Sue O'Connor

Sue O'Connor (born ) is an Australian archaeologist and Distinguished Professor in the School of Culture, History & Language at the Australian National University. Her research focuses primarily on the evidence of Pleistocene settlement and early human migration in the Indo-Pacific region.

Education O'Connor studied archaeology at the University of New England (Australia) and graduated with honours in 1980. She furthered her studies at the University of Western Australia where she received her PhD in 1991.

Canine domestication in East Timor O'Connor worked on a team that conducted research on a dog burial found at Matja Kuru in East Timor. Their findings suggest that humans domesticated dogs at the site as early as 3,000 years ago. Analysis of the remains revealed a number of morphological similarities between modern-day domesticated dogs and the dog found at the burial site. O'Connor and her team assert that the presence of domesticated dogs may indicate that a hunting-foraging way of life was still prevalent at the time.

Pleistocene era burial In 2017, O'Connor's research team recovered the world's oldest fish hooks from an ancient burial site on Alor Island, Indonesia. Five circular, rotating hooks, probably used for deep-sea fishing, were found under the chin and around the jaws of an adult female skeleton buried 12,000 years ago. This discovery contradicts the current theory that most fishing activities on the island had been carried out by men. Until 2017, the oldest fish-hooks found with a burial site were unearthed at a river site in Siberia and were determined to be 9,000 years old.

In July 2024, O'Connor was elected as a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.