Australian researchers will soon have greater capacity to analyse our past at the microscopic level, with the Australian Microarchaeological and Palaeosciences Facility (AusMAP) set to be established at Flinders University.
The first of its kind in the world, AusMAP will position Australia at the very forefront of micro-scale data generation, aiming to revolutionise the ways scientists address key questions and grand challenges in the fields of archaeology, palaeontology and the geosciences.
The new laboratory has been made possible with a significant investment from the Australian Research Council's 2025 Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities scheme.
Lead Chief Investigator Associate Professor Mike Morley, a geoarchaeologist and Director of the Flinders Microarchaeology Laboratory, says the ways scientists study the past and the types of information they can collect are changing at a remarkable pace.
"With huge advances in technological capability, both in the field and the laboratory, the most significant transformations are occurring at the smallest scales of analysis; in the micro realm," says Associate Professor Morley, who established the Microarchaeology Laboratory in 2020.
"We are continuing to drill down into new layers of understanding our past and as each of these advances are made, the techniques required to analyse and contextualise the data are becoming increasingly vital.
"AusMAP aims to be the first of its kind, putting Australia ahead of the curve in these emerging fields of micro-analyses, which are likely to underpin the future of archaeological, palaeontological and Earth science."
Serving Australia, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, and global collaborations, the AusMAP Facility will be a state-of-the-art laboratory complex enabling analyses of cultural, fossil, and environmental materials at microscopic scales.
By uniquely combining cutting-edge micro-scale recording and excavation techniques with quantitative analytical instrumentation, AusMAP will be the first of its kind worldwide, allowing Australia to lead the field in micro-scale analyses of artefacts, fossils, ecofacts, rocks, and minerals.
"Microarchaeology is already being used by our team in groundbreaking research, from the extinction of the largest ever primate, Gigantopithecus blacki, to understanding the chemical environments that can preserve rock art, as well as reconstructing the environments of the earliest Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia," says Associate Professor Morley from Flinders' College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.
"Building on the work of Flinders Microarchaeology Laboratory, the establishment of AusMAP and its new high-specification technology will take these analyses to unprecedented heights.
"This is a significant milestone in our quest to understand the past at a microscopic level. This facility will enable us to uncover details that were previously beyond our reach, providing unprecedented insights into human history and environmental changes."
The Australian Microarchaeology and Palaeosciences Facility (AusMAP) has been funded under the Australian Research Council's Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities scheme for 2025. The project will be administered by Flinders University with Flinders Chief Investigators Associate Professor Mike Morley, Professor Amy Roberts, Professor Gavin Prideaux and Dr Diana Fusco, with project partners the University of Sydney, University of Adelaide, Griffith University, Lantern Heritage Pty Ltd, La Trobe University, University of Toronto, Scarborough, University of Melbourne, Silpakorn University and National University of Malaysia.
