Chris Urwin is a research fellow at Monash University and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. He conducts archaeological and museum-based research with Indigenous communities in Australia and the Pacific. He researches how people build places through time, and how personal and community histories are constructed when artefacts are collected and exchanged. Urwin has held a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) and worked as curator for the First Peoples archaeology collection at Museums Victoria (Melbourne).
Chris completed his PhD at Monash University in 2019, for which he worked with two villages in Orokolo Bay (PNG) to establish radiocarbon chronologies for their ancestral sites, alongside a program to document local oral traditions. This research has helped improve our understanding of the history of exchange and social change on PNG's south coast. Chris enjoys communicating archaeology and anthropology for a popular audience. From 2017-2019 he was social media officer for the Australian Archaeological Association.
Experience
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2022–presentPostdoctoral research fellow, Monash University
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2021–2022Postdoctoral research fellow, Smithsonian Institution
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2020–2021Postdoctoral research fellow, Monash University
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2019–2020Senior curator, Museums Victoria
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2015–2018Teaching associate, Monash University
Education
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2019Monash University, Doctor of Philosophy
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2013Monash University, Honours / Australian Indigenous Archaeology
Publications
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2022Remembering removal: Indigenous narratives of colonial collecting practices in the Gulf of Papua (Papua New Guinea), The Routledge Companion to Global Indigenous History
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2021Engaging and designing place: Furnishings and the architecture of archaeological sites in Aboriginal Australia, The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea
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202150 years and worlds apart: Rethinking the Holocene occupation of Cloggs Cave (East Gippsland, SE Australia) five decades after its initial archaeological excavation and in light of GunaiKurnai world views, Australian Archaeology
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2021Archaeology: Western Science or Global Practice?, Current World Archaeology
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2021Swamp and Delta Societies of the Papuan Gulf, Papua New Guinea, The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea
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2021Engaging and designing place: Furnishings and the architecture of archaeological sites in Aboriginal Australia, The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea
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2021Combining oral traditions and bayesian chronological modeling to understand village development in the Gulf of Papua (Papua New Guinea), Radiocarbon
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2021The Development (and Imagined Reinvention) of Australian Archaeology in the Twentieth Century, The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea
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20202000 Year-old Bogong moth (Agrotis infusa) Aboriginal food remains, Australia, Scientific Reports
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2020Worked bone and teeth from Orokolo Bay in the Papuan Gulf (Papua New Guinea), Australian Archaeology
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2020How long have dogs been in Melanesia? New evidence from Caution Bay, south coast of Papua New Guinea, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
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2019Excavating and interpreting ancestral action: Stories from the subsurface of Orokolo Bay, Papua New Guinea, Journal of Social Archaeology
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2018The chronology of Popo, an ancestral village site in Orokolo Bay, Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea, Australian Archaeology
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2016Hearing the evidence: Using archaeological data to analyse the long-term impacts of dugong (Dugong dugon) hunting on Mabuyag, Torres Strait, over the past 1000 years, Australian Archaeology
Grants and Contracts
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2021Applying high-resolution chronological modelling to historicise the recent archaeological past (past 500 years): Jiwarrjiwarra 1, Marra Country, Northern Territory
- Role:
- Co-Investigator
- Funding Source:
- Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
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2020Entwined Narratives of Indigenous Voyaging and American Collecting: Pacific Canoes in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution
- Role:
- Chief Investigator
- Funding Source:
- National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
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2017User Access Grant: High-resolution radiocarbon chronologies for the phased development of Popo Ancestral Village in Papua New Guinea (PNG)
- Role:
- Co-Investigator
- Funding Source:
- Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
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2016Dating the ancestral migration village site of Popo, Orokolo Bay, Papua New Guinea.
- Role:
- Investigator
- Funding Source:
- Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering
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2016Dating the Miruka clan suburb of Popo Ancestral Village, Orokolo Bay
- Role:
- Chief Investigator
- Funding Source:
- Australian Archaeological Association Student Reserach Grants Scheme
Professional Memberships
- Australian Archaeological Association
- The World Archaeological Congress
- The Archaeological & Anthropological Society of Victoria
- Museum Ethnographers Group
- Australian Association for Pacific Studies
Research Areas
- Pacific Cultural Studies (200210)
- Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Archaeology (210101)
- Archaeology Of New Guinea And Pacific Islands (Excl. New Zealand) (210106)
- Social And Cultural Anthropology (160104)
- Pacific History (Excl. New Zealand And Maori) (210313)
- Melbourne
- Website
- @c_urwin
- Article Feed
- chris.urwin@monash.edu
- ORCID
- Joined
