Shaun Adams made a comment
I find the dates of these Acts interesting. Is the UK Burial Act 1857 the most up-to-date?
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I don’t advise licking bones that you dig up.
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I was on a dig last week. We found a porous light coloured fragment. My colleague looked at me and said, does it stick to your tongue? I said no thanks.... some ceramics also stick... we’ll determine this under a microscope in the lab...
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Well I guess the response is situation based. Firstly, Any human remains you dig up should be reported to the police straight away. It for conversation sake, is there good reason to think it is modern? If they were teeth you could look for fillings, that would give you a general idea. No fillings: move onto cavities. This would also give you an age range,...
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Shaun Adams replied to martyn fellender
England was certainly different before the romans wasn’t it. Didn’t they do a dig at Stonehenge? I wonder what they found.
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Shaun Adams replied to Joseph Balletta
Wow good work Joseph. You are a classics expert!
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Shaun Adams replied to Susan Bradford
You are correct Susan. Isn’t it amazing that there are still bones from our earliest ancestor. There are an incredible amount of processes and settings that must be perfect to fossilise a bone. And then for it to be preserved is another set of rare processes. In a way the odds of being fossilised for even a few thousand years are akin to winning the lottery....
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Shaun Adams replied to Lorna Gleasure
Teeth tell such an amazing story Lorna. Did you know that there are incremental lines in your enamel that recorded your day-to-day health, from when you were a baby? When you are born there is a lot of stress and a thick line of stress gets laid down. And then when you are teething etc etc. Teeth don’t turnover so these lines are still there from when they...
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Shaun Adams made a comment
Isn't it interesting that there are so many of us walking around yet we never see people once they die. I've worked with some cultures that would keep body parts as luck charms, or to enhance their hunting skills. It is interesting how we see life through different eyes.
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What type of dog is it Kay? How did you teach it to focus on human remains?
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This is a very interesting question Amelia and one I do not have an answer for. I guess the same can be said for blood and hair. Does anybody else have thoughts on this??
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Shaun Adams made a comment
The first time I heard about archaeology was when my grandmother took me to the museum. I did my first dig when I was 13 at the old Police Watch-house in Orange, NSW.
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Shaun Adams replied to Melissa Espinoza
Wow I have to look into this Melissa.
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Shaun Adams replied to Alvaro A
Intriguing
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Shaun Adams replied to Ann Bouchard
There is so much knowledge that we can re-learn with archaeology. I find it fascinating everyday.
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Shaun Adams replied to Maya Kelly
Perfect
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Shaun Adams replied to Luise W
I like this post Luise. Yes there will be more opportunities. And they will come quicker if we work in cooperation and partnership. We reap what we sow, and one day it may be our parents sitting in a cardboard box in a lab.
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Charles that is correct. You hit the nail on the head, as they say. How can we think that we are going to be able to continue scientific analyses on human remains without ethical approval. Through collaboration we build partnerships so that each party realises their aims. In many circumstances, Aboriginal communities are not interested in our scientific data....
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Well said Catherine. Respect and consultation should be primary to scientific study.
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Great analogy Travis. I want to watch this now.
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Thanks for the comment Anne. I agree. It is a step in decolonisation. One which is our ethical responsibility. Maybe institutions should engage with those who are the descendants of these remains and frame their role as caretaker. Here in Australia, many Aboriginal communities prefer to have ethnographic collections held by the museum because they know they...
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Thanks for this story Shelley. It illustrates the the two spheres we as archaeological scientists work in.
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Thank you for sharing this story Selina. It sounds truly agonising and it speaks volumes for some of the case studies we discuss here.
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You raise a good point Marek. Who owns the dead? And who has the right to control what happens to them? As we discuss throughout this MOOC European colonies like Australia traditionally considered that the colonisers owned them. Similar in Egypt. If you think how European countries would feel if their ancestors were in museums in another part of the world then...
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I did not know that Metre, thank you for letting us know about your part of the world.
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Very well said Ann. An ethical and constructive partnership builds trust. Sometimes we need to put aside our scientific ambitions and aim to deliver social outcomes with our research.
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Shaun Adams made a comment
A link here on Michael Blakey and his work at the African Burial Ground. I had the honour of speaking in his session at a conference a few years ago. A truly inspirational anthropologist and a topic very relevant to our discussions.
https://archive.archaeology.org/online/interviews/blakey/ -
You have described this well Deidra. When populations have been through hardships like colonialism the last thing they want in many cases is the colonisers destroying what remains of the heritage and connection to their ancestors. Respect for others is the key word in the circumstances.
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Shaun Adams made a comment
Here at Griffith we have aimed to make science and in particular bioarchaeological sciences more accessible. I hope you find it an intimate and stimulating experience. Please let us know how we can improve. And if you enjoy it!
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Shaun Adams replied to Mette Lang
Online learning can certainly broaden your horizons Metre. I hope you enjoy what we have created here at Griffith.
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Shaun Adams replied to Cindy van Dreumel
Certainly plenty of history here Cindy. Enjoy
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Shaun Adams replied to Maxi Weigert
Hi Maxi, welcome to the course. I find that understanding people from the past helps me understand how we arrived where we are today. A very interesting story that continues to surprise us. I hope you enjoy your time here :)
