Roger Cribb

Roger Llewellyn Dunmore Cribb (6 January 1948 – 24 August 2007) was an Australian archaeologist and anthropologist who specialised in documenting and modelling spatial patterns and social organisation of nomadic peoples. He is noted for conducting early fieldwork amongst the nomadic pastoralists of Anatolia, Turkey; writing a book on the archaeology of these nomads;[1] pioneering Australian archaeology and anthropologies’ use of geographical information systems,[2][3] plus genealogical software;[4] and conducting later fieldwork documenting the cultural landscapes of the Aboriginal peoples of Cape York Peninsula.[5][6][7]

Dr Cribb’s life’s work is the work of a practical, applied social scientist[8] who firmly believed anthropological models, grounded and parsimoniously applied, could reliably reach beyond our existing accumulated knowledge, into the archaeological past of some of our oldest cultures in some of the more sparsely populated regions of our world: i.e. the nomadic pastoralists of Anatolia (Turkey)[1][9] and the gatherer-hunters of Cape York, (Australia).[10][11]

Dr Cribb’s research practice was to strive to undertake as much ‘ethnographic’ fieldwork as possible with the peoples whose heritage he wished to later unravel and reveal.[1][12][13] His preference was to store his (and other peoples) data within purpose-designed databases,[14][15][16] and then apply small, efficient purpose-designed computer programs to analyze the data and distill, reveal, confirm, plus extrapolate social and environmental organising principles and patterns.[17][18][19] Organising principles and patterns ‘discovered’, were reapplied back into the original physical and biological landscapes, tested if possible, then extrapolated back in time[1][9]

It is perhaps unfortunate that mid-career, for both mental and physical health reasons,[20] Dr Cribb found himself and his broader projects (in Cape York) having to proceed without academic patronage or funding. From the early 1990s onwards Dr Cribb became increasingly disengaged from academic communities of scholars, tending to work instead within the grey (unpublished) fringes of more commercially driven (less ‘pure’) research projects and programs.[21][22][23] Rapid developments in computer technologies and programming quickly overtook him, yet he continued for many years to work in those areas, with those peoples whose cultural landscapes he was most keen to understand, document, and help reveal to the world.[24]

From Dr Cribb’s works and his writings, it can be seen ‘terra nullius’ myths offended his belief in pre-existing, largely unrevealed human heritage deeply imprinted into otherwise apparently ’empty’ landscapes[25][26]

It might be said, Dr Cribb’s most enduring professional contribution over a lifetime, was his work to counter all sense of ‘terra nullius by recording large archaeological landscapes; facilitating archaeological heritage protection; and revealing forever the richness, density and vastness of some of the cultural landscapes still persisting in Anatolia (Turkey), and Cape York (Australia).