In consultation with staff, students nominate a topic related to the course around which they can design a practical, replicable or experiential archaeological experiment. This involves a systematic approach informed by scientific method to formulate research aims, hypotheses, rationales, and experiment designs. Students video record themselves carrying out the experiment in a controlled environment. ARCS2010 students have cast bronze, created fire projectiles, and recreated ancient perfumes – supervised in the secure School of Social Science Archaeological laboratory, and Archaeology Teaching and Research Centre (ATARC) on UQ's St. Lucia campus. Students edit footage to produce a 10 minute presentation providing aims/hypotheses; rationale; literature review; video evidence conducting the experiment itself; discussion and implications; conclusions and references. Students are tutored in audio-visual production and post-production techniques, and given access to specialist materials (are assigned from the course budget). Selected presentations are uploaded to a dedicated YouTube channel with some high ranking students going on to publish their experiments in academic journals, making this a well-suited technique for establishing student research portfolios or promoting media engagement. As this technique spans much of a standard course duration it is recommended to be more highly weighted at approximately 45% of the total course grade.

Photo of Professor Chris Clarkson

Professor Chris Clarkson

c.clarkson@uq.edu.au

I studied archaeology at the University of Queensland, then completed my PhD at the Australian National University under the supervision of Prof Peter Hiscock and Distinguished Professor Sue O'Connor on Holocene technological and cultural change in Wardaman Country, Northern Territory. I then took up a postdoctoral Fellowship in the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolution at the University of Cambridge, working closely with Professors Robert Foley, Marta Mirazon Lahr and Michael Petraglia. I returned to UQ as an ARC Fellow in 2004 and then took up a lectureship in the School of Social Science in 2005. My teaching is centred on stone tools, ancient technologies, Anustralian Indigenous heritage, Human Evolution and other topics. My research involves working closely with Aboriginal people documenting their cultural heritage, understanding the evolution of our species and the migration of Homo sapiens out of Africa and long-term change in many parts of the world, including East Timor, France, Africa, and India. I am currently working on Australia's oldest known site of Madjedbebe in close collaboration with the Mirarr and Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, and the site of Malangangerr with the Manilikarr, Njanmja Aboriginal Corporation and Kakadu National Park. Find out more