Professor Matthew Spriggs

Professor of Archaeology

Email: matthew.spriggs@anu.edu.au
Phone: + 61 2 6125 8229

Research Interests

* Pacific and Southeast Asian archaeology
* archaeology and linguistics
* subsistence systems and agricultural origins
* human impact on the environment
* politics and archaeology
* Cornish studies (particularly language history).

Current Research Projects

I am currently involved in two ARC Discovery grants. The latest, with ARC QEII Fellow, Dr Stuart Bedford, is “Persistence and Transformation in Ancestral Oceanic Society: the archaeology of the first 1500 years in the Vanuatu archipelago”. This project will run from 2008-2012 and will involve excavations at several major Vanuatu sites dating to between about 3000 and 1500 years ago. The other grant, led by Prof. Rainer Grun of the Research School of Earth Sciences (funded 2006-2008), is using strontium and other isotope data to track migrations of Pacific peoples, and of other groups worldwide, as well as to address aspects of their diet. I have also recently been involved in the discovery of the earliest cemetery site in the Pacific, at Teouma on Efate Island in central Vanuatu (project co-directed with Stuart Bedford and Ralph Regenvanu, former Director of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre), and we are cooperating with an international team of experts in studying the site and the skeletal remains found there. We have finished three excavation seasons at the Teouma site (2004-2006), in 2006 funded largely by the National Geographic Society, and are currently writing up the results. Excavations will resume at Teouma in 2008 as part of the new ARC grant.

I am also involved in a project on the sourcing of Island SE Asian obsidian artefacts, with colleagues at ANU and with collaborators in Indonesia and the Philippines.

In my research on Cornish language history I am involved in editing the manuscripts of William Scawen (1600-1689)for publication, and writing about the linguistic research of Thomas Tonkin (1678-1742).

Key Publications last five years or so (2002 - present).

*M. SPRIGGS 2002 Taro Cropping Systems in the Southeast Asian-Pacific Region: an Archaeological Update, in S. Yoshida and P. Matthews (eds) Vegeculture in Eastern Asia and Oceania, pp.77-94. Japan Centre for Area Studies Symposium Series 16. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.
*S. O?CONNOR, M. SPRIGGS and P. VETH* 2002. Excavations at Lene Hara Cave Establishes Occupation in East Timor at least 30,000 to 35,000 Years Ago. Antiquity 76:45-50.
*J.I. MEAD, D.W. STEADMAN, S.H. BEDFORD, C.J. BELL and M. SPRIGGS 2002 New Extinct Mekosuchine Crocodile from Vanuatu, South Pacific. Copeia 2002(3):632-641.
*M. SPRIGGS* 2003. Chronology of the Neolithic Transition in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific: A View from 2003. Review of Archaeology 24(2):57-80.
*M. SPRIGGS* 2003. Where Cornish was Spoken and When: a Provisional Synthesis. Cornish Studies 11: 230-272.
*S. O?CONNOR, M. SPRIGGS & P. VETH (eds) 2005. The Archaeology of the Aru Islands, Eastern Indonesia. Terra Australis 22. Canberra: Pandanus Books, ANU. 314 + x pp., 177 plates and figures, 106 tables.
*M. SPRIGGS 2005. Bougainville?s Early History: An Archaeological Perspective, in A. Regan and H.M. Griffin (eds) Bougainville Before the Conflict, pp. 1-19. Canberra: Pandanus Books.
*M. SPRIGGS 2005. William Scawen (100-1689) ? A Neglected Cornish Patriot and Father of the Cornish Language Revival. Cornish Studies 13:98-125.
*P. VETH, M. SPRIGGS and S. O?CONNOR 2005. The Continuity of Cave Use in the Tropics: Examples from East Timor and the Aru Islands, Maluku. Asian Perspectives 44(1):180-192.
*F. VALENTIN, R. SHING & M. SPRIGGS 2005. Des Restes Humains dates du debut de la periode de Mangaasi (2400-1800 BP) Decouverts a Mangaliliu (Efate, Vanuatu). Comptes Rendus Palevol 4: 420-427.
*S. BEDFORD, M. SPRIGGS AND R. REGENVANU 2006. The Teouma Lapita Site and the Early Human Settlement of the Pacific Islands. Antiquity 80:812-828.
*S. BEDFORD AND M. SPRIGGS 2007 Birds on the rim: a Unique Lapita carinated vessel in its wider context. Archaeology in Oceania 42(1):12-21.
*M. SPRIGGS 2007 Population in a Vegetable Kingdom: Aneityum Island (Vanuatu) at European Contact in 1830, in J.-L. Rallu and P.V. Kirch (eds) The Growth and Collapse of Island Societies, pp. 278-305. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
*M. SPRIGGS 2007 The Neolithic and Austronesian Expansion within Island Southeast Asia and into the Pacific, in S Chiu and C. Sand (eds) From Southeast Asia to the Pacific. Archaeological Perspectives on the Austronesian Expansion and the Lapita Cultural Complex, pp. 104-140. Taipei: Academia Sinica.
*S. BEDFORD AND M. SPRIGGS 2008 Northern Vanuatu as a Pacific Crossroads: the Archaeology of Discovery, Interaction and the Emergence of the ?Ethnographic Present?. Asian Perspectives 47(1):95-120.

Go to Bibliography to access most of Matthew Spriggs' publications online including his Phd, The Island Melanesians book and many of his academic papers and unpublished reports.

For a complete CV go to Curriculum Vitae

Career Highlights

Awarded the Republic of Vanuatu General Service Medal for service to archaeological training and research, 2002; Elected a Fellow of Society of Antiquaries of London, 2002; Elected Fellow of the Australian Humanities Academy,1998; Visiting Scholarship, St John's College, Cambridge 2001-2;Head of School of Archaeology and Anthropology, 1999-2001; Appointed Professor of Archaeology, Faculty of Arts, 1997; Winner of the Kon-Tiki Museum-Telenor 'No Barriers' Prize, Oslo, Norway, 1998; 1987-1994 Fellow and 1994-6 Senior Fellow, RSPAS; 1981-6 Assistant Professor and 1986-7 Associate Professor, University of Hawaii. Thomson ISI Australian Citation Laureate 2004 for Archaeology and anthropology. Currently serving on the Humanities and Creative Arts panel of the Australian Research Council (2006-2008).

Courses Currently Taught

ARCH2037/ARCH6037 Post-Roman Archaeology of Britain: Arthur and the Anglo Saxons
ARCH2005/ARCH6005 Archaeology of the Pacific Islanders