Heather Burke

Biography

Heather is an historical archaeologist with a wide range of research interests, including the construction of class and status through material culture, the archaeology of cross-cultural engagement and the links between cultural heritage, memory and past and present social identity. She graduated with a PhD from UNE (Armidale) in 1996, and has worked as a researcher and consultant on historical and Indigenous archaeological sites throughout New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, Queensland and the Northern Territory. She is a past co-editor of the journal Australian Archaeology and has published widely, including the books Meaning and Ideology in Historical Archaeology (1999) and The Archaeologist’s Field Handbook, a standard manual for teaching archaeological field methods which was revised and expanded for a second edition in 2017. Her current research focusses on the ‘frontier’ and its social and material effects, particularly the archaeology of frontier conflict in Queensland.