Dr Alice Storey, an archaeologist at the University of New England, is tracing the global migration routes of domestic chickens back through thousands of years towards their origins in the jungles of South-east Asia.

In doing so, Dr Storey is pioneering the use of DNA from ancient chicken bones recovered from well-dated archaeological sites around the world. This is enabling her to add a fourth dimension – that of time – to an emerging “map” of chicken dispersal. One of the ultimate goals of such research is identifying the original Asian centres of jungle fowl domestication.

“All of our domestic chickens are descended from a few hens that I like to think of as the ‘great, great grandmothers’ of the chicken world,” Dr Storey said.

Biological, linguistic, historical and archaeological data have all contributed to an understanding that chickens accompanied human movements from their Asian homeland west through the Middle East to Europe and Africa, and east through the islands of South-east Asia and the Pacific.

Dr Storey’s analysis of ancient DNA is disentangling complications in this broad picture caused by interactions later than the original dispersal. “Only ancient DNA provides a unit of analysis with the chronological control necessary to reconstruct and disentangle the signals of initial dispersals from those of later interactions,” she said. Hers are the first published reports on the use of ancient DNA in this context.

A paper by Dr Storey and her colleagues, titled “Global dispersal of chickens in prehistory using ancient mitochondrial DNA signatures”, is published today in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE.

The paper, available at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0039171, provides evidence for dispersal out of Asia over 3,000 years ago involving the movement of chickens both westwards to Europe and eastwards into the Pacific.

One of the most striking results of the study was the discovery of the same DNA signature in ancient chicken bones from Europe, Thailand, the Pacific and Chile, and from Spanish colonial sites in Florida and the Dominican Republic. This means that chickens dispersed both westwards and eastwards from a single ancient domestication centre, and converged thousands of years later when the Spanish brought their chickens from Europe to the New World.

“While unambiguous data does not yet exist to trace any of the detected mitochondrial DNA signatures back to specific domestication centres, the analysis of ancient DNA sequences presented here is an important first step towards it,” the paper concludes.

Media contact: Dr Alice Storey on (02) 6773 3085 or Leon Braun (UNE PR) on (02) 6773 3771.

Emeritus Professor John Mulvaney, often called “the father of Australian archaeology”, visited the University of New England on Friday 7 October to see his son Ken Mulvaney, who is also an archaeologist, graduate as a Doctor of Philosophy.

In 2004 the Australian Archaeological Association awarded Professor Mulvaney its Rhys Jones Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Australian Archaeology, acknowledging “his pioneering spirit, his distinguished and sustained achievements in Australian prehistory, his fostering of the discipline in Australia, and his mentoring of so many young archaeologists – including those who themselves have attained distinction”.

Another recipient of the Rhys Jones Medal, UNE’s Professor Iain Davidson, was the principal supervisor of Ken Mulvaney’s research for his PhD thesis titled Dampier Petroglyphs: Shadows in the Landscape Echoes Across Time. That research, funded by Woodside Energy Ltd, concerned the Aboriginal rock art of north-western Australia’s Dampier Archipelago. Dr Ken Mulvaney now works in Western Australia as Cultural Heritage Specialist for Rio Tinto.

Professor Mulvaney said he was “very pleased” that his son had followed him into the field of Aboriginal archaeology, and had completed such a “very important piece of work”.

The ceremony on Friday was for those graduating from academic programs within UNE’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The following day – Saturday 8 October – saw the ceremony for the Faculty of The Professions, at which the Occasional Address speaker was Philip Clark AM, Chair of the Advisory Board of the Australian Government’s Education Investment Fund.

Mr Clark inspired the graduands with the story of his own successful career, which developed through legal training and business experience. That career has included leading roles with the major law firms Mallesons Stephen Jaques (as Managing Partner) and Minter Ellison (as Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer). He was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia in 2007 for his contribution to the development of national law firms and encouraging corporate involvement in community programs.

Mr Clark’s work in the not-for-profit sector includes positions on the Board of the St James Ethics Centre and on the Advisory Board of the High Resolves Initiative. He served on the Board of Directors of the Garvan Research Foundation from 2005 to 2008.

“There’s nothing more important than a strong education and research sector,” Mr Clark said, and he went on to describe UNE as an institution that combined “the highest academic standards, industry-valued qualifications and flexible modes of learning”, and that was “at the forefront of online learning”.

“UNE has built significant strength and expertise around regional issues, and is capitalising on that expertise as a centre of excellence for regional education,” he said. “That is of considerable interest to the Education Investment Fund, as we open a $500 million Regional Round to provide infrastructure to universities and VET organisations to enable them to significantly improve their educational offerings to benefit regional students.”

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows Dr Ken Mulvaney (left) and Emeritus Professor John Mulvaney at the UNE graduation ceremony.

Hot on the heels of its last Aspects of Antiquity lecture, the University of New England will again play host to a distinguished guest speaker when Christopher Davey, honorary director of the Australian Institute of archaeology, gives a talk entitled “John Garstang and Walter Beasley, and the foundation of the Australian Institute of Archaeology”.

The lecture will take place at 5:30 PM on Thursday, August 25 in The Gallery at Earle Page College.

In January 1935, Walter Beasley, an Australian businessman, met Professor John Garstang (from Liverpool) at his excavation at Jericho. Mr Davey’s lecture will review the life of Garstang and trace his influence on Beasley, who from the time of their meeting funded archaeological expeditions and in 1946 established the AIA.

Christopher Davey has been Honorary Director of the Australian Institute of Archaeology for ten years and has been responsible for re-establishing it at La Trobe University. He studied ancient languages at Cambridge University and archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University of London. He has excavated in Europe, Australia and the Middle East, and has undertaken research into the history of mining and metallurgy and the history of archaeology. Prior to retirement, Chris had a professional career initially as a mining engineer at Broken Hill, and then as a mines inspector, a contract engineer, a university lecturer and finally as an international project financier. Chris is coming to UNE by courtesy of the Ingram-Moore Bequest administered by the AIA.

All are welcome to his lecture, which will be held in The Gallery at Earle Page College. The public is also welcome to attend a research seminar held the following day, Friday August 26  at 9.30 in the University’s Arts Building Lecture Theatre 3. At this seminar, Mr. Davey will present a paper entitled “Jim Stewart and Walter Beasley: the beginnings of Near Eastern Archaeology in Australia”.

This seminar will deal with the connection between the two men, which began in 1935, and the consequences for both the AIA and Australian archaeological work in the Mediterranean after Stewart returned to Australia after the War.

In view of UNE being the repository for Stewart’s private collection of archaeological items (in the Museum of Antiquities), copies of his published books with his and his wife Eve’s annotations (in the Dixson Library), and some of his private papers (in the UNE Archives), this seminar should be of exceptional interest. It is Stewart’s material (above all the Cypriot items) which has put our Museum on the international map.

The University of New England has had excellent relations with the AIA for a considerable number of years, and this has been considerably to the benefit of the university. The late Mary Dolan had a long-time association with the Institute; another person at the university is a Life Member of the AIA, on the editorial board of its journal, and a member of its council. Some years ago, the institute lent to the UNE Museum of Antiquities a number of Garstang’s finds from Jericho, together with some of Kathleen Kenyon’s material excavated at Jerusalem. This display was exhibited in the Dixson Library for an extended period.

Enquiries: Greg Horsley 6773 2390 or 6773 2555.

The University of New England will soon offer ancient history enthusiasts a rare opportunity: to view and hear about 50,000 fragments of wall paintings more than 3000 years old from the so-called “Palace of Nestor” at Pylos in Western Greece.

The speaker at the University of New England’s next Aspects of Antiquity lecture on Thursday, August 11 at 5.30pm is a specialist on this site which dates to before 1200 BC.

Professor Jack Davis, the Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, will be the speaker. He is an acknowledged expert on this site, and in this he follows in the footsteps of Carl Blegen who dug at Pylos and (among much else) found wall frescoes there.

The title of the lecture is, “Reconstructing an Iconographical Program of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos: New Wall-Paintings and their Interpretation.”

Professor Davis, accompanied by his wife Dr Sharon Stocker, who is also an archaeologist, is visiting UNE and Armidale as the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens 2011 Visiting Professor. Currently Prof Davis and his wife reside in Athens where he is the Director of the American School of Classical Studies.

All are welcome to his lecture on Thursday evening, which will be held in the Junior Common Room (above the Dining Hall) at Earle Page College. The next morning, Friday 12 August at 9.30 in the University’s Arts Building lecture Theatre 3, Professor Davis will speak at the School of Humanities weekly Research Seminar series. His paper is entitled, “Dateline 1180 BC: The Palace of Nestor after the Collapse of Mycenaean Society”, and concerns who lived in Messenia in W. Greece, and what level of lifestyle and affluence there was before the coming of the Spartans in the 8th century BC.

Enquiries: Greg Horsley on 6773 2390 or 6773 2555.