ACT Monaro Riverina Branch: Talk – The Archaeology of Water
18 September @ 6:00 pm AEST
This talk continues the long-standing tradition of a joint annual event between the ACT Monaro Riverina Branch of AGHS and the Friends of the National Library of Australia.
Speaker: Dr Chris Carter
Water is essential for human survival. We need water to live, for health and hygiene, to cultivate crops, to manage livestock, for trade, industry and commerce – and for our gardens. Across the world and in different ways, from the most arid areas of the world to landscapes that are regularly flooded, humans have adapted their behaviour and settings to occupy the entire globe, and water has been at the heart of this remarkable development.
In his talk, archaeologist Chris Carter will describe some of the ways in which people have managed water for power and pleasure. We will travel from the driest deserts in the world – the Atacama Desert of Chile and the Arabian Peninsula – to the lush, terraced hillsides that produce prodigious quantities of grain in the Philippines, from the slopes of Andean Peru to Australia with its own surprisingly long history of water management. We will look briefly at how humans have gained access to and control of water, and how that has impacted on lifeways, with both positive and negative results.
Venue: Theatre, National Library of Australia
Cost: $20 AGHS members and Friends of the NLA, $25 others. Includes light refreshments.
Bookings: The Friends will be managing all bookings, and they will open on Friday 1 August. Details will be on the NLA website – www.nla.gov.au and go to What’s On.
Dr Chris Carter is a practising archaeologist with over 25 years’ experience working as a teacher, researcher, heritage consultant and tour leader working both nationally and overseas, including over 30 tours to South American countries. He has a BA (Hons), MA and PhD from the Australian National University. His PhD research was based on excavations he carried out at coastal sites in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.
As a teacher, Chris has always declared that archaeology cannot be learned in the classroom. This belief led him to take a study group to South America in 1995 and hehas continued to lead several tours a year ever since. The areas visited have expanded to cover many other countries along with areas within Australia that reflect the subjects he teaches.
Photo: Generalife, The Alhambra by Chris Carter.