Lynley Wallis


Lynley A. Wallis is an Australian archaeologist and Associate Professor at Griffith University. She is a specialist in palaeoenvironmental reconstruction through the analysis of phytoliths.

Education

Wallis obtained her PhD from the Australian National University. Her PhD thesis titled Phytoliths, Late Quaternary Environment and Archaeology in Tropical Semi-arid Northwest Australia demonstrated the suitability of phytolith analysis to questions of palaeoenvironmental interest in the tropical semi-arid areas and, subsequently, produced the first detailed late Quaternary terrestrial vegetation record for northwest Australia.

Career

Her career spans both private and public sector cultural heritage management, university lecturing and research in both Indigenous and historical archaeology.
She was employed as a lecturer in the School of Anthropology, Archaeology and Sociology at James Cook University and then for five years at Flinders University. From 2009–2011, Associate Professor Wallis served as a senior research fellow at the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre at the University of Queensland. From 2016–2020 Wallis was a senior research fellow with Nulungu Research Institute at University of Notre Dame but in 2020 took up a research position at Griffith University in Brisbane.
Between these academic positions, Wallis worked as senior conservation officer for the Heritage Unit, Environment ACT and then as a senior research officer at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. She started her own consulting company Wallis Heritage Consulting in 2011 which provides cultural heritage management services and Indigenous liaison for both government and private sector clients.

Research

Wallis' research interests focus on human-environment relationships through the late Quaternary period, coastal and island archaeology, phytolith analysis, and ethnobotany. She specialises in palaeoenvironmental reconstruction through the analysis of phytoliths and remote area fieldwork, and maintains broad interests in community-based Indigenous archaeology.
She has been worked on projects across most of Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory, Australian Capital Territory and Queensland and has international experience working in Chile, Vietnam and Thailand.
She has been involved in a number of Australian Research Council grants across her career and has been awarded more than 40 research grants.

Awards and honours

Wallis has served as President of two peak organisations for archaeologists in Australia, the Australian Archaeological Association and the Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists.
In 2012, Wallis was awarded life membership for her contribution to the Australian Archaeological Association.

Select publications