Vale: Wal Ambrose
Remembering Wal Ambrose, who died in January. He was one of the first conservators in Australia and a maverick within archaeological conservation . In 1966, Ambrose established a Conservation Section at the newly formed Australian National University (ANU) School of Pacific Studies (Walston 1980:10). He was employed from 1966 to 1981 as a research officer in both Conservation and Experimental Archaeology (Golson 1997:5; Ambrose 2004). Most Australian archaeologists based at the ANU working on Pacific ceramics until the mid-1990s interacted with Ambrose for advice, collaboration, use of conservation materials, procedures and related matters (Bruno David, pers. comm. 2016). To this day, the School of Pacific Studies where Ambrose worked remains the only archaeology department in Australia to employ a conservator in an ongoing position.