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Betty Meehan

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Australian archaeologist

Betty MeehanFAHA
BornBetty Francis Meehan
1933
Bourke, New South Wales, Australia
NationalityAustralian
Occupation(s)Archaeologist, anthropologist
Years active1958–2000s
Known forWork with Arnhem Land peoples

Betty Francis Meehan FAHA (born 1933) is an Australian archaeologist and anthropologist who has worked extensively with Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.

Early life and education

Meehan was born and grew up in Bourke, New South Wales, Australia, in 1933. She was the elder daughter of Francis Owen and Olive Jane Meehan. She attended high school in Bourke and trained as a specialist infants' teacher at Bathurst Teachers College, teaching in Bourke, Darwin, Sydney, and Canberra. Meehan travelled with her first husband, Lester Hiatt, to the remote Northern Territory town of Maningrida, in East Arnhem Land, arriving in 1958 on a pearling lugger to find the Aboriginal community had set up camp on the beach and sent out a dugout canoe to bring them ashore. There she set up the first school for Aboriginal children at Maningrida, returning in the 1970s to undertake her PhD fieldwork with her second husband, Rhys Jones. In 1977, Meehan visited North Arnhem Land to observe the Anbarra people's daily behaviour living on the coast.

She studied anthropology at the University of Sydney from 1962, obtaining an MA in anthropology and a PhD at the Department of Prehistory and Anthropology of the Australian National University.

Career and recognition

Meehan was president of the Australian Archaeological Association in 1984 and editor of Australian Archaeology from 1987-1994.

She focused her research on the subsistence regimes of an Arnhem Land Aboriginal community. In 2007 she co-authored an article about this region and the confluence of human culture and the environment.

She was made an Honorary Associate of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University (1995-1996), was director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Environment Section of the Australian Heritage Commission from 1991 to 1995, head of the Aboriginal Section National Museum of Australia (1990-1991), and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (1987).

Her work is described and lauded in Billy Griffiths' 2018 award-winning book Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia.

References

  1. Obituaries 'A culture made less remote' 21 February 2008 Les Hiatt, 1931-2008
  2. Brockwell, Sally (2014). "Meehan, Betty". Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. pp. 4756–4758. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_2406. ISBN 978-1-4419-0426-3.
  3. Meehan, Betty (May 1977). "Hunters by the seashore". Journal of Human Evolution. 6 (4): 363–370. Bibcode:1977JHumE...6..363M. doi:10.1016/S0047-2484(77)80005-5.
  4. Hiatt, Les (5 October 2001). "Obituary - Rhys Jones". Obituaries Australia. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
  5. Bowler, Sandra; Clune, Genevieve (June 2000). "That Shadowy Band: The Role of Women in the Development of Australian Archaeology". Australian Archaeology (50): 32.
  6. Meehan, Betty; Jones, Rhys; Australian Archaeological Association (1988), Archaeology with ethnography: an Australian perspective, Dept. of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, ISBN 978-0-7315-0283-7
  7. Meehan, Betty (1977). "Hunters by the Seashore". Journal of Human Evolution. 6 (4): 363–370. Bibcode:1977JHumE...6..363M. doi:10.1016/S0047-2484(77)80005-5.
  8. Bourke, Patricia; Brockwell, Sally; Faulkner, Patrick; Meehan, Betty (October 2007). "Climate variability in the mid to late Holocene Arnhem Land Region, North Australia: Archaeological archives of environmental and cultural change". Archaeology in Oceania. 42 (3): 91–101. doi:10.1002/j.1834-4453.2007.tb00022.x.
  9. "Australian Academy of the Humanities Fellows". Archived from the original on 27 May 2015. Retrieved 27 May 2015.
  10. Griffiths, Billy (26 February 2018). Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia. Black Inc. ISBN 9781760640446.
  11. "Billy Griffiths, Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia (Black Inc., 2018)". Australian Archaeological Association. Archived from the original on 10 April 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2020.


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