Cathy Urwin
Biographic Data
| ID | 77071 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cathy Urwin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cathy |
| FAMILY NAME | Urwin |
| SIGNATURE | URWIN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Monash University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3868-9574 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 568 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Gleaning the Rocky Shore? 2500 Years of Coastal Resource Use at Red Bluff 1, GunaiKurnai Country, SE Australia
Shell middens in Gippsland along the eastern half of Victoria's coastline have usually been characterised as small, short‐duration camp sites with relatively low shell densities and low taxonomic diversity. Here we present new excavation results from a dense, high‐diversity site at Red Bluff near the eastern end of GunaiKurnai Country, a location that features the first intertidal rocky platform habitat between Wilsons Promontory in the west and …
Uncovering Hidden Dynamics of Past Kinship and Exchange Relations on Papua New Guinea’s South Coast (650–300 cal BP) Through Scanning Electron Microscopy Automated Mineralogy Analyses of Pottery Sherd…
Ethnographic accounts of Melanesian exchange systems, such as the Kula and Hiri, have significantly influenced the development of anthropology. These accounts primarily focus on male agency framed by heroic seafaring ventures, while the agency of women and their cultural practices—key to the interconnectedness of Melanesian societies—has often been overlooked. On Papua New Guinea’s south coast details of women’s cultural practices are available i…
Shell grit has a song
How will Australia and the Pacific contribute to global Indigenous archaeologies in the next half century
Agency amongst the entrepôts
The exchange of specialized items and the social connections those exchanges engender play a fundamental role in the trajectories of societal relations. Processual archaeologists developed a core–periphery model to understand how these exchange relations work. The model evoked complex societal “cores” and “peripheries” at societal edges where exchanges with other cultures take place. The rigidity of core–periphery modeling led to the emergence of…
Building culturally meaningful chronologies
This paper examines some of the ways in which Indigenous and Western archaeological chronologies are being negotiated and entwined in Oceania. Indigenous pasts are often known through oral traditions, genealogies and ancestral landscapes; these are vital pasts populated by the ancestors. The archaeological past is often interpreted through taphonomy, stratigraphy and direct dating techniques. There are tensions and intersections between these per…
Archaeological evidence of an ethnographically documented Australian Aboriginal ritual dated to the last ice age
In societies without writing, ethnographically known rituals have rarely been tracked back archaeologically more than a few hundred years. At the invitation of GunaiKurnai Aboriginal Elders, we undertook archaeological excavations at Cloggs Cave in the foothills of the Australian Alps. In GunaiKurnai Country, caves were not used as residential places during the early colonial period (mid-nineteenth century CE), but as secluded retreats for the pe…
Agila and the reanimation of seafaring on the south coast of Papua New Guinea after 770 cal BP
Seafaring ceramicists connected widely spaced communities along the expanse of PNG’s south coast for more than 1,500 years following the arrival of people using pots with Lapita decoration c.2,900 cal BP. Archaeological investigations at locations from the Gulf of Papua in the west to Mailu Island in the east suggest a major change occurred to seafaring and social relations after 1,200 cal BP. The following five centuries often referred to as the…
Re‐assessing regional chronologies for island southeast Asian voyaging to Aboriginal Australia
According to written histories, trepang fishers from Island Southeast Asia (“Makassans”) frequented coastal northern Australia from c.1750 to 1907 CE. Yolŋu oral traditions and old Austronesian borrow words in coastal Aboriginal languages suggest a long and complex history of foreign voyaging to northern Australia. Yet archaeological radiocarbon chronologies for the Southeast Asian trepang industry and earlier voyaging encounters are few and the …
Rethinking agency in hiri exchange relationships on Papua New Guinea's south coast
Aboriginal monumental stone-working in Northern Australia during the Pleistocene
Chris URWIN, Bruno DAVID, Jean-Jacques DELANNOY, Joshua A. BELL, Jean-Michel GENESTE, Aboriginal monumental stone-working in Northern Australia during the Pleistocene, Megaliths of the World, pp. 241-256
Marra philosophies of stone, and the stone artefacts of Walanjiwurru 1 rockshelter, Marra Country, northern Australia
The Development (and Imagined Reinvention) of Australian Archaeology in the Twentieth Century
Most histories of Australian archaeology written in the past three decades imagine that the discipline came of age in (approximately) the year 1960. We are led to believe that systematic archaeological research, nuanced interpretations, and advocacy for the conservation of Aboriginal cultural heritage all date to the post-1960 era. Yet archaeological research in Australia has a lengthier and more complex genealogy. Here we use a series of case st…
Paradigm shifts and ontological turns at Cloggs Cave, GunaiKurnai Country, Australia
In recent years, a number of authors have theorized an “ontological turn” that is reorienting research in the human and social sciences. In this setting, we have witnessed an increasing number of anthropological and archaeological works seeking to recognize ontological difference among a variety of human groups, from Indigenous societies to Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. While ontological approaches have been restricted to anatomically modern huma…
Determining the origin and changing shape of landscape‐scale rock formations with three‐dimensional modelling
Archaeologists often wonder how and when rock shelters formed, yet their origins and antiquity are almost never systematically investigated. Here we present a new method to determine how and when individual boulders and rock shelters came to lie in their present landscape settings. We do so through 3D laser (LiDAR) mapping, illustrating the method by example of the Borologa Aboriginal site complex in the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia…
Years and Worlds Apart
In this paper we report on new research at the iconic archaeological site of Cloggs Cave (GunaiKurnai Country), in the southern foothills of SE Australia’s Great Dividing Range. Detailed chronometric dating, combined with high-resolution 3D mapping, geomorphological studies and archaeological excavations, now allow a dense sequence of Late Holocene ash layers and their contents to be correlated with GunaiKurnai ethnography and current knowledge. …
Combining Oral Traditions and Bayesian Chronological Modeling to Understand Village Development in the Gulf of Papua (Papua New Guinea)
When European colonists arrived in the late 19th century, large villages dotted the coastline of the Gulf of Papua (southern Papua New Guinea). These central places sustained long-distance exchange and decade-spanning ceremonial cycles. Besides ethnohistoric records, little is known of the villages’ antiquity, spatiality, or development. Here we combine oral traditional and 14 C chronological evidence to investigate the spatial history of two anc…
How long have dogs been in Melanesia? New evidence from Caution Bay, south coast of Papua New Guinea
Worked bone and teeth from Orokolo Bay in the Papuan Gulf (Papua New Guinea)
Ethnographic records show that people from Orokolo Bay in the Papuan Gulf (Papua New Guinea) made, used, and exchanged artefacts made from bone and teeth during the twentieth century. Archaeologically, these kinds of artefacts are poorly documented, partly because osseous materials tend to decay rapidly in exposed tropical rainforest sites. Where these artefacts have been found in the Papuan Gulf, only a few have been reported in detail. Here we …
Excavating and interpreting ancestral action
The Gulf of Papua, Papua New Guinea, is a rapidly changing geomorphic and cultural landscape in which the ancestral past is constantly being (re)interpreted and negotiated. This paper examines the importance of subsurface archaeological and geomorphological features for the various communities of Orokolo Bay in the Gulf of Papua as they maintain and re-construct cosmological and migration narratives. The everyday practices of digging and clearing…
The chronology of Popo, an ancestral village site in Orokolo Bay, Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea
Cultural research at Orokolo Bay (PNG) has long focussed on elaborate social-ceremonial practice and maritime exchange (hiri). Previously the chronology of settlement was based on a single radiocarbon determination of 410 ± 80 BP from Popo village. Today, Popo is an important village site along an ancestral migration route for clan groups living up to 125 km to the east. This paper presents archaeological results of a recent excavation at Popo, u…
Global Social Archaeologies
In their book on global social archaeologies, Koji Mizoguchi and Claire Smith set out to describe and promote archaeologies aligned with human rights and social justice. The authors aim to provide
Archaeologies of Island Melanesia
Archaeologies of Island Melanesia: Current Approaches to Landscapes, Exchange and Practice." Australian Archaeology, 86(3), pp. 323–325
Forty Years in the South Seas
Equity in publication is paramount
Changing the Subject
Language, gender, and childhood
Excavating and interpreting ancestral action
The Gulf of Papua, Papua New Guinea, is a rapidly changing geomorphic and cultural landscape in which the ancestral past is constantly being (re)interpreted and negotiated. This paper examines the importance of subsurface archaeological and geomorphological features for the various communities of Orokolo Bay in the Gulf of Papua as they maintain and re-construct cosmological and migration narratives. The everyday practices of digging and clearing…
Years and Worlds Apart
In this paper we report on new research at the iconic archaeological site of Cloggs Cave (GunaiKurnai Country), in the southern foothills of SE Australia’s Great Dividing Range. Detailed chronometric dating, combined with high-resolution 3D mapping, geomorphological studies and archaeological excavations, now allow a dense sequence of Late Holocene ash layers and their contents to be correlated with GunaiKurnai ethnography and current knowledge. …
Marra philosophies of stone, and the stone artefacts of Walanjiwurru 1 rockshelter, Marra Country, northern Australia
Agency amongst the entrepôts
The exchange of specialized items and the social connections those exchanges engender play a fundamental role in the trajectories of societal relations. Processual archaeologists developed a core–periphery model to understand how these exchange relations work. The model evoked complex societal “cores” and “peripheries” at societal edges where exchanges with other cultures take place. The rigidity of core–periphery modeling led to the emergence of…
Rethinking agency in hiri exchange relationships on Papua New Guinea's south coast
How long have dogs been in Melanesia? New evidence from Caution Bay, south coast of Papua New Guinea
Worked bone and teeth from Orokolo Bay in the Papuan Gulf (Papua New Guinea)
Ethnographic records show that people from Orokolo Bay in the Papuan Gulf (Papua New Guinea) made, used, and exchanged artefacts made from bone and teeth during the twentieth century. Archaeologically, these kinds of artefacts are poorly documented, partly because osseous materials tend to decay rapidly in exposed tropical rainforest sites. Where these artefacts have been found in the Papuan Gulf, only a few have been reported in detail. Here we …
Hearing the evidence
Dugong hunting by Torres Strait Islanders has a long history dating back at least 4000 years. Dugongs are highly susceptible to over-predation, due to slow development and low fecundity/reproductive rates. While attempts to model catch sustainability using recent survey and catch data have caused conservation concern, lack of historical data prevents reliable statements on the sustainability of past dugong hunting practices. In the absence of his…
Re‐assessing regional chronologies for island southeast Asian voyaging to Aboriginal Australia
According to written histories, trepang fishers from Island Southeast Asia (“Makassans”) frequented coastal northern Australia from c.1750 to 1907 CE. Yolŋu oral traditions and old Austronesian borrow words in coastal Aboriginal languages suggest a long and complex history of foreign voyaging to northern Australia. Yet archaeological radiocarbon chronologies for the Southeast Asian trepang industry and earlier voyaging encounters are few and the …
Combining Oral Traditions and Bayesian Chronological Modeling to Understand Village Development in the Gulf of Papua (Papua New Guinea)
When European colonists arrived in the late 19th century, large villages dotted the coastline of the Gulf of Papua (southern Papua New Guinea). These central places sustained long-distance exchange and decade-spanning ceremonial cycles. Besides ethnohistoric records, little is known of the villages’ antiquity, spatiality, or development. Here we combine oral traditional and 14 C chronological evidence to investigate the spatial history of two anc…
Becoming a Mother Through Culture
Culture" is often considered in terms of identifiable artifacts, rules, and practices, with less attention given to how investment in these features comes about. Using data extracts from a case study of a young woman who is becoming a mother for the first time, we pay attention to how people react to cultural processes in terms of how they "feel." We use our own affective and reflective responses to interviews and observational material about her…
Forty Years in the South Seas
Archaeological evidence of an ethnographically documented Australian Aboriginal ritual dated to the last ice age
In societies without writing, ethnographically known rituals have rarely been tracked back archaeologically more than a few hundred years. At the invitation of GunaiKurnai Aboriginal Elders, we undertook archaeological excavations at Cloggs Cave in the foothills of the Australian Alps. In GunaiKurnai Country, caves were not used as residential places during the early colonial period (mid-nineteenth century CE), but as secluded retreats for the pe…
Agila and the reanimation of seafaring on the south coast of Papua New Guinea after 770 cal BP
Seafaring ceramicists connected widely spaced communities along the expanse of PNG’s south coast for more than 1,500 years following the arrival of people using pots with Lapita decoration c.2,900 cal BP. Archaeological investigations at locations from the Gulf of Papua in the west to Mailu Island in the east suggest a major change occurred to seafaring and social relations after 1,200 cal BP. The following five centuries often referred to as the…
Selections from Changing the Subject
Global Social Archaeologies
In their book on global social archaeologies, Koji Mizoguchi and Claire Smith set out to describe and promote archaeologies aligned with human rights and social justice. The authors aim to provide
Determining the origin and changing shape of landscape‐scale rock formations with three‐dimensional modelling
Archaeologists often wonder how and when rock shelters formed, yet their origins and antiquity are almost never systematically investigated. Here we present a new method to determine how and when individual boulders and rock shelters came to lie in their present landscape settings. We do so through 3D laser (LiDAR) mapping, illustrating the method by example of the Borologa Aboriginal site complex in the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia…
The chronology of Popo, an ancestral village site in Orokolo Bay, Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea
Cultural research at Orokolo Bay (PNG) has long focussed on elaborate social-ceremonial practice and maritime exchange (hiri). Previously the chronology of settlement was based on a single radiocarbon determination of 410 ± 80 BP from Popo village. Today, Popo is an important village site along an ancestral migration route for clan groups living up to 125 km to the east. This paper presents archaeological results of a recent excavation at Popo, u…
Language, gender, and childhood
Changing the Subject
Changing the Subject is a classic critique of traditional psychology in which the foundations of critical and feminist psychology are laid down. Pioneering and foundational, it is still the groundbreaking text crucial to furthering the new psychology in both teaching and research. Now reissued with a new foreword describing the changes which have taken place over the last few years, Changing the Subject will continue to have a significant impact …
War in the Nursery
Women and the Psychiatric Paradox (Book)
Language, Gender and Childhood
Agenda for Reform
Agenda for Reform
"Noblesse Oblige" and Practical Politics
Selections from Changing the Subject
Afterword
Changing the Subject
Changing the Subject
How do we watch a film? Rereading ‘Video Replay’ in the light of affective processes
From Bodies to Minds in Childcare Literature
With hindsight, the knowledge produced by modern medicine and associated disciplines ‘in the name of the child’ has been as important for parents as for children themselves. The rapid growth of specialized knowledges on child health and development through the twentieth century has been closely linked to the emergence of social practices aimed specifically at the early detection or prevention of deviance. Michel Foucault&s;s historical work on th…
Becoming a Mother Through Culture
Culture" is often considered in terms of identifiable artifacts, rules, and practices, with less attention given to how investment in these features comes about. Using data extracts from a case study of a young woman who is becoming a mother for the first time, we pay attention to how people react to cultural processes in terms of how they "feel." We use our own affective and reflective responses to interviews and observational material about her…
Hearing the evidence
Dugong hunting by Torres Strait Islanders has a long history dating back at least 4000 years. Dugongs are highly susceptible to over-predation, due to slow development and low fecundity/reproductive rates. While attempts to model catch sustainability using recent survey and catch data have caused conservation concern, lack of historical data prevents reliable statements on the sustainability of past dugong hunting practices. In the absence of his…
The chronology of Popo, an ancestral village site in Orokolo Bay, Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea
Cultural research at Orokolo Bay (PNG) has long focussed on elaborate social-ceremonial practice and maritime exchange (hiri). Previously the chronology of settlement was based on a single radiocarbon determination of 410 ± 80 BP from Popo village. Today, Popo is an important village site along an ancestral migration route for clan groups living up to 125 km to the east. This paper presents archaeological results of a recent excavation at Popo, u…
Excavating and interpreting ancestral action
The Gulf of Papua, Papua New Guinea, is a rapidly changing geomorphic and cultural landscape in which the ancestral past is constantly being (re)interpreted and negotiated. This paper examines the importance of subsurface archaeological and geomorphological features for the various communities of Orokolo Bay in the Gulf of Papua as they maintain and re-construct cosmological and migration narratives. The everyday practices of digging and clearing…
How long have dogs been in Melanesia? New evidence from Caution Bay, south coast of Papua New Guinea
Worked bone and teeth from Orokolo Bay in the Papuan Gulf (Papua New Guinea)
Ethnographic records show that people from Orokolo Bay in the Papuan Gulf (Papua New Guinea) made, used, and exchanged artefacts made from bone and teeth during the twentieth century. Archaeologically, these kinds of artefacts are poorly documented, partly because osseous materials tend to decay rapidly in exposed tropical rainforest sites. Where these artefacts have been found in the Papuan Gulf, only a few have been reported in detail. Here we …
The Development (and Imagined Reinvention) of Australian Archaeology in the Twentieth Century
Most histories of Australian archaeology written in the past three decades imagine that the discipline came of age in (approximately) the year 1960. We are led to believe that systematic archaeological research, nuanced interpretations, and advocacy for the conservation of Aboriginal cultural heritage all date to the post-1960 era. Yet archaeological research in Australia has a lengthier and more complex genealogy. Here we use a series of case st…
Paradigm shifts and ontological turns at Cloggs Cave, GunaiKurnai Country, Australia
In recent years, a number of authors have theorized an “ontological turn” that is reorienting research in the human and social sciences. In this setting, we have witnessed an increasing number of anthropological and archaeological works seeking to recognize ontological difference among a variety of human groups, from Indigenous societies to Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. While ontological approaches have been restricted to anatomically modern huma…
Determining the origin and changing shape of landscape‐scale rock formations with three‐dimensional modelling
Archaeologists often wonder how and when rock shelters formed, yet their origins and antiquity are almost never systematically investigated. Here we present a new method to determine how and when individual boulders and rock shelters came to lie in their present landscape settings. We do so through 3D laser (LiDAR) mapping, illustrating the method by example of the Borologa Aboriginal site complex in the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia…
Years and Worlds Apart
In this paper we report on new research at the iconic archaeological site of Cloggs Cave (GunaiKurnai Country), in the southern foothills of SE Australia’s Great Dividing Range. Detailed chronometric dating, combined with high-resolution 3D mapping, geomorphological studies and archaeological excavations, now allow a dense sequence of Late Holocene ash layers and their contents to be correlated with GunaiKurnai ethnography and current knowledge. …
Combining Oral Traditions and Bayesian Chronological Modeling to Understand Village Development in the Gulf of Papua (Papua New Guinea)
When European colonists arrived in the late 19th century, large villages dotted the coastline of the Gulf of Papua (southern Papua New Guinea). These central places sustained long-distance exchange and decade-spanning ceremonial cycles. Besides ethnohistoric records, little is known of the villages’ antiquity, spatiality, or development. Here we combine oral traditional and 14 C chronological evidence to investigate the spatial history of two anc…
Archaeology (21 works) · Geography (21 works) · History (21 works) · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies (17 works) · Sociology (17 works) · History (15 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (14 works) · Ethnology (12 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (11 works) · Political science (10 works)