Projects & Clients

Our Clients

Turnstone Archaeology undertakes cultural heritage projects across Queensland for a range of clients and Aboriginal corporations. Our projects include major dams, civil and urban construction, mining, national parks, alternative energy sites (such as solar farms and wind farms), pipelines, roads, power lines, and marine environments.

We work with many Aboriginal communities from the NSW border to Cape York.

Other proponents include Federal, State and Local government entities  (including Main Roads, Education, Defence, State Development, Water Infrastructure and National Parks, Urban Utilities, Queensland Rail), mining (such as Anglo-American and Glencore), oil, gas and alternative energy companies, and urban planning and agricultural developments.

Turnstone Archaeology Key Projects

Keynote Projects

Hells Gate Ochre Quarry

Hells Gates Dam Investigation 2020-2021

A major scoping study for the proposed Hells Gates Dam as the cultural heritage component of the Business Case for Townsville Enterprises Ltd and SMEC on behalf of Gugu Badhun and Gudjala (Ngrragoonda) Aboriginal Corporations.

The inundation zone covers nearly 25,000 hectares and is located in remote and rugged country in the Upper Burdekin River. Target areas were selected using a predictive landscape model developed by Turnstone. Modelling was highly effective, with 100% accuracy of suspected landscape predictions, resulting in the identification of a rich cultural landscape. Further research was undertaken by Professor Mark Moore (UNE) and Professor Paul Tacon (Griffith University).

Kabi Kabi First Nation Shell Midden Mapping Project, 2019-2020

Funded by Healthy Land and Waters, Turnstone Archaeology provided technical assistance, recording and mapping of Aboriginal shell middens in Pumicestone Passage as well as training and upskilling for Kabi People.

The study located and mapped 63 shell middens.  Of these, 22 were previously unregistered midden sites. Other associated finds included a dugong-hunting site, stone-walled hearths, a stone-walled fish trap and two inter-tidal increase stone arrangements. A potential oyster-breeding stone arrangement appears to be Aboriginal in origin and may provide evidence of pre-European aquaculture.

Kabi Kabi First Nation Shell Midden Mapping Project
Glencore Hail Creek Coal Mine

Glencore Hail Creek Coal Mine, 2019-2021

Turnstone Archaeology assisted the Widi People of North Queensland with cultural heritage assessments and mitigation programs for the Hail Creek Eastern Margin mine expansion project.

Several thousand sites identified within the mine exploration area range from isolates to large artefact concentrations, knapping floors and stone resource areas.  Brumby Waterhole is a significant protected cultural feature for the Widi People within the mine site.

Clarke Range Wind Farm, 2021

Turnstone archaeologists assisted Barada Kabalbara Yetimarala (BKY) People, of central Queensland, on a large wind farm project in the Clarke Range, core country of BKY.

A total of thirteen individual sites consisting of stone artefacts, a potential ceremonial place with rock wells and a cultural site (Mt Bora), were identified and recorded during the survey and assessment of the Wind Farm.

Clarke Range Wind Farm
Toowoomba Second Range Crossing

Toowoomba Second Range Crossing, 2015-2018

As the largest road project in Queensland, Turnstone Archaeology worked with two Aboriginal corporations over three years. During this time, we identified 133 cultural heritage sites and a new bora ground complex. An earth oven in an open-air site near Rocky Creek returned a date of almost 7000 years, becoming one of the oldest dated sites outside a rock shelter in southeast Queensland.

During construction of the highway in 2018, a hoard of Australian silver coins was found dating from the 1890s to 1940s, the largest hoard found in Queensland. Several months of research was required in identifying the German migrant responsible for the burial of the hoard.

Bromelton Water Pipeline, 2016

Survey and a major excavation program for the Mununjali People of Beaudesert. The project located three high-density artefact concentrations in a subsurface excavation that produced over 4500 artefacts and a carbon-dated earth oven.

Bromelton Water Pipeline