Benjamin Marwick
PhD Student, Department of Archaeology and Natural History

Email: benjamin.marwick@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

My PhD thesis examines stone artefact technology and economics, cultural change and environmental change during the Pleistocene and Holocene in Northwest Thailand. This project is a collaboration with Professor Rasmi Shocoongdej (Silpakorn University, Bangkok) who is the director of the Highland Archaeological Project in Pangmapha. My thesis is supervised by Sue O’Connor and Peter Hiscock.

My MA (2002) was completed at the University of Western Australia as was my BA (Hons) (1999) which included a semester at the University of Michigan.

Research Interests

Stone artefact archaeology in Southeast Asia and Australia, archaeological sediments, language evolution, Australian and Southeast Asian archaeology

Key Publications

• Marwick, B. 2006a. What can archaeology do with Boyd and Richerson's cultural evolutionary program? The Review of Archaeology 26(2): 30-40. [PDF at dspace.anu.edu.au]
• Marwick, B. 2005a. The interpersonal origins of language: Social and linguistic implications of an archaeological approach to language evolution. Linguistics and the Human Sciences 1.2: 197-224. [PDF at dspace.anu.edu.au]
• Marwick, B. 2005b. Element concentrations and magnetic susceptibility of anthrosols: Indicators of prehistoric human occupation in the inland Pilbara, Western Australia. Journal of Archaeological Science 32: 1357-1368. [sciencedirect.com] [PDF]
• Marwick, B. 2003. Pleistocene exchange networks as evidence for the evolution of language. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17(1): 67-81. [PDF at dspace.anu.edu.au]
• Marwick, B. 2002a. Milly’s Cave: Evidence for human occupation of the Inland Pilbara during the Last Glacial Maximum. Tempus 7: 21-33. [PDF at dspace.anu.edu.au]
• Marwick, B. 2002b. Evidence of prehistoric occupation of the Abrolhos Islands, Western Australia. Records of the Western Australian Museum 20(4): 461-464.

Career Highlights

Editor (current), Journal of World Prehistory, Associate Editor (current), Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association, Winner, 2006 Dorothy Cameron Prize, Researcher, Middle Mekong Archaeology Project (current); Occasional Instructor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Chiang Mai University (current); Volunteer, Lower Mekong Archaeological Project (2005); Senior Consultant, Eureka Archaeological Research and Consulting, UWA (2003-2004); Undergraduate Instructor, UWA Centre for Archaeology (2001-2004)