May obtained an honours from Flinders University in 2001 under the supervision of Professor Claire Smith and Professor Mark Staniforth. Her thesis was titled The Last Frontier? acquiring the American-Australian Scientific Expedition Ethnographic Collection 1948. She obtained a PhD in 2006 from the Australian National University, supervised by Professor Howard Morphy, Professor Jon Altman and Dr Luke Taylor. Her thesis, titled Karrikadjurren – Creating Community with an Art Centre in Indigenous Australia used archaeological and ethnographic methods to explore the ongoing significance of art-making in Aboriginal communities in Arnhem Land. She carried out fieldwork collaboratively with artists from the Injalak Arts centre in Gumbalanya.
Career
After completing her PhD, May was employed as a lecturer in archaeology at Flinders University. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and a Chief Investigator on the Australian Research Council funded project "Picturing change: 21st Century perspectives on recent Australian rock art, especially that from the European contact period" which ran from 2008-2011 and was led by Professor Paul Taçon. She was also a Chief Investigator on the ARC-funded project "Wellington Range rock art in a global context" which ran 2016-2018. In 2009, she was appointed a lecturer at the Australian National University, and in 2017 she joined PERAHU as a senior research fellow. She currently directs the project "Pathways: people, landscape, and rock art in Djok Country" which runs from 2018-2024. May is best known as a scholar of rock art, particularly so-called Contact rock art traditions in Australia. She has also collaborated on research into rock art in China and Europe. More broadly, she has published monographs and edited collections concerning the archaeology of art, the archaeology and history of Macassan traders in northern Australia, and the history of collectors of Aboriginal Australian materials. May has been involved in the management of the world heritage listed Kakadu National Park, serving on the Kakadu research advisory committee and consulting as an outside expert on the park management plan. May's collection of filmed oral histories and other materials from her previous and ongoing research around Oenpelli, Injalak Hill and Kakadu is archived at AIATSIS.
Selected publications
Books
Injalak Arts members, Melissa Marshall, Sally K. May and Felicity Wright. 2018 Injalak Hill Rock Art. Gunbalanya: Injalak Arts.
Michelle Langley, Mirani Litster, Duncan Wright and Sally K. May. 2018 The Archaeology of Portable Art: Southeast Asian, Pacific and Australian Perspectives. London: Routledge.
Marshall Clark and Sally K. May. 2013 . Canberra: ANU EPress.
Ines Domingo Sanz, Danae Fiore, and Sally K. May. 2008 Archaeologies of Art: time, place and identity. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Sally K. May. 2009 Collecting Cultures: Myth, Politics, and Collaboration in the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition. California: Altamira.
Journal articles
May, S.K., Maralngurra, J., Johnston, I., Goldhahn, J., Lee, J., O’Loughlin, G., May, K., Nabobbob, C., Garde, M., and P.S.C. Taçon. 2019 ‘‘This is my Father’s Painting: a first-hand account of the creation of the most iconic rock art in Kakadu National Park’. Rock Art Research, v.36/2.
Frieman, C., and May, S.K. 2019 ‘Navigating Contact: Tradition and Innovation in Australian Contact Rock Art’, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, DOI: 10.1007/s10761-019-00511-0
May, S.K., Johnston, I.G., Taçon, P.S.C., Domingo Sanz, I. & J. Goldhahn. 2018 ‘Early Australian Anthropomorphs: the global significance of Jabiluka’s Dynamic Figure rock art’. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, v. 28/1, pp. 67–83.
May, S.K., Marshall, M., Domingo Sanz, I. & C. Smith. 2017 ‘Reflections on the Pedagogy of Archaeological Field Schools within Indigenous Community Archaeology Programmes in Australia’. Public Archaeology, 16/3-4:, pp. 172–190.
May, S.K., Wesley, D., Goldhahn, J., Litster, M. and B. Manera. 2017 ’Symbols of Power: the firearm paintings of Madjedbebe ’. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, v.21/3, pp. 690–707.
May, S.K., Taçon, P.S.C., Paterson, A. and M. Travers. 2013 ‘The world from Malarrak: depictions of Southeast Asian and European subjects in rock art from the Wellington Range, Australia’, Australian Aboriginal Studies, v.2013/1, pp. 45–56.
May, S.K., Taçon, P.S.C., Wesley, D. and M. Pearson. 2013 ‘Painted Ships on a Painted Arnhem Land Landscape’. The Great Circle: Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History, v.35/2, pp. 83–102.
May, S. K., Taçon, P.S.C., Guse, D., and M. Travers. 2010 ‘Painting History: Indigenous Observations and Depictions of the ‘Other’ in Northwestern Arnhem Land, Australia’, Australian Archaeology, v. 71, pp. 57–65.
May, S. K, McKinnon, J., and J. Raupp. 2009 ‘Boats on Bark: an analysis of Groote Eylandt bark paintings featuring Macassan praus from the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition, Northern Territory, Australia’, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, v.38/2, pp. 369–385.
Commissioned reports
May, S.K., Blair, S., Sullivan, S., and N. Hall. 2011 An-garregen: A Cultural Heritage Strategy for Kakadu National Park. Commissioned by Parks Australia.
