Professor Ian J. McNiven (Monash University, and Chief Investigator with the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage) is an anthropological archaeologist who specialises in understanding the long-term development of Australian Indigenous coastal societies with a focus on the archaeology of seascapes and ritual and spiritual relationships with the sea. He is an elected member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In addition to over 180 refereed journal papers and book chapters, his 16 books include The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art (OUP, 2018), Appropriated Pasts: Indigenous Peoples and the Colonial Culture of Archaeology (AltaMira Press, 2005), and Constructions of Colonialism: Perspectives on Eliza Fraser's Shipwreck (Leicester University Press, 1998).
Professor Bruno David (Monash University, and Chief Investigator with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for
Australian Biodiversity and Heritage) is an archaeologist who specialises in the archaeology of Australia and the western Pacific, landscape archaeology, and rock art. He has long-practiced transdisciplinary approaches to archaeology, investigating the past through multiple disciplinary approaches in partnership research programs requested by local Indigenous communities. He has undertaken field research in Australia, Egypt, Papua New Guinea, the U.S.A., and Vanuatu. He has published hundreds of academic and popular articles on various dimensions of archaeology, and 17 books, the most recent including: The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art (OUP, 2018), Cave Art (Thames & Hudson, 2017), and Hiri: Archaeology of Maritime Trade along the South Coast of Papua New Guinea (University of Hawaii Press, 2017). He currently researches community archaeology with the GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation of East Gippsland, southeastern Australia.

• Introduction: Archaeology of Sahul by Ian J. McNiven and Bruno David


• The Thick Darkness of Pre-Historic Time: Antiquarian Archaeology in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Victoria by Ian J. McNiven


• History of Archaeology in Papua New Guinea: The Early Years Up to 1960 by Glenn R. Summerhayes


• Trans-Disciplinary Approaches to the Past in New Guinea by Chris Ballard


• Oral Tradition, History, and Archaeohistory of Indigenous Australia by Iain Davidson, Heather Burke, Lynley A. Wallis, Pearl Connelly, Lance Sullivan, Hazel Sullivan, Stephen Porter, and Isabel Tarragó


• Cultural Heritage and Contract Archaeology in Australia and New Guinea by Joanna Fresløv


• Museum Collections and their Legacies by Lindy Allen


• Island Hopping to Sahul by Kasih Norman, Sue O'Connor, and Michael Bird


• Australia's First People: Oldest Sites and Early Culture by Chris Clarkson, Kasih Norman, Sue O'Connor, Jane Balme, Peter Veth, and Ceri Shipton


• Interactions with Megafauna by Chris N. Johnson, Joe Dortch, and Trevor H. Worthy


• What Does DNA Tell Us about Past Connections and the Settlement of Sahul? by Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith and Anna L. Gosling


• Fire and the Transformation of Landscapes by Cassandra Rowe, Janelle Stevenson, Simon Connor, and Matthew Adeleye


• Beyond Agriculture: Ditch Networks in the New Guinea Landscape by Chris Ballard


• Enhanced Ecologies and Ecosystem Engineering: Strategies Developed by Aboriginal Australians to Increase the Abundance of Animal Resources by Ian J. McNiven, Tiina Manne, and Anne Ross


• The Coming of the Dingo by Jane Balme and Sue O'Connor


• Engaging and Designing Place: Furnishings and the Architecture of Archaeological Sites in Aboriginal Australia by Bruno David, Jean-Jacques Delannoy, Chris Urwin, Joanna Fresløv, Russell Mullett, and Christine Phillips


• The Big Flood: Responding to Sea-Level Rise and the Inundated Continental Shelf by Jonathan Benjamin and Sean Ulm


• Past Aboriginal Populations and Demographic Change Using Radiocarbon Data and Time-Series Analysis by Alan Williams, Sean Ulm, and M. A. Smith


• Persistence of Complexity: Continuation of Intensification, Population Change, and Socio-Structural Change in Current Debates in Australian Archaeology by Harry Lourandos and Anne Ross


• Boundaries, Relationality, and Style Provinces in Australian Rock Art by Madeleine Kelly and Liam M. Brady


• Australian Indigenous Ochres: Use, Sourcing, and Exchange by Jillian Huntley


• Axe Quarrying, Production, and Exchange in Australia and New Guinea by Anne Ford and Peter Hiscock


• Shell Valuables and Exchange Systems in New Guinea by Kat Szabó


• Language Evolution and Spread by Patrick McConvell and Nick Evans


• Stone Tool Manufacture and Use by Chris Clarkson


• Mortars and Pestles Make the Mid-Holocene Occupation of New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago Visible by Pamela Swadling


• Pottery Exchange Systems in New Guinea by Glenn R. Summerhayes


• Coral Sea Cultural Interaction Sphere by Ian J. McNiven


• Maritime Coastal and Island Societies of Australia and New Guinea by Michael Rowland, Ben Shaw, and Sean Ulm


• Below the Sky, Above the Clouds: The Archaeology of the Australian High Country by Joanna Fresløv and Russell Mullett


• The Archaeology of Social Transformation in the New Guinea Highlands by Dylan Gaffney and Tim Denham


• Beyond the Barriers: A New Model for the Settlement of Australian Deserts by Peter Veth, Jo McDonald, and Peter Hiscock


• Murray River Societies in Australia through the Lens of Bioarchaeology by Judith Littleton, Sarah Karstens, and Harry Allen


• Swamp and Delta Societies of the Papuan Gulf, Papua New Guinea by Chris Urwin, James W. Rhoads, and Joshua A. Bell


• Historisizing the "Dreaming": An Archaeological Perspective from Arid Australia by M. A. Smith


• Dugongs and Turtles as Kin: Relational Ontologies and Archaeological Perspectives on Ritualized Hunting by Coastal Indigenous Australians by Ian J. McNiven


• Rock Art Modification and its Ritualized and Relational Contexts by Liam M. Brady, R. G. Gunn, and Joakim Goldhahn


• Asian Traders and Macassan Trepangers by Daryl Wesley


• Whaling and Sealing in Nineteenth-Century Australia by Martin Gibbs and Lynette Russell


• Fatal Frontier: Temporal and Spatial Considerations of the Native Mounted Police and Colonial Violence Across Queensland by Lynley A. Wallis, Heather Burke, Bryce Barker, and Noelene Cole


• Missions and Reserves by Jeremy Ash


• The Archaeology of Agrarian Australia by Alistair Paterson


• Contact Rock Art by Jo McDonald, Ursula K. Frederick


• The Development (and Imagined Reinvention) of Australian Archaeology in the Twentieth Century by Chris Urwin and Matthew Spriggs


• Approaching Indigenous Archaeologies in Australia by Christopher Wilson


• Earth Mounding in the Western District of Victoria by Julian Dunn


• Flaked Stone Tools of Holocene Sahul: Case studies from Northern Australia and Papua New Guinea by Tim Ryan Maloney


• Plant Exploitation and Long-Term Cultural Change in Sahul: The Archaeobotanical Perspective by Stephanie Florin and Andrew Fairbairn


• Stone-Walled Fish Traps of Australia and New Guinea as Expressions of Enhanced Sociality by Ian J. McNiven and Ariana B. J. Lambrides

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea reviews and brings together the latest findings on the archaeology of the Australia-New Guinea region. In 42 new chapters commissioned for this book, 77 leading researchers present the archaeological evidence for Australia and New Guinea's deep-time history. The stories told reveal the astounding richness of Australia and New Guinea's Indigenous cultural history, stories of tens of thousands of years of Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, and New Guinean adaptation, cultural know-how, and creative ingenuity.