Environmental Futures Seminar - Patrick Faulkner

Patrick Faulkner is an archaeologist and archaeomalacologist with 25 years experience working in tropical Australasia, eastern Africa and Sri Lanka. Currently an Associate Professor in Archaeology and ARC Future Fellow at the University of Sydney, his research has focused on understanding the timing and nature of human-environmental interactions in coastal and freshwater environments.

Recent archaeological research in Sri Lanka has established occupation in the island’s interior rainforests by 48,000 years ago, concomitant with evidence of broad-spectrum diets and complex artefact assemblages. Coastal archaeology in Sri Lanka is comparatively less well developed, hampered largely by ambiguity in archaeological evidence driven by natural geomorphic and disturbance processes, particularly during the Mid to Late Holocene. As such, much discussion has been generated over several decades discussing the likely natural or human origin of coastal shell deposits. These issues are discussed with reference to an ongoing project on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, presenting some initial observations and outlining the way forward in understanding human engagement with near shore environments in the area, as well as implications for managing cultural heritage and likely future environmental changes impacting this coastline.