Person

Hallam, Sylvia Joy (1927 - 2019)

Born
17 August 1927
Kettering, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom
Died
3 June 2019
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Occupation
Archaeologist

Summary

Sylvia Hallam was an archaeologist who, after coming to Australia on 1961, became a pioneer of Aboriginal archaeology in Western Australia. Her research emphasised landscape studies and regional field surveying, stressing the importance of changing environments in understanding the archaeological record. She focussed on the Swan Coastal Plain, compiling an invaluable record of areas that have been subsumed under suburbia. Her interests ranged from microliths and the role of women in pre-European Western Australia to fire as a tool of land management. Hallam's seminal work, Fire and hearth (1975, revised edition 2014), showed how the use of fire radically altered the landscape and changed land use patterns. In her later career she switched from fieldwork to a fruitful study of archival materials. Hallam was active in professional organisations, serving as President of the Royal Society of Western Australia from 1985 to 1986.

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Details

Chronology

1961
Life event - Migrated to Western Australia with her family
1970 - 1984
Career position - Lecturer in prehistory (part-time to 1973), University of Western Australia
1984 - 1989
Career position - Associate Professor, Department of Archaeology, University of Western Australia
1984 - 2019
Award - Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities
1985 - 1986
Career position - President, Royal Society of Western Australia
2004
Education - PhD, University of Cambridge

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Books

  • Hallam, Sylvia J., Fire and hearth: a study of Aboriginal usage and European usurpation in south-western Australia (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1975), 158 pp. Details
  • Hallam, Sylvia J., Fire and hearth : Karla yoorda : a study of Aboriginal usage and European usurpation in south-western Australia (Crawley, W.A.: UWA Publishing, 2014), 203 pp. Details

Edited Books

  • Bird, Caroline; and Webb, R. Esmée eds, Fire and hearth forty years on : essays in honour of Sylvia J. Hallam (Perth, W. A.: Western Australian Museum, 2011), 142 pp. Details

Journal Articles

  • Bird, Caroline and Smith, Moya, 'Professor Sylvia Joy Hallam MA, PhD (Cantab.), FAHA 17th August 1927 - 3rd June 2019', Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, 102 (2019), 134-5. Details
  • Hallam, S. J., 'The relevance of Old World archaeology to the first entry of man into new words: colonization seen from the antipodes', Quaternary research, 8 (1) (1977), 128-48. Details

Reviews

  • Bird, Caroline; and Webb, R. Esmée, eds., Fire and hearth forty years on : essays in honour of Sylvia J. Hallam (2011)
    Davidson, Iain, Archaeology in Oceania, 47 (1), (2012), 55-6. Details

See also

  • Griffiths, Billy, Deep time dreaming: uncovering ancient Australia (Carlton, Vic.: Black Inc., 2018), 376 pp. Details

Helen Cohn

Created: 27 May 2022

EOAS ID: biogs/P006984b.htm

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"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260