Curating Nation | Guerrilla Archaeologists and the Singapore Story

Prof. Miksic at the Spice Garden, Fort Canning

Date: 12 April 2012, Thursday
Time: 6.30pm
Venue: NUS Museum

Free Admission.
To register, please email museum@nus.edu.sg or call 6516 8817 / 8429

Most people think Singapore and archaeology are boring subjects, but the combination of the two can be exciting. Since Singapore has no laws covering archaeology, it is possible and sometimes necessary to go about the exploration for new sites in unorthodox ways. The term "underground" can mean something different in Singapore than it does in normal archaeological contexts!  In this talk Prof. John Miksic will provide an account of the history of archaeology in Singapore since 1984, and its connection with museums.

About the Speaker
Prof. John Miksic grew up in western New York State, where he found stone arrowheads made by the Iroquois on his grandfather's farm. In 1967 he participated in his first archaeological expedition, to northern Canada to study Inuit. The next year he joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Malaysia, whereupon he was entranced by the archaeological potential of this region. He obtained his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1979 after studying an ancient port in northeast Sumatra. He lived in Bencoolen for two years, Yogyakarta for six years, and moved to Singapore in 1987. He teaches at the National University of Singapore, and heads the Archaeology Unit at ISEAS.

Event photos