He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1969, the year of its foundation, serving on its Council from 1972 to 1974 and again, this time as Honorary Secretary, from 1989 to 1996.
[11] In 2018, Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia by Billy Griffiths (which describes some of Mulvaney's work and applauds the way he "[built] bridges between the disciplines of history and archaeology"[12]) won the award.
[14] In 1929 on the Murray River was Devon Downs which answered John Mulvaney’s theory of complex cultures and societies of Aboriginal people.
Mulvaney himself was brought to a site ten kilometers away from Devon Downs where tall limestone cliffs hung over a sandy floor called Fromm’s Landing.
Mulvaney worked on another site with Herbert Tindale which differed in societal and cultural succession from Fromm’s Landing meaning to understand time and stone tools, there needed to be more diverse measuring techniques.
Mulvaney and his partner Bernie Joyce changed the deposit depth due to the site’s loose and sandy surface as it became an issue in measuring the stratigraphy of artifacts.
This began his political activism journey and in Glenelg River, it was made clear of the importance of stratified cave deposits to promote the conservation of Aboriginal antiques.