Heather Burke

Biographic Data

ID100082
NAMEHeather Burke
GIVEN NAMESHeather
FAMILY NAMEBurke
SIGNATUREBURKE H
AFFILIATIONSFlinders University
ORCID0000-0002-1141-9072
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS72
TOTAL CITATIONS202
AUTHOR COUNT72
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1994
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX7

  • An assemblage of resin-mounted macropod incisors from Quinkan Country, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland

    Open AccessLynley Wallis, Kim Vernon et al.ARTICLEAustralian Archaeology2026

    This paper reports on the first identification of macropod incisor ornaments from a non-burial context in northeast Australia. While ethnographic museum collections demonstrate the vibrant traditional organic material culture of the Indigenous peoples of Australia, the vagaries of preservation mean such items are only rarely recovered archaeologically. The Late Holocene Windmill Way site in southeast Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, is one such r…

  • Lessons learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic

    Open AccessNoha H Farag, Ahmet Ozen et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2026

    The COVID-19 pandemic revealed critical gaps in preparedness and response capacities globally. These gaps were evident in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, as the region faces unique challenges due to ongoing humanitarian crises, political instability and large-scale religious gatherings, which further exacerbate the risk of spread of infectious diseases. In April 2024, a conference hosted by the US Centres for Disease Control and P…

  • Familiar, not foreign

    Open AccessLynley Wallis, Heather Burke et al.ARTICLEAustralian Archaeology2026

    Archaeologists have a longstanding interest in cross-cultural engagements between Indigenous people and Others, especially in settler colonial nations. In Australia, much archaeological attention has been directed to how such engagements are reflected in rock art, particularly in respect of colonial period seafaring activities and non-Indigenous watercraft technologies. Scholars have written extensively about depictions of foreign watercraft in A…

  • An Archaeology of Everyday Racism

    Claire Smith, Jocelyn McCartney et al.CHAPTERThe Oxford Handbook of Global…2025

    This chapter uses archaeological skills to examine the role of material culture in replicating everyday racism in Katherine, Northern Territory (NT), Australia. We argue that inclusivity, in the sense of equal and equitable access to opportunities and resources, is determined by inclusive design supported by inclusive behaviors and that archaeologists can inform the creation of a more equitable world by identifying how material culture acts to ex…

  • An exceptional assemblage of archaeological plant fibres from Windmill Way, southeast Cape York Peninsula

    Open AccessLynley Wallis, Heather Burke et al.ARTICLEAustralian Archaeology2025References: 2

  • Under the Shade of a Coolabah Tree

    Open AccessYinika L Perston, Lynley Wallis et al.ARTICLEArchaeology in Oceania/Archæology…2025References: 50

    This paper reports on the excavation of a cache of stone artefacts, buried on the bank of a waterhole or ‘billabong’ in central western Queensland. This is an extremely rare find, and yet it is the second such site to be reported within less than a 10 km radius. Consisting entirely of 60 large tula adzes with varying degrees of retouch on the margins, none of the artefacts show evidence of hafting or use. Three sets of artefacts conjoin, showing …

  • Coercion and Pacification on the Frontier

    Mirani Litster, Lynley Wallis et al.CHAPTERThe Oxford Handbook of Global…2024

    The Native Mounted Police were a paramilitary organization that operated across Queensland, Australia during the nineteenth century. Archaeologically they are represented by numerous camp sites occupied for varying durations, from just a few weeks to several decades. Living in these camps were White officers and the Aboriginal troopers serving under them, accompanied by the female partners of the troopers and sometimes of the officer(s), and thei…

  • Shell artefacts in Cape York Peninsula

    Open AccessLynley Wallis, Eva Martellotta et al.ARTICLEQueensland Archaeological Research2024

    As Australia’s largest peninsula, Cape York Peninsula in Queensland presents abundant opportunities to understand the complex relationship between people and coastal environments. Beyond merely being food refuse, shells demonstrate considerable cultural significance as both practical tools and symbolic objects. Yet studies of shell artefacts across Cape York Peninsula have been limited. The Agayrr Bamangay Milbi (ABM) Project, a Traditional Owner…

  • Archaeological Insights into Asymmetrical Warfare on the Queensland Frontier

    Open AccessAnthony Pagels, Heather Burke et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal of…2024References: 14

    Historiographic debate in Australia over whether or not the asymmetrical conflicts between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in the colonial period can be characterized as “war” remains unresolved, largely because most such events did not involve the traditional military. In this regard the situation in Queensland merits special attention, since much of the conflict in that colony from 1848 onward was conducted by a particular government para…

  • A preliminary study of culturally modified sugarbag trees in the Laura Sandstone Basin, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland

    Open AccessLynley Wallis, Heather Burke et al.ARTICLEQueensland Archaeological Research2024References: 2

    Erythrophleum spp. (Cooktown ironwood) is an endemic north Australian tree that is a key cultural resource. In Cape York Peninsula (CYP), Traditional Owners value, use, care for and manage the trees in culturally appropriate ways. Members of the Agayrr Bamangay Milbi (ABM) Project team have recorded hundreds of culturally modified Cooktown ironwood trees (CMTs) across southeast CYP, stretching from Jowalbinna in the south to Cape Melville in the …

  • A Conversational Approach to Learning About Learning

    Gladys Rowe, Heather Burke et al.ARTICLECanadian Journal of Program…2023

    In the context of Indigenous and decolonial evaluation, who is doing the work matters, the way that we do this work matters, and how stories of this work is shared matters. Based on their experiences as Learning Facilitators, the authors share their insights and questions about how learning might be supported through an embedded learning approach. A conversational approach used to share these learnings is congruent with the ways of working that t…

  • The difficult, divisive and disruptive heritage of the Queensland Native Mounted Police

    Open AccessHeather Burke, Lynley Wallis et al.ARTICLEMemory Studies2023References: 11

    The colonial history of nineteenth-century Queensland was arguably dominated by the actions of the Native Mounted Police, Australia’s most punitive native policing force. The centrality of the Native Mounted Police to the sustained economic success of Queensland for over half a century, and their widespread, devastating effects on Aboriginal societies across the colony, have left a complex legacy. For non-Indigenous Queenslanders, a process of ob…

  • The Discipline of Dress

    Open AccessNic Grguric, Heather Burke et al.ARTICLEHistorical Archaeology2023References: 10

    Clothing is capable of providing a range of insights into aspects of identity, authority, power, and hierarchy. Here we present the results of an analysis of an assemblage of uniform buttons and accoutrements from seven 19th-century Native Mounted Police (NMP) camps in Queensland, Australia. As part of wider colonial structures of discipline and expropriation, the NMP uniform was a powerful symbol of control: over troopers’ bodies, over NMP detac…

  • Glass beads in a Dillybag

    Gabriella Mclay, Heather Burke et al.ARTICLEWorld Archaeology2023Cited by: 2References: 39

  • Weapons of the frontier wars

    Open AccessAnthony Pagels, Heather Burke et al.ARTICLEQueensland Archaeological Research2023Cited by: 1References: 5

    Firearms were critical to the activities of the Queensland Native Mounted Police, a frontier force tasked with suppressing Aboriginal resistance in the colony of Queensland, Australia, between 1848 and 1929. Wider colonial processes meant that arming the Native Mounted Police was never straightforward, despite a dedicated program to standardise and update police weaponry from 1864 onwards. In this paper we use historical, archaeological and museu…

  • The distribution, chronology and significance of late Holocene aged stone-based structures on Pitta Pitta Country, western Queensland

    Open AccessEilis Brien, Lynley Wallis et al.ARTICLEQueensland Archaeological Research2023References: 33

    There is considerable discourse around the timing of Australia's interior colonisation and whether environmental or technological impacts pushed people into occupying more arid environments. However, the general scarcity of rockshelter sites and the limited amount of research undertaken to date in central western Queensland has meant this region has only been peripherally considered in such debates. It is well recognised that, by the time Europea…

  • Oral Tradition, History, and Archaeohistory of Indigenous Australia

    Ian Davidson, Heather Burke et al.CHAPTEROxford Handbook of the…2022

    This article considers some of the uncertainties about the position of oral traditions in relation to historical studies with written texts and in the narrative studies derived from archaeological evidence that may be called archaeohistories. There are issues about the ways in which we learn about Indigenous peoples, sometimes using non-Indigenous people as intermediaries and sometimes, though rarely, in the direct voices of Indigenous peoples. T…

  • Lithic technologies from a stone hut and arrangement complex in Pitta Pitta Country Queensland, and the detection of social learning in archaeology

    Tim Maloney, Lynley Wallis et al.ARTICLEAustralian Archaeology2022Cited by: 2References: 46

    Lithic assemblages associated with Indigenous Australian built structures are underexplored. The Hilary Creek Site 1 (HCS1) complex, western Queensland, comprising at least 16 stone-based hut structures and multiple stone arrangements, also contains a surface assemblage of thousands of flaked stone artefacts. Analysis of a sample of this assemblage provides novel insights into the technology and role of flaked stone artefacts at this site, reveal…

  • A Comprehensive Online Database about the Native Mounted Police and Frontier Conflict in Queensland

    Lynley Wallis, Heather Burke et al.ARTICLEJournal of Genocide Research2022

    In recent years the publication of online maps documenting frontier conflict between Indigenous peoples and interlopers in Australia has generated great public interest. These new resources are vital memorials to frontier conflict; however, we note they are still relatively “flat” resources, much more akin to visualized spreadsheets with a spatial element. Another new resource, the Frontier Conflict and the Native Mounted Police Database is a com…

  • Fatal FrontierTemporal and Spatial Considerations of the Native Mounted Police and Colonial Violence Across Queensland

    Lynley Wallis, Lynley A Wallis et al.CHAPTEROxford Handbook of the…2021

    Over the past two decades, archaeologists have explored aspects of Indigenous agency to better encompass experiences of cross-cultural contact in colonial Australia. Yet the area of frontier conflict has largely remained the purview of historians, in part because of challenges in identifying such events archaeologically. One alternative means through which to consider frontier conflict is to investigate the material remains of colonial policing f…

  • Archaeology of Everiday Racism

    Open AccessClaire Smith, John Ralph et al.ARTICLEVestígios - Revista Latino-American…2021

    This paper examines the role of material culture in replicating everyday racism in Katherine, Northern Territory, Australia. We argue that inclusivity is determined by inclusive design supported by inclusive behaviours and that archaeologists can inform the creation of a more equitable world by identifying how material culture acts to exclude certain groups and replicate inequalities that might otherwise go unnoticed. This paper is part of the so…

  • Nervous nation

    Open AccessHeather Burke, Raymond C Kerkhove et al.ARTICLEAboriginal History Journal2021Cited by: 3References: 11

    The frontier of nineteenth-and twentieth-century Australia was a place in which colonists routinely lived in fear of retaliation by the Aboriginal peoples whose traditional lands they had forcibly dispossessed. It has been suggested this concern manifested itself in domestic architecture, in both active and passive defensive strategies designed to afford protection against various forms of potential attack. Yet there remains a lack of substantive…

  • Flaked Glass Artifacts from Nineteenth–Century Native Mounted Police Camps in Queensland, Australia

    Open AccessYinika L Perston, Lynley Wallis et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal of…2021Cited by: 4References: 37

  • The shape of absence

    Heather Burke, Lynley Wallis et al.ARTICLEJournal of Community Archaeology…2021Cited by: 1References: 11

    This paper explores the notion of absence as a key, but elusive, element in the contemporary recognition, perception and reception of Australian frontier conflict. It derives from a four-year-long community archaeology project to document the lives and legacies of a devastating frontier paramilitary policing force – the Queensland Native Mounted Police (NMP). The sources of absence in the heritage of the NMP are complex, deriving from silences in…

  • Huts and stone arrangements at Hilary Creek, western Queensland

    Open AccessLynley Wallis, B Barker et al.ARTICLEQueensland Archaeological Research2021Cited by: 4References: 35

    This paper reports on an Aboriginal site complex, incorporating hut structures, ceremonial stone arrangements, an extensive surface artefact assemblage of lithics and mussel shell, and a silcrete quarry, located along Hilary Creek, a tributary of the Georgina River in western Queensland, Australia. At least two phases of occupation are indicated. The most recent huts have their collapsed organic superstructure still present, while those of a pres…