Reading time: 50 minutes The Battle of Savo Island The Battle of Savo Island occurred early in the morning on 9 August 1942 when the the Japanese 8th Fleet surprised the Allied Task Force shortly after the landing at Guadalcanal. In approximately 37...

Reading time: 5 minutes American farmer and poet Wendell Berry said of the first Europeans in North America that they came with vision, but not with sight. They came with vision of former places but not the sight to see what was before them. Instead of...

Reading time: 8 minutes Just over 80 years ago, Australian forces fought their first major battle of World War II. Bardia, a small town on the coast of Libya, some 30 km from the Egyptian border, was an Italian stronghold. The Australian troops occupied Bardia,...

Reading time: 6 minutes When the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was only the fourth time that international events prevented the games from going forward. Perhaps surprisingly, this was the second time for Tokyo, although...

The word “pyramid” is synonymous with Egypt, but it is actually neighbouring Sudan that is home to the world’s largest collection of these spectacular ancient structures.

Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu is in the news again, with the publication of a new book critiquing Pascoe’s arguments. Dark Emu builds on an earlier, less known work by archaeologist Rupert Gerritsen, who argued a number of regions across Australia should be considered centres of Aboriginal agriculture.

Reading time: 11 minutes To the Axis Powers, the Australian flotilla that fought in the Mediterranean during the Second World War appeared to be no threat. Anyone looking at the old, small and slow destroyer group would think the same. Soon, however, the Axis and the...

Reading time: 7 minutes A scene from Doug Engelbart’s groundbreaking 1968 computer demo. Doug Engelbart Institute On a crisp California afternoon in early December 1968, a square-jawed, mild-mannered Stanford researcher named Douglas Engelbart took the stage at...

Reading time: 8 minutes Since the global pandemic began, debate has raged over whether Tokyo should go ahead with the Olympic Games, now set to open on July 23. The same heated debates were heard the last time an Olympic Games were staged following a global pandemic —...

Reading time: 9 minutes The real-life story of French navigator Nicolas Baudin’s sea voyage to map the unknown coasts of Australia is more gripping than any fictionalised account. In the wake of the French Revolution in 1789, the French were experiencing a maelstrom...

Reading time: 6 minutes READ PART ONE AND PART TWO By Michael Vecchio Saving Private Ryan (1998) Dir. Steven Spielberg Surely amongst the first titles to come to mind if asked to name a World War II movie, Saving Private Ryan is yet another Steven Spielberg...

Reading time: 9 minutes The Battle of Cape Spada was a short, violent encounter on the 19th of July, 1940 where the cruiser HMAS Sydney of the Royal Australian Navy sank one Italian cruiser and severely damaged another off the coast of Crete. In this article, we go...

Reading time: 9 minutes Eminent Australian anthropologist Peter Sutton and respected field archaeologist Keryn Walshe have co-authored a meticulously researched new book, Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate. It’s set to become the definitive critique...

Reading time: 8 minutes The Roman emperor Augustus is held up by some as a statesman who brought peace, and as a potential model for the future. But what was the cost of Augustus’ peace, and how real was it? On his 2012 honeymoon to Rome, Facebook founder Mark...

Reading time: 7 minutes National Geographic magazines and Indiana Jones movies might have you picturing archaeologists excavating near Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge and Machu Picchu. And some of us do work at these famous places. But...

Reading time: 8 minutes For a fine example of overconfidence during the height of British Imperialism, look no further than the Anglo-Zulu War. Fought in the late 19th century after the invasion of Zululand, the British Empire faced a far greater challenge than...

Reading time: 6 minutes Holiday in Hawaii and one of the birds you’re most likely to encounter is the chicken. You find them everywhere from beaches, to car parks and on walks through the bushland. The locals warn that your chance of ever catching one are slim as...

Reading time: 6 minutes There are moves afoot to scrub colonial businessman Benjamin Boyd’s name from the map. The owners of historic Boydtown on the NSW south coast are planning to change its name, while Ben Boyd National Park may also be renamed. Residents in...

Reading time: 10 minutes In 2013, the World Health Organisation declared antibiotic resistance was a threat to global health security. It can seem hard to believe that in the 21st century infectious diseases remain such a profound existential risk. But this...

Reading time: 8 minutes Archaeology in the rugged landscape of Georgia reveals a medieval world where caves and underground shelters provided refuge from raiders, allowing a threatened civilisation to flourish Southwest Georgia, close to the borders with Turkey and...