Ursula Frederick
Biographic Data
| ID | 953563 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ursula Frederick |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ursula |
| FAMILY NAME | Frederick |
| SIGNATURE | FREDERICK U |
| AFFILIATIONS | Australian National University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8132-0310 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 89 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
If trees could talk: The Derby Prison Boab Tree and the punitive landscape of northwest Western Australia
Arboreal Alterations: An Introduction to Culturally Modified Trees (CMTs) in Australia
Culturally modified trees (CMTs) were once ubiquitous throughout the Australian landscape but they have been significantly affected by tree‐clearing practices associated with pastoralism, residential expansion and forestry. These, in addition to effects of bushfires and floods have had a massive impact on the survival of both dead and living CMTs. Despite their past ubiquity and current threats, they are probably one of the most under‐researched …
Snake and Moon ‘Right Way Marriage’ Stories on Stone and Bark
In northwest Australia, boab trees hold significant cultural values for First Nations people. Their leaves, bark, roots and nuts are important as traditional resources for food, medicine, fibre, water and shade and serve as reference points in the landscape. Some of the tree trunks are inscribed with images and symbols which tell of events and narratives that took place during the time when the landscape was created. One boab tree, at Karunjie St…
Trees to remember: Culturally Modified Boab Trees in the Face of Climate Change
Culturally modified trees (CMTs) are a unique form of archaeology and cultural heritage. There are several factors affecting the survival of culturally modified trees in Australia, and these will all likely be exacerbated by climate change. Boab trees (Adansonia gregorii), which are endemic to northwest Australia, have been subject to modification by Indigenous people both prior to and following the settlement of the Kimberley region by European …
Embedded in the Bark: Kimberley Boab Trees as Sites of Historical Archaeology
This paper discusses the Australian boab tree and its potential for research as living historical archaeology. Boab trees play an important role in the economy, culture, and cosmology of Indigenous people in northwest Australia and continue to hold a powerful presence in the Kimberley region today. Working with Nyikina and Mangala Traditional Owners we have undertaken to document examples of this iconic tree and its cultural and historical associ…
Histories of Australian Rock Art Research
Australia has one of the largest inventories of rock art in the world with pictographs and petroglyphs found almost anywhere that has suitable rock surfaces – in rock shelters and caves, on boulders and rock platforms. First Nations people have been marking these places with figurative imagery, abstract designs, stencils and prints for tens of thousands of years, often
Art in the bark: Indigenous carved boab trees (Adansonia gregorii) in north-west Australia
Found only in a restricted area of north-west Australia, the Australian boab (Adansonia gregorii) is recognisable by its massive, bottle-shaped trunk, and is an economically important species for Indigenous Australians, with the pith, seeds and young roots all eaten. Many of these trees are also culturally significant and are sometimes carved with images and symbols. The authors discuss the history of research into carved boabs in Australia, and …
Beyond colonialism? A comment on the formulation of ‘contact’ archaeology in Australia
The Bad and the Beautiful: An artist’s encounter with the image of Port Arthur, Tasmania
Port Arthur Historic Site is a World Heritage Property in Tasmania, Australia. Inscribed as one of a suite of sites for the role it played in the British-Australian system of convict transportation, management and reform, it is today a major tourist attraction. Like most tourism destinations of the twenty-first century, image capture has become an integral component of visitor experience. Although at first it would seem that Port Arthur oozes ima…
Interrogating Human Origins: Decolonisation and the Deep Human Past
Born on the voyage: Inscribing emigrant communities in the twilight of sail
From the 1830s to the 1880s, non-stop voyages from the United Kingdom to the Australasian colonies created highly structured and insular shipboard communities. Emigrant experiences were shaped by the social spaces aboard sailing vessels, alongside layers of formal superintendence and informal communitas. While these increasingly literate travellers commonly recorded their passage in diaries and letters, other means of marking the journey are less…
Last Drinks at the Hibernian’: Practice-led research into art and archaeology
Last Drinks at the Hibernian (Frederick & Ireland 2016) is a collaborative art work that explores what happens when archaeological materials are reconstituted as art and how the ‘creative turn’ might swivel archaeology’s critical lens back onto its own practices and materialities. This creative engagement explores the history and political economy of Australian archaeology, particularly historical archaeology, in order to understand how archaeolo…
Beyond Art/Archaeology: Research and Practice after the ‘Creative Turn’
This forum aims to go beyond the usual art/archaeology discussions to explore the possibilities – and challenges - for work which might push beyond what is traditionally accepted as either art or archaeology. The articles comprise a diverse range of responses from academics and practitioners working creatively with heritage—in its broadest sense—from a range of disciplinary perspectives. This introduction sets these responses into context through…
No complaints: Counter-narratives of immigration and detention in graffiti at North Head Immigration Detention Centre, Australia 1973-76
Immigration has played a particularly significant role in shaping settler-colonial societies, including Australia. Successive governments have taken instrumental roles in constructing narratives of Australia’s immigration history. Contrary to the images we see today – of capsizing boats and desperate people seeking refuge – the picture of post-Second World War immigration was all sunshine and smiles, hope and opportunity. Throughout the post-war …
Born to be a Stoway”: Inscriptions, Graffiti, and the Rupture of Space at the North Head Quarantine Station, Sydney
Geographies of commemoration: Angel Island, San Francisco and North Head, Sydney
Glitch
Over the last five years many industrialized economies have been shifting their analogue television networks to digital transmission. This photographic essay captures the accumulated ruin of this transition as it continues to play out on the streets and screens of contemporary Australia. As an artefact of the changeover period, the glitch is rendered both as an ephemeral surge of disordered information and as an excess of redundant technology. Th…
Shake Well Midden: An archaeology of contemporary graffiti production in Perth, Western Australia
Following on from the inroads archaeologists have made into the study of graffiti, this project set out to examine graffiti production through the lens of its associated material culture. A graffiti midden comprising the detritus of mark-making paraphernalia and other contemporary residues was recorded. The study reveals that aerosol painting was the dominant technique employed in the production of graffiti. One component of the assemblage-the ae…
Battlefield or gallery? A comparative analysis of contemporary mark-making practices in Sydney, Australia
In this paper we present an analysis of the differences and similarities in the spatial distribution of graffiti in two Sydney suburbs: Newtown and Miranda. The research examines the extent to which factors of surveillance, location and legislation affect the range, production and spatial distribution of graffiti. Through the application of conventional archaeological field methods to the contemporary landscape this study has shown how an archaeo…
Signs of the times: Archaeological approaches to historical and contemporary graffiti
The papers in this themed section on historical and contemporary graffiti derive in part from a two-day workshop, That was Then, This is Now: Contemporary Archaeology in Australia, that we (Clarke and Frederick) organised at the University of Sydney in February 2012. The Editors of Australian Archaeology invited us to submit a set of papers from the workshop to showcase some of the Australian research in the field of contemporary archaeology. We …
When Worlds Collide Quietly: Rock Art and the Mediation of Distance
This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Disciplines of the Past Defining Contact Rock Art Rock Art in Watarrka National Park, Central Australia Characterizing the Rock Art Assemblage Interpreting the Watarrka Assemblage Drawing from a Distance The Art of Encounter Conclusion References
Rebecca will you marry me? Tim: Inscriptions as objects of biography at the North Head Quarantine Station, Manly, New South Wales
In this paper we explore the historical inscriptions at the North Head Quarantine Station, Manly through the lens of biography to examine what the archaeological record can tell us about some of the people who found themselves in quarantine and who chose to mark their presence in the landscape. In particular we focus on two inscriptions located in the Wharf area of the Quarantine Station to illustrate how the archaeological record in this instanc…
Making a Sea Change: Rock art, archaeology and the enduring legacy of Frederick McCarthy’s research on Groote Eylandt
We have noted that the presence of an archaeological team with specific archaeological objectives was an important aspect of the Expedition's originality. This is all the more remarkable because, at the time of their research, Australian archaeology was in its infancy. By 1948 very little specialised archaeological research had been undertaken and only two sites-Devon Downs in South Australia and Lapstone Creek in New South Wales-were regarded as…
Emerging Perspectives on Automobilities in Non-Urban Australia: A context for Cruising Country
Since the early twentieth century, motor vehicles of all descriptions have been central characters in the settlement, governance and representation of Australia. They have been, and remain, objects of desire and exchange, characters in subsistence, ceremonial and market economies, sites of projective identification and spaces of distinctive social experience. Local and national spaces, time, histories and identities are reshaped in and through ou…
Roadworks: Automobility and belonging in Aboriginal art
Life is old there Older than the trees Younger than the mountains
At the centre of it all: Constructing contact through the rock art of Watarrka National Park, central Australia
This paper offers an account of rock art research on contact and challenges some of the basic assumptions underlying previous approaches to contact rock art. It is argued that many Australian rock art studies incorporating contact art offer merely descriptive accounts of introduced objects without exploring the underlying social processes motivating and directing change within the art system. This study outlines a number of interpretations about …
Revolution is the New Black: Graffiti/Art and Mark-making Practices
Signs of the times: Archaeological approaches to historical and contemporary graffiti
The papers in this themed section on historical and contemporary graffiti derive in part from a two-day workshop, That was Then, This is Now: Contemporary Archaeology in Australia, that we (Clarke and Frederick) organised at the University of Sydney in February 2012. The Editors of Australian Archaeology invited us to submit a set of papers from the workshop to showcase some of the Australian research in the field of contemporary archaeology. We …
Art in the bark: Indigenous carved boab trees (Adansonia gregorii) in north-west Australia
Found only in a restricted area of north-west Australia, the Australian boab (Adansonia gregorii) is recognisable by its massive, bottle-shaped trunk, and is an economically important species for Indigenous Australians, with the pith, seeds and young roots all eaten. Many of these trees are also culturally significant and are sometimes carved with images and symbols. The authors discuss the history of research into carved boabs in Australia, and …
Shake Well Midden: An archaeology of contemporary graffiti production in Perth, Western Australia
Following on from the inroads archaeologists have made into the study of graffiti, this project set out to examine graffiti production through the lens of its associated material culture. A graffiti midden comprising the detritus of mark-making paraphernalia and other contemporary residues was recorded. The study reveals that aerosol painting was the dominant technique employed in the production of graffiti. One component of the assemblage-the ae…
Rebecca will you marry me? Tim: Inscriptions as objects of biography at the North Head Quarantine Station, Manly, New South Wales
In this paper we explore the historical inscriptions at the North Head Quarantine Station, Manly through the lens of biography to examine what the archaeological record can tell us about some of the people who found themselves in quarantine and who chose to mark their presence in the landscape. In particular we focus on two inscriptions located in the Wharf area of the Quarantine Station to illustrate how the archaeological record in this instanc…
Trees to remember: Culturally Modified Boab Trees in the Face of Climate Change
Culturally modified trees (CMTs) are a unique form of archaeology and cultural heritage. There are several factors affecting the survival of culturally modified trees in Australia, and these will all likely be exacerbated by climate change. Boab trees (Adansonia gregorii), which are endemic to northwest Australia, have been subject to modification by Indigenous people both prior to and following the settlement of the Kimberley region by European …
Beyond Art/Archaeology: Research and Practice after the ‘Creative Turn’
This forum aims to go beyond the usual art/archaeology discussions to explore the possibilities – and challenges - for work which might push beyond what is traditionally accepted as either art or archaeology. The articles comprise a diverse range of responses from academics and practitioners working creatively with heritage—in its broadest sense—from a range of disciplinary perspectives. This introduction sets these responses into context through…
No complaints: Counter-narratives of immigration and detention in graffiti at North Head Immigration Detention Centre, Australia 1973-76
Immigration has played a particularly significant role in shaping settler-colonial societies, including Australia. Successive governments have taken instrumental roles in constructing narratives of Australia’s immigration history. Contrary to the images we see today – of capsizing boats and desperate people seeking refuge – the picture of post-Second World War immigration was all sunshine and smiles, hope and opportunity. Throughout the post-war …
Born to be a Stoway”: Inscriptions, Graffiti, and the Rupture of Space at the North Head Quarantine Station, Sydney
Embedded in the Bark: Kimberley Boab Trees as Sites of Historical Archaeology
This paper discusses the Australian boab tree and its potential for research as living historical archaeology. Boab trees play an important role in the economy, culture, and cosmology of Indigenous people in northwest Australia and continue to hold a powerful presence in the Kimberley region today. Working with Nyikina and Mangala Traditional Owners we have undertaken to document examples of this iconic tree and its cultural and historical associ…
The Bad and the Beautiful: An artist’s encounter with the image of Port Arthur, Tasmania
Port Arthur Historic Site is a World Heritage Property in Tasmania, Australia. Inscribed as one of a suite of sites for the role it played in the British-Australian system of convict transportation, management and reform, it is today a major tourist attraction. Like most tourism destinations of the twenty-first century, image capture has become an integral component of visitor experience. Although at first it would seem that Port Arthur oozes ima…
Geographies of commemoration: Angel Island, San Francisco and North Head, Sydney
Roadworks: Automobility and belonging in Aboriginal art
Life is old there Older than the trees Younger than the mountains
Arboreal Alterations: An Introduction to Culturally Modified Trees (CMTs) in Australia
Culturally modified trees (CMTs) were once ubiquitous throughout the Australian landscape but they have been significantly affected by tree‐clearing practices associated with pastoralism, residential expansion and forestry. These, in addition to effects of bushfires and floods have had a massive impact on the survival of both dead and living CMTs. Despite their past ubiquity and current threats, they are probably one of the most under‐researched …
Last Drinks at the Hibernian’: Practice-led research into art and archaeology
Last Drinks at the Hibernian (Frederick & Ireland 2016) is a collaborative art work that explores what happens when archaeological materials are reconstituted as art and how the ‘creative turn’ might swivel archaeology’s critical lens back onto its own practices and materialities. This creative engagement explores the history and political economy of Australian archaeology, particularly historical archaeology, in order to understand how archaeolo…
Glitch
Over the last five years many industrialized economies have been shifting their analogue television networks to digital transmission. This photographic essay captures the accumulated ruin of this transition as it continues to play out on the streets and screens of contemporary Australia. As an artefact of the changeover period, the glitch is rendered both as an ephemeral surge of disordered information and as an excess of redundant technology. Th…
At the centre of it all: Constructing contact through the rock art of Watarrka National Park, central Australia
This paper offers an account of rock art research on contact and challenges some of the basic assumptions underlying previous approaches to contact rock art. It is argued that many Australian rock art studies incorporating contact art offer merely descriptive accounts of introduced objects without exploring the underlying social processes motivating and directing change within the art system. This study outlines a number of interpretations about …
Introduction — Compelling cultures: Representing cultural diversity and cohesion in multicultural Australia
Revolution is the New Black: Graffiti/Art and Mark-making Practices
Making a Sea Change: Rock art, archaeology and the enduring legacy of Frederick McCarthy’s research on Groote Eylandt
We have noted that the presence of an archaeological team with specific archaeological objectives was an important aspect of the Expedition's originality. This is all the more remarkable because, at the time of their research, Australian archaeology was in its infancy. By 1948 very little specialised archaeological research had been undertaken and only two sites-Devon Downs in South Australia and Lapstone Creek in New South Wales-were regarded as…
Emerging Perspectives on Automobilities in Non-Urban Australia: A context for Cruising Country
Since the early twentieth century, motor vehicles of all descriptions have been central characters in the settlement, governance and representation of Australia. They have been, and remain, objects of desire and exchange, characters in subsistence, ceremonial and market economies, sites of projective identification and spaces of distinctive social experience. Local and national spaces, time, histories and identities are reshaped in and through ou…
Roadworks: Automobility and belonging in Aboriginal art
Life is old there Older than the trees Younger than the mountains
Media and materiality: Extending the Boundaries of Object Research
Articles included in this volume focus on the social role of "things" to examine the relationships between material and media artefacts, the construction of social identities, and the production and use of culture. As a collection, the articles reiterate a shift in contemporary object-based research which sees the study of things as an expanded discourse in which the thing itself is neither tethered to its material properties or a sole narrative.…
When Worlds Collide Quietly: Rock Art and the Mediation of Distance
This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Disciplines of the Past Defining Contact Rock Art Rock Art in Watarrka National Park, Central Australia Characterizing the Rock Art Assemblage Interpreting the Watarrka Assemblage Drawing from a Distance The Art of Encounter Conclusion References
Rebecca will you marry me? Tim: Inscriptions as objects of biography at the North Head Quarantine Station, Manly, New South Wales
In this paper we explore the historical inscriptions at the North Head Quarantine Station, Manly through the lens of biography to examine what the archaeological record can tell us about some of the people who found themselves in quarantine and who chose to mark their presence in the landscape. In particular we focus on two inscriptions located in the Wharf area of the Quarantine Station to illustrate how the archaeological record in this instanc…
Shake Well Midden: An archaeology of contemporary graffiti production in Perth, Western Australia
Following on from the inroads archaeologists have made into the study of graffiti, this project set out to examine graffiti production through the lens of its associated material culture. A graffiti midden comprising the detritus of mark-making paraphernalia and other contemporary residues was recorded. The study reveals that aerosol painting was the dominant technique employed in the production of graffiti. One component of the assemblage-the ae…
Battlefield or gallery? A comparative analysis of contemporary mark-making practices in Sydney, Australia
In this paper we present an analysis of the differences and similarities in the spatial distribution of graffiti in two Sydney suburbs: Newtown and Miranda. The research examines the extent to which factors of surveillance, location and legislation affect the range, production and spatial distribution of graffiti. Through the application of conventional archaeological field methods to the contemporary landscape this study has shown how an archaeo…
Signs of the times: Archaeological approaches to historical and contemporary graffiti
The papers in this themed section on historical and contemporary graffiti derive in part from a two-day workshop, That was Then, This is Now: Contemporary Archaeology in Australia, that we (Clarke and Frederick) organised at the University of Sydney in February 2012. The Editors of Australian Archaeology invited us to submit a set of papers from the workshop to showcase some of the Australian research in the field of contemporary archaeology. We …
Glitch
Over the last five years many industrialized economies have been shifting their analogue television networks to digital transmission. This photographic essay captures the accumulated ruin of this transition as it continues to play out on the streets and screens of contemporary Australia. As an artefact of the changeover period, the glitch is rendered both as an ephemeral surge of disordered information and as an excess of redundant technology. Th…
Born to be a Stoway”: Inscriptions, Graffiti, and the Rupture of Space at the North Head Quarantine Station, Sydney
Geographies of commemoration: Angel Island, San Francisco and North Head, Sydney
No complaints: Counter-narratives of immigration and detention in graffiti at North Head Immigration Detention Centre, Australia 1973-76
Immigration has played a particularly significant role in shaping settler-colonial societies, including Australia. Successive governments have taken instrumental roles in constructing narratives of Australia’s immigration history. Contrary to the images we see today – of capsizing boats and desperate people seeking refuge – the picture of post-Second World War immigration was all sunshine and smiles, hope and opportunity. Throughout the post-war …
Beyond Art/Archaeology: Research and Practice after the ‘Creative Turn’
This forum aims to go beyond the usual art/archaeology discussions to explore the possibilities – and challenges - for work which might push beyond what is traditionally accepted as either art or archaeology. The articles comprise a diverse range of responses from academics and practitioners working creatively with heritage—in its broadest sense—from a range of disciplinary perspectives. This introduction sets these responses into context through…
Interrogating Human Origins: Decolonisation and the Deep Human Past
Born on the voyage: Inscribing emigrant communities in the twilight of sail
From the 1830s to the 1880s, non-stop voyages from the United Kingdom to the Australasian colonies created highly structured and insular shipboard communities. Emigrant experiences were shaped by the social spaces aboard sailing vessels, alongside layers of formal superintendence and informal communitas. While these increasingly literate travellers commonly recorded their passage in diaries and letters, other means of marking the journey are less…
Last Drinks at the Hibernian’: Practice-led research into art and archaeology
Last Drinks at the Hibernian (Frederick & Ireland 2016) is a collaborative art work that explores what happens when archaeological materials are reconstituted as art and how the ‘creative turn’ might swivel archaeology’s critical lens back onto its own practices and materialities. This creative engagement explores the history and political economy of Australian archaeology, particularly historical archaeology, in order to understand how archaeolo…
Beyond colonialism? A comment on the formulation of ‘contact’ archaeology in Australia
The Bad and the Beautiful: An artist’s encounter with the image of Port Arthur, Tasmania
Port Arthur Historic Site is a World Heritage Property in Tasmania, Australia. Inscribed as one of a suite of sites for the role it played in the British-Australian system of convict transportation, management and reform, it is today a major tourist attraction. Like most tourism destinations of the twenty-first century, image capture has become an integral component of visitor experience. Although at first it would seem that Port Arthur oozes ima…
Embedded in the Bark: Kimberley Boab Trees as Sites of Historical Archaeology
This paper discusses the Australian boab tree and its potential for research as living historical archaeology. Boab trees play an important role in the economy, culture, and cosmology of Indigenous people in northwest Australia and continue to hold a powerful presence in the Kimberley region today. Working with Nyikina and Mangala Traditional Owners we have undertaken to document examples of this iconic tree and its cultural and historical associ…
Histories of Australian Rock Art Research
Australia has one of the largest inventories of rock art in the world with pictographs and petroglyphs found almost anywhere that has suitable rock surfaces – in rock shelters and caves, on boulders and rock platforms. First Nations people have been marking these places with figurative imagery, abstract designs, stencils and prints for tens of thousands of years, often
Art in the bark: Indigenous carved boab trees (Adansonia gregorii) in north-west Australia
Found only in a restricted area of north-west Australia, the Australian boab (Adansonia gregorii) is recognisable by its massive, bottle-shaped trunk, and is an economically important species for Indigenous Australians, with the pith, seeds and young roots all eaten. Many of these trees are also culturally significant and are sometimes carved with images and symbols. The authors discuss the history of research into carved boabs in Australia, and …
Archaeology (22 works) · History (21 works) · Sociology (20 works) · History (16 works) · Art (15 works) · Geography (14 works) · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Visual arts (10 works) · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation (8 works)