D.Frankel@latrobe.edu.au

David Frankel studied archaeology at the University of Sydney before going on to complete a
PhD at Gothenburg University, Sweden. After some years at The British Museum, he
returned to Australia in 1978 to take up a lectureship at La Trobe University. Retiring after 35 years at La Trobe as Emeritus Professor, he maintains a close connection with the
Department of Archaeology and History.
He is Joint Editor-in-Chief of the Swedish monograph series, Studies in Mediterranean
Archaeology, and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the
Society of Antiquaries of London. In 2015 he was awarded the Rhys Jones Medal for
Outstanding Contributions to Australian Archaeology by the Australian Archaeological
Association. His primary research interests are in Australian Aboriginal archaeology and in the
archaeology of Bronze Age Cyprus. He has excavated a range of sites in Australia and
Cyprus and published extensively on the archaeology of these areas.

My name is Ian Debenham and I am currently an HDR student at Macquarie University
working on a thesis titled “The Roman Shipbuilding Industry” which will, when completed,
provide a detailed view of Roman shipbuilding from a governmental and administrative point
of view and the metamorphosis of this industry from Republic to Empire. I am 70 years old,
retired, a grandfather and a former licensed aircraft maintenance engineer, former museum
curator, current honorary company director of Historical Aircraft Projects Pty. Ltd., honorary
secretary of the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society Inc. and occasional volunteer at the
Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (Powerhouse) in Sydney. I am a life member of the
Aviation Historical Society of Australia (NSW) and for my services to the study of
Australia’s aviation history I was awarded an OAM.

I am a recent archaeology Honours graduate (2019) from the University of Queensland. My
research interests include the archaeology of medicine, particularly  investigating
medicinal/non-food uses of plants in archaeobotany, the interplay between historical texts
and archaeological interpretation; feminist/sensory archaeology; and polychrome statues
and their displays in museums. Much of these interests were combined in my Honours thesis
on the archaeology of contraception in the Greco-Roman world, which looked at plants
commonly found in Mediterranean archaeological sites that were also recorded by ancient
medical authors as contraceptive ingredients.  The lack of access to networks in Australia is
definitely something I felt and I look forward to being able to engage and communicate with
others researching Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology!