I have been fascinated with dating the past all my research career. The opportunity to contribute to understanding where we as a species came from is one of the most exciting and humbling things I have ever been involved with.

Although the number of early human remains that have been found would literally fill a small tow truck, a major source of these bones is Indonesia; it’s here that the first remains of Homo erectus and more recently Homo floresiensis (‘the Hobbit’) have been discovered. Crucially, Indonesia was most likely the last staging post before Australia was colonised  by early humans some 60,000 years ago.

In southeast Asia and Australia I have been using the latest developments in radiocarbon dating and characterising volcanic ash bands to date some of the major fossil finds.

The following few pages are designed to give a taste of some of the key discoveries and how they were unearthed. Embedded in the map links are short summaries of the important sites with images and movies. Click on the map numbers to go to the relevant page. If you’re interested, this fieldtrip has also been translated into Armenian which you can reach by clicking here.

This work is been undertaken collaboratively with Australian, Indonesian and UK colleagues at the following institutions without whom this work would not have been possible: Geological and Research Development Centre, Goethe University, Indonesian Centre for Archaeology, Institut Teknologi Bandung, the University of Aberystwyth, the University of New England and the University of Wollongong.