Peter Coutts

Peter John Frazer Coutts was an Australian archaeologist who was first director of the Victoria Archaeological Survey (VAS), the precursor to the Heritage Branch of Aboriginal Affairs Victoria.

Peter Coutts was educated at the University of Melbourne in electrical engineering but was later a post-graduate student in the School of General Studies at the Australian National University. He undertook research on Aboriginal settlement at Wilsons Promontory (Vic) in which he excavated several test pits in shell middens from which several radiocarbon dates were obtained. His work is interesting in its pioneering use of computers to analyse data from the sites. The results of the research were published in a Masters thesis and later by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.

After concluding his research at ANU, Coutts enrolled as a postgraduate student at the University of Otago, New Zealand, where he made a significant contribution to the development of historical archaeology in New Zealand. His Ph.D research focused on the period of contact between the Maori and the European settlers, typically sealers and whalers. It is clear from his published works that his research interests in historical archaeology were very broad, with a particular interest in the archaeology of buildings.

In 1972 the Archaeological and Aboriginal Relics Office was established under the provisions of the Archaeological and Aboriginal Relics Preservation Act (1972) and in April 1973 Peter Coutts was appointed as its Director. Faced with little knowledge of the Aboriginal archaeology of Victoria, apart from previous work at Keilor and Green Gully and his own work at Wilsons Promontory, Coutts decided that improving the knowledge of Aboriginal heritage was a priority for the AARO and later the Victorian Archaeological Survey. To do this he decided to undertake a field survey of a section across Victoria from south to north based on the 1:100,000 map sheet series. Selected sites were to be excavated to provide a chronology of Aboriginal settlement.

Lacking the staff to undertake this work, Coutts initiated the Archaeological Summer School program. These were field camps where anyone could pay to learn the rudiments of archaeology and record or excavate archaeological sites. The first was a small affair in January 1975 and nine others were run between 1975 and 1982. These were an important training ground for avocational and student archaeologists from all over Australia.

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