Vito Hernandez, BA, GradDip, MSc, PhD

I am an environmental archaeologist with a specialist focus on geoarchaeology and over twenty years of experience in the academic and industry sectors. My technical specialisms include archaeological-sedimentology, pedology, and stratigraphy (micro, meso and macro). I maintain a wide range of research interests from human evolution to early agriculture and disaster studies in Archaeology, in which I keenly apply theories of political ecology and economy.

I wrote a PhD in Geoarchaeology under the primary supervision of Professor Mike Morley and secondary supervision of Associate Professor Martin Polkinghorne. My PhD explores Pleistocene human occupation and dispersals in Southeast Asia. For my research, I investigated one site in mainland Southeast Asia and another in island Southeast Asia considered to be key sites for the study of human evolution and dispersals in the region. To study the sites, I primarily used micromorphological and microarchaeological techniques. 

I lecture, tutor, and do scientific demonstration on the following topics: Pleistocene Archaeology in Southeast Asia, Transitions from hunter-gathering to farming in Southeast Asia, Human evolution in Southeast Asia, Sediments in Archaeology (with focus on the tropics), Archaeological micromorphology, Advanced field methods in archaeology, Cultural Resource Management in Southeast Asia, and Miocene Climates and Environments as they relate to Human Evolution.

As a geoarchaeological specialist, my research tackles various periods of the deep past of Southeast Asia from the Pleistocene to the Early Modern Period, and various grand research themes such as the earliest occupations and dispersals of humans in the region, early regional agricultural development/intensification, and disasters and resilience. Currently, I am part of a project researching the resilience of Cambodian society post-Angkor and research affiliate of the Australian Microarchaeology and Palaeosciences (AusMAP) facility (formerly the Flinders Microarchaeology Laboratory).