Bones of Contention Interpreting Australia's past. Paul Taçon, Anthropolgist, (Australian Museum) Wednesday, February 25, 1998 Duke of Edinburgh, Pyrmont Archaeologists, digging around, study antiquity for something sound. The search for knowledge drives them most, taking them outback from coast to coast. Spinning yarns and weaving tales, they recount their past over lagers and ales. But is archaeology a true science, or is it just a matter of compliance? Join us tonight for all will be told, of this and, more, stories of old. Dr. Paul S.C. Taçon is head of the Australian Museum's People and Place Research Centre and is a Senior Research Scientist in Anthropology. He has a BA (Honours) in Anthropology and Psychology (University of Waterloo, Canada), an MA in Anthropology (Trent University, Canada) and a Ph.D in Anthropology (Australian National University, Canberra). He has conducted archaeological and ethnographic fieldwork since 1980 and has over 50 months field experience in remote parts of Australia, Canada and the USA. Extensive field expeditions have been undertaken in the Canadian arctic and in Arnhem Land, Australia. He has edited two books and published 40 scientific papers on prehistoric art, material culture and contemporary Indigenous issues. He is a specialist in rock art, landscape archaeology and the relationship between art and identity. He participates in a wide range of public programs and supervised research into the content of the Museum's Indigenous Australians exhibition, which opened in April 1997. Most recently, he headed an investigation into the rock art of Jinmium, N.T. one of the country's most controversial sites, publishing the results in December 1997. Currently he is planning for field work in Botswana, southern Africa in September 1998.
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