This keynote address will explore a range of cultural heritage projects relating to collaborations between ANSTO, Flinders University and the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation. From rare artefacts to earthen cooking mounds and ancient shell middens this presentation considers the contribution of radiocarbon dating within a broader research program that has investigated Aboriginal...
Aldehydes are considered an important species toward astrobiology, acting as a primary reagent for the Strecker synthesis of amino acids in aqueous media. However, within the cold, icy surfaces of planetary bodies and interstellar dust particles, chemical reactions that lead to these biological-building blocks can still unfold. Here, "non-thermal equilibrium" chemistry is driven by harsh...
Eco-engineering tailings into soil-like substrates is an emerging technology to rehabilitate the tailings landscapes. Pioneer plants play an important role in mineral weathering and secondary mineral formation, which are pre-requisites for aggregate formation and pedogenesis in the tailings. The present study aimed to characterise the direct role of pioneer plant roots in tailing mineral...
The 3.48 Ga Dresser Formation, Pilbara Craton, Western Australia provides the Earth’s most convincing evidence of early life through a diverse array of biosignatures. However, identifying biosignatures in Archean rocks is difficult due to billions of years of erosion, deformation, and metamorphic alteration. Characterisation of community-accepted biosignatures also remains challenging,...
We employ high-throughput thermal-neutron tomographic imaging to visualise internal diagnostic features of dense fossiliferous breccia from three Pleistocene cave localities in Sumatra, Indonesia. We demonstrate that these seemingly homogeneous breccias are an excellent source of data to aid in determining taphonomic and depositional histories of complex depositional sites such as tropical...
Changes in the coordination of elements in silicate melts as a function of pressure impact their geochemical behaviour and are key to understanding processes such as planetary differentiation. Questions persist as to the extent to which the coordination environment of elements in silicate melts at high pressure and temperature can be preserved in glasses recovered to ambient conditions.
The...
Our understanding of material culture and past environmental contexts have been utterly transformed over the last two decades by new and greatly improved scientific methods. Innovative investigations revolve around refinement of methods for chronological dating, characterization and provenancing, bioarchaeology, geoarchaeology and the emerging sub-discipline of cyber-archaeology. As ever, when...
Fingermarks are an important tool in forensic investigations however, a large number are not successfully recovered and are never used as evidence.(1) A significant challenge in their detection is the chemical variability of fingermark deposits. This research aims to answer important questions in fingermark chemistry using synchrotron sourced analysis including x-ray fluorescence microscopy...
Fluid-mediated mineral replacement reactions are common in natural systems and are essential for geological and engineering processes. In these reactions, a primary mineral is replaced by a product mineral via a mechanism called coupled dissolution-reprecipitation. This mechanism leads to the preservation of the shape of the primary mineral into the product mineral. The product mineral...