In 2018 I published a book on the lives and times of a handful of Australian archaeologists, including John Mulvaney, Isabel McBryde, Rhys Jones and Sylvia Hallam. The book, Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia, attempted to capture the dramatic transformations in Australian history and archaeology since the 1950s: a period marked by profound Indigenous activism and repeated revelations about the antiquity and variety of Indigenous histories and cultures. In this talk I will reflect on the biographical dimensions of the book, and why I chose to write about the immensities of deep time through the intimacies of individual lives.

Billy Griffiths is a historian and lecturer in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Deakin University. His latest book, Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia (Black Inc., 2018), won the Ernest Scott Prize, the Felicia A. Holton Book Award, the John Mulvaney Book Award, the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction and the 2019 Book of the Year at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. He is the recipient of the 2020 Max Crawford Medal from the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Zoom Only Event
Meeting ID: 849 0058 9945
Password: 630803
URL: https://anu.zoom.us/j/84900589945?pwd=eHNDcTVxZmNZNlBmNnBOeE h0VW94Zz09