Peter Hiscock
Encyclopedia
Peter Dixon Hiscock is a prominent Australia
n archaeologist. Born in Melbourne he obtained a PhD from the University of Queensland
. He is now Professor in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University
, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Museum
. His research interests include lithic technology
, the archaeology of prehistoric Aborigines in Australia
, and the study of Neanderthal
people.
. His work on colonization and setllement, with Lynley Wallace, created the 'Desert Transformation' model, which proposed that about 50,000 years ago human colonisists dispersed across much of the Australian continent at a time when the deserts were less harsh than today. These early settlers then gradually adapted to the onset of harsher environments that occurred after approximately 35,000 years ago.
His work with Patrick Faulkner also led to a reconsideration of the large Anadara granosa shell mounds of northern Australia.
His major contribution to Australian prehistory has been a new synthesis of the subject, in a book titled Archaeology of Ancient Australia. In that volume he advanced the view that there was little evidence for directional change in the prehistory of Australia
and that the archaeological evidence was better seen as documenting a long series of adaptive changes, perhaps operating in multiple directions, rather than progress towards 'intensification' in the recent past. This view was founded on a strong negative critique of the value of ethnography
in the construction of narratives about the deep prehistoric past, arguing that ethnographic analogy had often imposed images of the lifestyle of recent Australian Aborigines
on the different lives of their distant ancestors. Brian Fagan. has suggested that in doing so Hiscock has attacked the tyranny of the ethnographic record that has dogged Australian archaeology for generations. Hiscock's argument also emphasized the likely failure of much of the Pleistocene
archaeological record to preserve, arguing that the apparent simplicity of early eras resulted partly from the poverty of the archaeological evidence. Interpreting the available archaeological and genetic evidence from these view points Hiscock presented a novel narrative of Australian prehistory, in which population sizes fluctuated through time in response to environmental productivity, the physical characteristics of people varied as climate and gene flows altered, and the economic, social, and ideological systems adjusted to accommodate and incorporate the circumstances of each time period.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n archaeologist. Born in Melbourne he obtained a PhD from the University of Queensland
University of Queensland
The University of Queensland, also known as UQ, is a public university located in state of Queensland, Australia. Founded in 1909, it is the oldest and largest university in Queensland and the fifth oldest in the nation...
. He is now Professor in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University
Australian National University
The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...
, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Society of Antiquaries of London
The Society of Antiquaries of London is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London , and is...
and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Museum
Australian Museum
The Australian Museum is the oldest museum in Australia, with an international reputation in the fields of natural history and anthropology. It features collections of vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, as well as mineralogy, palaeontology, and anthropology...
. His research interests include lithic technology
Lithic Technology
In archeology, lithic technology refers to a broad array of techniques and styles to produce usable tools from various types of stone. The earliest stone tools were recovered from modern Ethiopia and were dated to between two-million and three-million years old...
, the archaeology of prehistoric Aborigines in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, and the study of Neanderthal
Neanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...
people.
Australian Prehistory
In addition to his work on lithic technology in Australia Hiscock has contributed to a reinterpretation of the Prehistory of AustraliaPrehistory of Australia
The prehistory of Australia is the period between the first human habitation of the Australian continent and the first definitive sighting of Australia by Europeans in 1606, which may be taken as the beginning of the recent history of Australia...
. His work on colonization and setllement, with Lynley Wallace, created the 'Desert Transformation' model, which proposed that about 50,000 years ago human colonisists dispersed across much of the Australian continent at a time when the deserts were less harsh than today. These early settlers then gradually adapted to the onset of harsher environments that occurred after approximately 35,000 years ago.
His work with Patrick Faulkner also led to a reconsideration of the large Anadara granosa shell mounds of northern Australia.
His major contribution to Australian prehistory has been a new synthesis of the subject, in a book titled Archaeology of Ancient Australia. In that volume he advanced the view that there was little evidence for directional change in the prehistory of Australia
Prehistory of Australia
The prehistory of Australia is the period between the first human habitation of the Australian continent and the first definitive sighting of Australia by Europeans in 1606, which may be taken as the beginning of the recent history of Australia...
and that the archaeological evidence was better seen as documenting a long series of adaptive changes, perhaps operating in multiple directions, rather than progress towards 'intensification' in the recent past. This view was founded on a strong negative critique of the value of ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
in the construction of narratives about the deep prehistoric past, arguing that ethnographic analogy had often imposed images of the lifestyle of recent Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines , also called Aboriginal Australians, from the latin ab originem , are people who are indigenous to most of the Australian continentthat is, to mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania...
on the different lives of their distant ancestors. Brian Fagan. has suggested that in doing so Hiscock has attacked the tyranny of the ethnographic record that has dogged Australian archaeology for generations. Hiscock's argument also emphasized the likely failure of much of the Pleistocene
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
archaeological record to preserve, arguing that the apparent simplicity of early eras resulted partly from the poverty of the archaeological evidence. Interpreting the available archaeological and genetic evidence from these view points Hiscock presented a novel narrative of Australian prehistory, in which population sizes fluctuated through time in response to environmental productivity, the physical characteristics of people varied as climate and gene flows altered, and the economic, social, and ideological systems adjusted to accommodate and incorporate the circumstances of each time period.
Books
- Hiscock, P. 2008 Archaeology of Ancient Australia. Routledge: London.
- Hiscock, P. and V. Attenbrow 2005 Australia's Eastern Regional Sequence revisited: Technology and change at Capertee 3. British Archaeological Reports. International Monograph Series 1397. Oxford:Archaeopress.
- Veth,P., M. Smith and P. Hiscock 2005 Desert Peoples: archaeological perspectives. Blackwell.
Articles/Chapters
- Hiscock, P. and C. Clarkson 2009 The reality of reduction experiments and the GIUR: reply to Eren and Sampson. Journal of Archaeological Science 36:1576-1581.
- Hiscock, P, A. Turq, J-P. Faivre and L. Bourguignon. 2009 Quina procurement and tool production. pp. 232–246 in. B. Adams and B.S. Blades (eds) Lithic Materials and Paleolithic Societies Wiley-Blackwell
- Hiscock, P. 2009 Reduction, recycling and raw material Procurement in Western Arnhem Land. pp. 78–94 in. B. Adams and B.S. Blades (eds) Lithic Materials and Paleolithic Societies Wiley-Blackwell
- Hiscock, P. and C. Clarkson 2008 The construction of morphological diversity: a study of Mousterian implement retouching at Combe Grenal. pp. 106–135 in. W. Andrefsky (ed.) Lithic Technology Cambridge University Press.
- Mercieca, A. and Hiscock, P. 2008 Experimental insights into alternative strategies of lithic heat treatment. Journal of Archaeological Science 35:2634–2639.
- Hiscock, P. and C. Clarkson 2007 Retouched notches at Combe Grenal (France) and the Reduction Hypothesis. American Antiquity 72: 176-190.
- Hiscock, P. 2007 Looking the other way. A materialist/technological approach to classifying tools and implements, cores and retouched flakes. In S. McPherron (ed.) Tools versus Cores? Alternative approaches to Stone Tool Analysis. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 198–222.
- Hiscock, P. 2007 Australian point and core reduction viewed through refitting. In M. de Bie and U.Schurman (eds) Fitting Rocks. Lithic refitting examined. British Archaeological Reports. International Monograph Series 1596. Oxford: Archaeopress. pp. 105–118.
- Hiscock, P. 2006 Blunt and to the Point: Changing technological strategies in Holocene Australia. pp. 69–95 in I. Lilley (ed.) Archaeology in Oceania: Australia and the Pacific Islands. Blackwell.
- Hiscock, P. 2006 Process or planning?: depicting and understanding the variability in Australian core reduction. In S. Ulm (eds) An archaeological life: papers in honour of Jay Hall. University of Queensland. pp. 99–108.
- Hiscock, P. and P. Faulkner 2006 Dating the dreaming? Creation of myths and rituals for mounds along the northern Australian coastline. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 16:209-22.
- Hiscock, P. and S. O’Connor 2006 An Australian perspective on modern behaviour and artefact assemblages, Before Farming, online version 2006/1 article 5.
- Hiscock, P. and C. Clarkson 2005 Experimental evaluation of Kuhn's Geometric Index of Reduction and the flat-flake problem. Journal of Archaeological Science 32:1015-1022.
- Hiscock, P. and V. Attenbrow 2005 Reduction continuums and tool use. In Clarkson, C. and L. Lamb (eds) Rocking the Boat: Recent Australian Approaches to Lithic Reduction, Use and Classification. British Archaeological Reports. International Monograph Series 1408. Oxford: Archaeopress.
- Hiscock, P. and C. Clarkson 2005 Measuring artefact reduction: an examination of Kuhn's Geometric Index of Reduction. In Clarkson, C. and L. Lamb (eds) Rocking the Boat: Recent Australian Approaches to Lithic Reduction, Use and Classification. British Archaeological Reports. International Monograph Series 1408. Oxford: Archaeopress.
- Hiscock, P. 2005 Reverse knapping in the Antipodes: The spatial implications of alternate approaches to knapping. In Xavier Terradas (editor) L'outillage lithique en contextes ethnoarchéologiques / Lithic Toolkits in Ethnoarchaeological Contexts. Acts of the XIVth UISPP Congress, University of Liège, Belgium, 2–8 September 2001, Colloque/Symposium 1.4. British Archaeological Reports. International Monograph Series, S1370. Oxford: Archaeopress. pp. 35–39.
- Bellwood, P. and P. Hiscock 2005 Australia and the Austronesians. In C. Scarre (editor) The human past. World prehistory and the development of human societies. Thames and Hudson. pp. 264–305.
- Hiscock, P. 2005 Artefacts on Aru: evaluating the technological sequences. In S, O’Connor, M. Spriggs, and P. Veth (eds.) The Archaeology of the Aru Islands, Eastern Indonesia. Terra Australis 22, Australian National University, Canberra. pp. 205–234.
- Hiscock, P. and S. O’Connor 2005 Arid paradises or dangerous landscapes. A review of explanations for Paleolithic assemblage change in arid Australia and Africa. In P. Veth, M. Smith and P. Hiscock (eds) Desert Peoples: Archaeological perspectives. Blackwell. pp. 58–77.
- Hiscock, P. and L. Wallis 2005 Pleistocene settlement of deserts from an Australian perspective. In P. Veth, M. Smith and P. Hiscock (eds) Desert Peoples: archaeological perspectives. Blackwell. pp. 34–57.
- Hiscock, P. 2004 Slippery and Billy: intention, selection and equifinality in lithic artefacts. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 14:71-77.
- Hiscock, P. and V. Attenbrow 2003 Early Australian implement variation: a reduction model. Journal of Archaeological Science 30: 239-249.
- Hiscock, P. 2002 Pattern and context in the Holocene proliferation of backed artefacts in Australia. In Robert G. Elston and Steven L. Kuhn (eds) Thinking Small: Global Perspectives on Microlithization. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association (AP3A) number 12. pp. 163–177.
- Hiscock, P. 2002 Quantifying the size of artefact assemblages. Journal of Archaeological Science 29:251-258.
- Hiscock, P. 2001 Sizing up prehistory: sample size and composition of artefact assemblages. Australian Aboriginal Studies 2001/1:48-62.
- Hiscock, P. and V. Attenbrow 1998 Early Holocene Backed Artefacts from Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 33:49-63.
- Hiscock, P. 1996 Transformations of Upper Palaeolithic implements in the Dabba industry from Haua Fteah (Libya). Antiquity 70:657-664.
- Hiscock, P. 1996 The New Age of alternative archaeology of Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 31:152-164.
- Hiscock, P. 1996 Mobility and technology in the Kakadu coastal wetlands. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 15:151-157.
- Hiscock, P. 1994 Technological responses to risk in Holocene Australia. Journal of World Prehistory 8:267-292.