Professor Rhys Jones is an internationally-distinguished archaeologist at The Australian National University. His research, particularly in Australia, has made a substantial and enduring contribution to the discipline, and to its public appreciation. The papers and tributes collected here were written by his colleagues and friends to honour Rhys' formal retirement in 2001, and to celebrate his many interests.

The papers cover an appropriately wide range of topics, but most take up themes that have loomed large in Rhys' research. Perhaps foremost amongst these has been his career-long concern with the age, nature and impact of initial human colonization in Greater Australia. Many papers here discuss cases and techniques of chronology, the fundamental issue, and one to which Rhys has brought a unique combination of technical expertise, archaeological knowledge and scientific imagination. Others take up Rhys' longstanding interests in the development of Australian Aboriginal art, the meanings of stone tool technology, the extinction of megafauna, and the historical ecology of Aboriginal subsistence practices. Others again, extend some of these themes into the western Pacific and further afield or acknowledge Rhys' delight in the antiquarian ideas and philosophies which gave rise to the emerging discipline of archaeology.