ANU Archaeology student wins leading Association of Consulting Archaeologists Award

Melissa Hetherington, who is completing her Honours year at the ANU, has been awarded the Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists (AACAI) Student Award in 2010. Melissa transferred her tuition, and the shell midden she is studying, from WA to Canberra in February. This is the inaugural year of this new national award by AACAI - value $2500.

In their review, the AACAI panel noted the “commendable amount of consultation with traditional owners and the commitment to present a report for presentation back to the community was viewed particularly highly”.

Melissa is conducting her project on the age and stratigraphy of the midden shell materials, working in the new laboratories in Archaeology and Natural History, School of Culture, History and Language (CAP). Her dissertation is convened in the Honours program in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (CASS), and the radiocarbon dates are being run in RSES (CMPS). So this is also another win for cross-Collegiate ANU support for research-led teaching in Archaeological Science. The project at ANU arose through fieldwork and involvement by Tony Barham and the ARC Tsunami Project  (with Sue O`Connor and Stewart Fallon) working cooperatively with the consulting company Archae-Aus Pty Ltd and the mining company Citic Pacific at Cape Preston in WA.

For details on the ARC Tsunami project

For more information on Archaeology see the College of Arts and Social Sciences or the School of Archaeology and Anthropology.