Joshua Connelly

    Joshua Connelly

    PhD Student

    Cairns

    Joshua completed a Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology at the University of New England in 2008 and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) First Class at James Cook University in 2020 for which he was awarded the Richard Brookdale Scholarship, Tropical Archaeology Research Laboratory Prize, and the Greg McIntyre Prize.

    Between completing these degrees Joshua worked for 10 years as a consultant archaeologist with many Traditional Owner groups across Australia. Much of his professional work focused on the excavation and analysis of Pleistocene and Holocene lithic artefact assemblages from northwestern Australia, a portion of which was the subject of his Honours thesis on Holocene technological provisioning strategies from the Eastern Hamersley Plateau, Nyiyaparli Country.

    Following the completion of his Honours research, Joshua relocated to Cairns to commence a PhD investigating the heavily constructed Indigenous seascapes of the Lizard Island Group, Far North Queensland. This research is part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) Coral Sea Flagship and is conducted with active participation by Dingaal and Ngurrumungu Traditional Owners.

    Research topic

    Investigating the Constructed Indigenous Seascapes of the Lizard Island Group, Far North Queensland.

    Research Outline

    Seascapes and cosmological spiritscapes are important aspects of Indigenous lifeways, they provide understanding of past and current cosmologies. This project investigates the ritual landscape of the Lizard Island Group in far north Queensland though a study of the distribution, construction, and design of over 1,000 stone arrangements. Archaeological cultural landscape approaches will be employed to study the distribution of ritual locations and their surrounding natural and social contexts. The location and form of these stone arrangements provide an opportunity to understand the physical representation of Indigenous peoples’ belief systems as they interacted with their environment through acts of construction and interaction with such places. The patterning within these distributions will be examined through the lenses of restricted ceremonial, totemic, and spiritscapes.

    Supervisory Team

    Distinguished Professor Sean Ulm (JCU)

    Dr Christian Reepmeyer (JCU)

    Professor Ian McNiven (Monash)

    Dr Martin Potter (Deakin)


    Extended Profile

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