Associate Professor Mick Morrison

Associate Professor Archaeology, University of New England

Google Scholar ORCID UNE Profile GitHub LinkedIn

Welcome

I am Associate Professor Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology, Classics and History (School of Humanities, Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education) at the University of New England (UNE), based in Armidale, NSW, on Anaiwan Country.

With over two decades of experience across academia and the cultural heritage sector, my work focuses on collaborative Indigenous archaeology, cultural landscape histories, and community-led heritage management across tropical northern Queensland (Cape York Peninsula, Gulf Country, Torres Strait), the Murray–Darling Basin (South Australian Riverland), and the New England Tablelands.

Core Research Areas

  • Shell Mounds, Earth Mounds & Indigenous Foodways: Investigating late-Holocene coastal shell mound construction, niche production strategies, and site formation processes around Albatross Bay and Weipa (western Cape York Peninsula), alongside geophysical, chronological, and ethnohistoric studies of anthropogenic earth mounds and earth oven cookery in the Murray River Valley (South Australia).
  • Colonialism, Christian Missions & Frontier Entanglements: Examining Indigenous agency, wellbeing, labour, and spatial entanglements with settler-colonialism, pastoralism, and Christian missions—including long-term archaeological and archival research at the former Weipa Moravian and Presbyterian missions (1898–1966) and colonial frontiers of the Western Central Murray.
  • Culturally Modified (Scarred) Trees: Developing spatial, dendrochronological, and archaeological frameworks to study culturally modified trees (such as native bee sugarbag harvesting scars and bark/timber extraction) as living archives of Indigenous resource stewardship, domiculture, and post-contact economic diversification.
  • Collaborative Heritage Practice & Digital Methods: Working in partnership with Traditional Owner organisations (including serving as voluntary Heritage Advisor to the Alngith Aboriginal Corporation since 2012) to support land and sea management, digital heritage keeping places, GIS spatial analysis, archaeo-geophysics, and ethical data governance (FAIR and CARE principles).

Selected High-Impact Publications

  • Field Methods Textbook: Burke, H., Morrison, M. & Smith, C. (2017). The Archaeologist’s Field Handbook: The Essential Guide for Beginners and Professionals in Australia (2nd ed.). Allen & Unwin.
  • Global Land Use (Science): Stephens, L., … Morrison, M., et al. (2019). Archaeological assessment reveals Earth’s early transformation through land use. Science, 365(6456), 897–902. DOI: 10.1126/science.aax1192
  • Shell Mounds & Earth Mounds: Foundational studies on Albatross Bay shell mounds (Archaeology in Oceania, 2003, 2013; Australian Archaeology, 2014; Queensland Archaeological Research, 2013, 2015), Murray River earth mound geophysics (Archaeological Prospection, 2019), and comparative Aboriginal earth oven cookery (Australian Archaeology, 2022).
  • Colonialism & Missions: Spatial and historical archaeologies of war capitalism and mission life in Cape York (International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 2010, 2019; Archaeology in Oceania, 2015), frontier conflict on the Murray (Aboriginal History, 2016), and social justice in collaborative archaeology (Archaeologies, 2019).
  • Culturally Modified Trees: Sugarbag scarred trees and colonial economic diversification in Cape York (Journal of Field Archaeology, 2013; JASSA, 2012) and the South Australian Riverland (JASSA, 2019).

View full biography, grants, supervision & publications → Google Scholar Profile →

Recent Writing & Updates


Browse all posts and categories in the Archive →