The discovery last year of the first therapeutic dental filling during the Neolithic and the finding, near Trieste, of the oldest military fort built by Romans in Europe was a major revolution in archaeology, not just for the discovery, but for the methods that were used to unearth the sites.
By analysing images produced by Airborne Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR), a team of scientists from the Multidisciplinary Laboratory at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) were able to locate the historically significant sites in ways that were beyond traditional archaeological excavation methods.
LIDAR uses laser light to remotely sense the properties of objects. In the case of the ICTP research, the "objects" were a series of archaeological sites in the Trieste Karst, a region northeast of the Adriatic Sea.
To talk about these imaging techniques, ANSTO will be welcoming back Professor Tuniz who was a former Director of the Physics Division at our Lucas Heights campus.
Professor Tuniz is a Science Consultant at the ICTP. As a bone reader, his work involves using physics to study the earliest human remains, their chemistry and DNA, their extinct floral and faunal contemporaries, and the geologic layers in which they were found.
He will be sharing his insights about these discoveries and what physics is bringing to archaeology.
To find out more about the science of bone reading and these important historical discoveries, join us for this free science lecture at Lucas Heights on 11 February.
About Professor Tuniz
Claudio Tuniz is Scientific Consultant and former Assistant Director (2004-2011) of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP).
His main field of interest is the application of advanced scientific methods in palaeoanthropology and human evolution, such as geochronology and X-ray imaging, in research projects carried on at the ICTP Multidisciplinary Laboratory.
At present he is Visiting Professor at the University of Wollongong (Australia) and at the University La Sapienza (Rome).
Tuniz led the accelerator mass spectrometry programme at ANSTO (1992-1996). He was also Director of the Physics Division at ANSTO (1996-1999) and Nuclear Counsellor at the Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations Organisations in Vienna (1999- 2004).
Previously he carried out his research activities at the University of Trieste, Italy, and other institutions such as the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics, the "Sincrotrone Trieste" and the Rutgers University (USA) (1974-1989).
He is Editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Springer, as well as author and co-author of over 100 papers in international journals, plus several books such as:
- "The science of human origins", with G. Manzi and D. Caramelli, Laterza, Italy, April 2013,;
- "Radioactivity", Oxford University Press, 2012,
- "The Bone Readers. Atoms, genes and the politics of Australia’s deep past", with R. Gillespie and C. Jones, Allan & Unwin, Sydney, Australia, Left Coast Press, USA, Springer Italia, 2009; and
- "Accelerator Mass Spectrometry", with J.R. Bird, D. Fink and G.F. Herzog, CRC Press, LLC, 1998.