Sue O'Connor

Sue O'Connor is an Australian archaeologist and Distinguished Professor in the School of Culture, History & Language at the Australian National University. Her research focuses primarily on the evidence of Pleistocene settlement and early human migration in the Indo-Pacific region.

Sue O'Connor
Alma materUniversity of New England (Australia) (1980)
University of Western Australia (1991)
AwardsRhys Jones Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Australian Archaeology (2011)
Scientific career
Fieldsarchaeology
InstitutionsUniversity of Western Australia
Australian National University

Education

O'Connor studied archaeology at the University of New England (Australia) and graduated with honors in 1980. She furthered her studies at the University of Western Australia where she received her PhD in 1991.[1]

Career

O'Connor was a lecturer at the University of Western Australia (UWA) from 1991 to 1994. In 1994, she accepted a research fellowship at Australian National University (ANU) in the Department of Archaeology and Natural History. In 2005, she was promoted to the Head of the Department and in 2008 was made a full Professor.[1]

O'Connor has conducted archaeological projects in the Northern Territory of Australia, Kimberley (Western Australia) Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Timor Leste. Her research findings have demonstrated the first evidence of ancient people living in the Kimberley region over 40,000 years ago. Her investigations have also resulted in the earliest indication for rock art production in Australia[1]

East Timor Cave

O'Connor led a research expedition which discovered a cave site in East Timor, with evidence of people living more than 42,000 years ago. It is "the oldest evidence of occupation by modern humans on the islands that were the stepping stones from South-East Asia to Australia". Prior to O'Connor's research, scholars believed that early humans migrated south from Maritime Southeast Asia to Australia by traveling northwards by means of Borneo and Sulawesi, and then south through Papua New Guinea. With the new research findings, O'Connor believes that early humans traveled south from Maritime Southeast Asia through East Timor to Australia.[2]

Canine domestication in East Timor

O'Connor worked on a team that conducted research on a dog burial found at Matja Kuru in East Timor. Their findings suggest that humans domesticated dogs at the site as early as 3,000 years ago. Analysis of the remains revealed a number of morphological similarities between modern-day domesticated dogs and the dog found at the burial site. O'Connor and her team assert that the presence of domesticated dogs may indicate that a hunting-foraging way of life was still prevalent at the time.[3]

Pleistocene era burial

In 2017, O'Connor's research team recovered the world's oldest fish hooks from an ancient burial site on Alor Island, Indonesia. Five circular, rotating hooks, probably used for deep-sea fishing, were found under the chin and around the jaws of an adult female skeleton buried 12,000 years ago. This discovery contradicts the current theory that most fishing activities on the island had been carried out by men. Until 2017, the oldest fish-hooks found with a burial site were unearthed at a river site in Siberia and were determined to be 9,000 years old.[4]

Selected publications

Journals
  • O'Connor, Sue; et al. (2017). "Hominin Dispersal and Settlement East of the Huxley's Line: The role of sea level changes, island size, and subsistence behaviour". Current Anthropology. 58 (17): 567–582. doi:10.1086/694252.
  • O'Connor, Sue; et al. (2017). "Fishing in life and death: Pleistocene fish-hooks from a burial context on Alor Island, Indonesia". Antiquity. 360 (91): 1451–1468. doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.186.
  • O'Connor, Sue; et al. (2015). "6500-Year-old Nassarius shell appliques in Timor-Leste: technological and use wear analyses". Journal of Archaeological Science. 62: 175–192. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2015.06.012.
  • O'Connor, Sue; et al. (2014). "The global implications of the early surviving rock art of greater Southeast Asia". Antiquity. 88 (342): 1050–1064. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00115315.
  • O'Connor, Sue; et al. (2013). "Marking resistance? Change and continuity in the recent rock art of the southern Kimberly, Australia". Antiquity. 87 (336): 539–554. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00049115. S2CID 163092229.

Books
  • O'Connor, Sue (2013). Transcending the Culture-Nature Divide in Cultural Heritage (Terra Australis 36): Views from the Asia–Pacific region (Volume 36). Australian National University. p. 254. ISBN 978-1922144041.
  • O'Connor, Sue; Fairbairn, Andrew (2012). New Directions in Archaeological Science (Terra Australis) (Volume 28). Australian National University. p. 274. ISBN 978-1921536489.
  • O'Connor, Sue (1999). 30,000 Years of Aboriginal Occupation: Kimberley, North West Australia (Terra Australis, 14). Australian National University. p. 155. ISBN 978-0731546220.

Awards
  • 2012 Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship[5]
  • 2018 ANU Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research[7]

References
  1. "Rhys Jones Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Australian Archaeology 2011". Australian Archaeological Association. Retrieved 22 June 2018.
  2. Smith, Deborah. "Timor cave may reveal how humans reached Australia". AGE News. Retrieved 22 June 2018.
  3. Gonzalez, Antonio; Clark, Geoffrey; O’Connor, Sue; Matisoo-Smith, Lisa (17 March 2016). "A 3000 Year Old Dog Burial in Timor-Leste". Australian Archaeology. 76: 13–20. doi:10.1080/03122417.2013.11681961. hdl:1885/73337. S2CID 88502164.
  4. Nguyen, Han. "ANU archaeologist finds world's oldest funeral fish hooks in Indonesia". The Canberra Times. Retrieved 24 June 2018.
  5. "Professor Sue O'Connor". Australian National University. Retrieved 26 June 2018.
  6. "Sue O'Connor". Australian Academy of the Humanities. Retrieved 2 December 2018.
  7. "Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research". ANU. 15 November 2018. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
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