Jillian Garvey


Dr Jillian Maree Garvey is an Australian archaeologist and researcher specialising in late Quaternary Australian Indigenous Archaeology at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. She is an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellow in Archaeology. Her research interests include Australian Aboriginal Archaeology, Experimental Archaeology, Landscape Archaeology, Late Pleistocene and Holocene Palaeoecology and Zooarchaeology and she is a specialist in the taphonomic identification of animal bones and invertebrate fauna.
As well as her research, Garvey teaches undergraduate courses and supervises Honours and Higher Degree in Research level, including Archaeology Field School, at La Trobe University.
Garvey is a Registered Cultural Heritage Advisor with the Office of Aboriginal Affairs Victoria and a current member of the Australian Archaeological Association ; International Council for Archaeozoology ; Australasian Quaternary Association and The Royal Society of Victoria.

Education

In 1999, Garvey completed a Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Science with a joint thesis between the Departments of Archaeology and Zoology at La Trobe University. The focus of her thesis was in identifying the fossilized history of a late Holocene assemblage of small mammals in Tasmania. This project involved studying the dietary selectivity of predators and "included the role in which Strigiformes play in the accumulation of small animals in these faunal assemblages". "Experimental feeding trials of the three owl taxa known to currently inhabit Tasmania" were conducted as part of the research in the investigation of regurgitated owl-pellets in determining the source of small animal bones. In 2005, she investigated "the vertebrate taphonomy, palaeoecology and the depositional environment of an Early Carboniferous fossil fish locality, Fish Hill, in the Home Station Member of the Snowy Plains Formation, Mansfield Basin, Australia. This project combined research on the vertebrate fish assemblage, micro vertebrates, ichnology, taphonomy and geology of the locality to develop an overall understanding of the palaeoecology and palaeocommunity". This PhD research contributed to improving knowledge on new fish species from the Early Carboniferous in the Mansfield Basin locality.

Career

Garvey has published on Indigenous Australian Archaeology with an extensive list of academic publications and Research projects in which she has been involved. She has worked on late Quaternary assemblages within South-west Tasmania, Lake Mungo in New South Wales, Cuddie Springs in New South Wales, and Murray River in north-west Victoria. Her contributions have included numerous book publications as an editor, reviewer and author and has over 30 published Conference papers nationally and internationally including Society of American Archaeology, International Conference for Zooarchaeology, Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology, Australian Archaeological Association Conference and Conference on Australian Vertebrate Evolution Palaeontology and Systematics.
Ongoing research into the possible causes relating to the extinction of Australia's megafauna during the late Pleistocene era have uncovered that megafauna and Indigenous humans co-existed in the same environment, inclusive of these two sites; Cuddie Springs in NSW and Nombe Rockshelter in the Papua New Guinea highlands. Bones from megafauna and stone tool artefacts from human inhabitants have been found at these sites in association with each other. The cause of Indigenous Australian megafauna loss has been attributed to human-driven extinction by numerous researchers, however, Garvey and her colleagues in dating faunal assemblages estimated 69% of total faunal species extinctions lie outside the known time for human colonization. Fauna may be identified from teeth, bone, hair, fur, shell, and are important in describing the palaeoenvironment and how Indigenous humans selected, killed and prepared these fauna as a nutritional food source in ancient times which has been a focus of Garvey's research. To obtain a greater understanding of Indigenous Australian aboriginal hunting and butchery practices, collection of evidence from the ethnographic record and modern animal anatomical experiments are conducted including fatty acid analyses involving Bennett's Wallaby, kangaroo, wombat and emu as an analogue to ancient fauna. Research on freshwater shell middens left in the archaeological record by Indigenous human occupants along the Murray River in Northwest Victoria has also been undertaken by Garvey.
During November 2016, Garvey and colleagues were involved in an archaeological dig at the Lancefield megafauna excavation site in central Victoria, Australia where the discovery of teeth from the extinct giant marsupial Diprotodon, a rhinoceros-sized wombat, had been unearthed from the ancient swamplands, together with remains of Macropus Titan, an extinct giant kangaroo, and aboriginal artefacts. The findings from the excavation site may hold important information on the extinction of megafauna in the region.

Awards and grants

Garvey had been awarded the ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellowship Mentoring Scheme at the University of Melbourne. This Fellowship is awarded to those who have completed a PhD in the last 10 years within Humanities and Social Sciences. The focus of this intensive mentoring programme is in improving and supporting leadership capabilities in early career female researchers, and best practice guidelines in research activities.
Garvey has been awarded over $875,000 in Research funding for project work between 2004 and 2016. Grants and Awards have been presented to Dr Garvey from the Australian Research Council, Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Kimberley Foundation, La Trobe University Research Transforming Human Societies and International Council for Archaeozoology and Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.