ARCHAEOLOGIST ON A MISSION
AN ARCHAEOLOGIST from the University of Southern Queensland is “mid-dive” in an exciting world-first research study regarding early modern humans and how they came to arrive in Australia.
USQ Professor Lara Lamb is attempting to answer some of the biggest questions around the original movement of people through the continent of Sahul, into what is now known as Australia, as far back as the Pleistocene ice ages.
“Back in November 2019, USQ Professor Bryce Barker and I had the privilege of spending six incredible weeks with the Kasua people in a small village called Fogomaiyu which is located in the Mount Bosavi region in the Southern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea,” she said.
“Our investigations of the Great Papuan Plateau and subsequent research aim to discover whether the Plateau could have served as something of a corridor for people who first moved across northern Sahul.”
Professor Lamb said the project marked a remarkable world first for USQ and could have a significant impact on the way experts understood the migrations of the earliest humans in the region.
“There’s been no archaeological research done on the Great Papuan Plateau, and what we’ve discovered is quite exciting because it is the first archaeological evidence for this regional eco-zone,” she said.
“We’ve got our first results which are truly staggering and we’re now in the process of posing this as a hypothesis: did people use the great Papuan Plateau as a migratory corridor into Northern Australia?”
Professor Lamb is also planning to work towards making all of the findings accessible to the local community in Papua New Guinea and said the USQ team was in the process of publishing its initial findings in a scientific research journal either late this year or early next year.
In the meantime, Professor Lamb wanted to encourage more young people to consider taking up studying anthropology and archaeology at USQ.
“Students can do an extended major in archaeology and anthropology in the Bachelor of Arts, and can do fourth year honours here, which means they can be qualified to work as a consultant archaeologist,” she said.
“This can lead to a whole range of wonderful career opportunities all over the world.”