Rupert Gerritsen

Rupert Gerritsen
Born	(1953-04-27)April 27, 1953 Geraldton, Western Australia, Australia
Died	November 3, 2013(2013-11-03) (aged 60) Canberra, ACT, Australia
Residence	Watson, ACT, Australia
Nationality	Australian
Known for	Preons, origins of agriculture in Australia
Scientific career
Fields	History, Archaeology, Ethnohistory, Cartography
Institutions	National Library of Australia

Rupert Gerritsen (27 April 1953 – 3 November 2013) was an Australian historian, archaeologist and independent researcher. Born in Geraldton, Western Australia, to Dutch parents, he became a noted authority on Indigenous Australian prehistory and on the early European exploration and cartography of Australia. He is best known for his argument that forms of agriculture and settled society existed on the continent before British settlement in 1788, and for his research into Dutch–Aboriginal contact following early shipwrecks on the Western Australian coast.

Biography

Gerritsen was born on 27 April 1953 in Geraldton, Western Australia. From the 1960s through to the 1980s he was involved in radical politics, anti-conscription and social activism during the Vietnam War era. In later life he settled in Canberra, living in the suburb of Watson in the Australian Capital Territory.

From 1995 he held an appointment as a Petherick Reader (researcher) at the National Library of Australia and worked as an independent consultant. He was a co-founder and National Secretary of the Australia on the Map: 1606–2006 commemoration, and served as Chair of the Australia on the Map Division of the Australasian Hydrographic Society. His research spanned Indigenous prehistory, historical linguistics, Dutch–Aboriginal interaction, and the history of European exploration and mapping of the Australian continent.

Gerritsen died in Canberra on 3 November 2013.

Work

Gerritsen's research examined evidence for pre-colonial agriculture, aquaculture and permanent settlement among Aboriginal Australians, drawing on archaeological, ethnohistorical and linguistic sources. His 2008 study Australia and the Origins of Agriculture argued that some Aboriginal groups practised forms of cultivation and food storage, and it is cited as an influence on Bruce Pascoe's later book Dark Emu.

A second major strand of his work concerned early contact between Europeans and Aboriginal people, particularly survivors of Dutch East India Company shipwrecks off the Western Australian coast, and the early cartography of Australia. His principal publications include And Their Ghosts May Be Heard (1994; 2nd edition 2002), Australia and the Origins of Agriculture (2008), Australia's First Criminal Prosecutions in 1629 (2011) and Beyond the Frontier: Explorations in Ethnohistory (2011). He also co-edited the proceedings of a symposium on the Freycinet Map of 1811.

Beyond his historical work, Gerritsen took an interest in theoretical physics, proposing a conjectural model of Preons as constituents of subatomic particles.

Honors

• Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau (R.O.N.), conferred in 2007 for services to Dutch–Australian relations.
• Australian Centenary Medal for services to Australian society.
• History and Philosophy of Science Medal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science.
• Dorothy Prescott Prize (2012).

Abstracts

• 2012 - "A Conjectural Preon Theory and its Implications" (Read in full)

External links

• Rupert Gerritsen at Wikipedia
• Personal website (publications and works)