OVER THE PAST THREE DECADES, archaeology has been going through a period of self-reflection, particularly with regard to issues of gender, power relations, and indigenous control. The best-known and most controversial issues in regard to indigenous control are ownership of the past and the repatriation of cultural materials, whether human remains or artifacts, held by statutory bodies such as museums and universities. In many situations, indigenous groups have regained control over their ancestral remains by recourse to legal means. After heated debate and acrimonious litigation, most Australian archaeologists now accept that indigenous (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) control of indigenous archaeological materials in Australia is legitimate and part of the overall reconciliation process between indigenous and nonindigenous Australia. Indeed, some Australian archaeologists have taken a somewhat self-congratulatory tone, in thinking we “seem to be at the forefront in terms of the negotiation of relationships between archaeologists and indigenous people” (Burke et al. 1994:19). While important advances are being made, parallel developments are taking place in other major settler-colonial contexts such as Canada and the United States (Biolsi and Zimmerman 1997a; Nicholas and Andrews 1997a; Swidler et al. 1997a; Watkins 2000). Furthermore, these changes have rarely been initiated by archaeologists; rather, they have been developed by archaeologists responding to indigenous demands for greater control of their ancestral heritage. These changes have also grown out of governments and legislators responding to broader political lobbying by indigenous people for social justice and equality.
The present chapter addresses these issues through examples from Australia. We emphasize that the issues are not specific to Australia; the Australian story is closely paralleled in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand, both in changing attitudes of archaeologists and in wider social transformations. In Canada, the recognition of First Nations’ rights and success is symbolized by the creation of the new provinces of the Arctic North, where indigenous interests are strong. In New Zealand, Maori concerns are expressed in the use of the Maori name Aotearoa in place of New Zealand, the colonial name expressing that history in the words “new” and “Zealand,” the name of a Dutch province on the other side of the world. Differing colonial experiences have led to different outcomes in law and land ownership. The dispossession of Aboriginal Australians was never resolved in any kind of agreed treaty, while the dispossession of Maoris was formalized in the Treaty of Waitangi (1840). Again these outcomes, and the issues behind them, are paralleled by the U.S. experience where some indigenous Americans—Treaty Indians—came to such an outcome and some did not.
Seen from Australia, the United States is striking for the force with which scientific interest is expressed and the weight it carries. Archaeology and anthropology are largely still seen as disinterested sciences rather than the socially constructed kinds of knowledge they actually are (Deloria 1969).
Increasing awareness of indigenous issues by archaeologists and their response reflects a slow decolonization of archaeology that mirrors broader anticolonial changes in community attitudes toward who has a right to determine indigenous lifeways. In Australia, these issues took on renewed significance in the 1990s in the wake of the Mabo court case which saw rejection of the two-hundred-year-old legal doctrine of terra nullius—the view that Australia was an empty land belonging to no one prior to European colonization in 1788—and the recognition of extant native title, and the Federal government’s program of “reconciliation” between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia. All these social, political, and legal changes set the scene for the development of a new, unique (Australian) archaeology tailored to accommodate the desires of the country’s indigenous and scientific communities. It will be the way Australians decide to decolonize our unique colonial heritage (and its legacies) that ultimately will frame and constrain the future face of Australian archaeology.
This chapter surveys anticolonial developments in Australian indigenous archaeology over the past thirty years. Key conceptual issues that underpin these developments are discussed and illustrated. However, the journey along the road of reconciliation continues. Despite significant advances, Australian archaeology remains underwritten by a number of subtle and insidious theoretical constructs that have colonial origins. These constructs, we contend, continue to underscore many of the cross-cultural tensions that remain in Australian archaeology, in both academic and public arenas. As a legacy of colonial circumstance, these constructs and tensions have relevance for the practice of indigenous archaeology in other settler colonies such as North America. Indeed, looking under the surface of archaeology anywhere in the world reveals that issues of power, control, and knowledge in regard to things of the past are invariably entwined with issues of power, control, and knowledge in regard to things of the present. Even ancient Stonehenge is now an overtly disputed place (Bender 1998).
Many authors have written on the history and colonial legacy of anthropology, James Clifford (1988) and Nicholas Thomas (1994) among others, showing anthropology to have been complicit in the colonial process (Diamond 1974). Foucault (1970) has argued that the human sciences—especially anthropology, linguistics, sociology, and economics—construct human subjectivities at the same time as they describe them. The central theme of these definitions is the categorization of people into dichotomies, insiders/outsiders, normal/abnormal, us/them. Along comparable lines, George Stocking (1985:112) has described the anthropological discipline as “primarily a discourse of the culturally or racially despised.”
In North America, Bruce Trigger (1984) has been at the forefront of exploring how the historical development of archaeology has rested on the representation of Native Americans as a singular and primitive Other. For Trigger the history of archaeological research can be seen as an aspect of the history of anthropology. He ties the growth of both disciplines to North America’s colonial history. As a result, archaeology was unavoidably colonialist, its structure serving to “denigrate native societies and . . . demonstrate that they had been static in prehistoric times and lacked the initiative to develop on their own” (Trigger 1984:386). While Trigger overstates the discipline’s intentionality, he is right to call our attention to the relationship between representational history and academic development.
We view the colonial culture of Australian archaeology as being composed of two intricately related concepts—disassociation and appropriation (Condori 1989; McGuire 1989). During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Aboriginal people were disassociated from their material heritage by suggestions that some Australian archaeological sites belonged to other “races.” We have identified two key examples of this process—rock art paintings from the Kimberley region in the northwest (McNiven and Russell 1997) and stone circles in Victoria in the southeast (Russell and McNiven 1998). A more pervasive form of disassociation has been achieved by the deceptively simple process of making the past an archaeologically constructed past. The discipline of archaeology is founded on the premise that insights into the (pre)historic past are made via the analysis and interpretation of cultural remains using Western scientific methods. As such, the (pre)history of a region or a people can only be written following research by archaeologists. Feminist archaeologist Joan Gero (1989:97) alerts us to the inherent imperialism of an archaeologically constructed past:
The expansion of archaeology must be seen as an aspect of cultural colonialism in which one system of knowledge erodes and ultimately supplants the structure of alternative systems. . . . [The] replacement by archaeology of other means of approaching the past is not progressive but imperialistic.
To those enculturated in the West, the archaeological charter might appear self-evident. However, the notion of an archaeologically constructed past takes on new meaning in colonial contexts where indigenous peoples have their own historical narratives. For Aboriginal Australians the construction of historical narratives frequently draws on the religious interpretive framework provided by the Dreaming or Dreamtime. Senior Wardaman people in the Lightning Brothers country of the Northern Territory classify rock art as either bulawula (paintings of human origin) or buwarraja (Dreaming pictures) (David et al. 1990, 1994; Flood et al. 1992; Merlan 1989). Although from an archaeological perspective, all of the art would be classified as of human origin, senior Wardaman draw on Dreaming cosmology to “read” the art. Immediately an archaeologist goes with Wardaman people into a shelter with archaeological and rock art traces and remains, different perceptions come into play, and the “single and obvious” observations and classes of Western knowledge fail: the marks on the sandstone walls do not there routinely fall into the universal classes of the human/cultural and the natural. The Wardaman experience reveals that differences between archaeological and Aboriginal constructions of historical narratives operate at both the ontological and epistemological levels. As such, both narrative forms can rarely be syncretized.
Appropriation of aspects of indigenous culture by the dominant society has become so commonplace as to largely pass unnoticed. Examples range from the Qantas jumbo jet that is adorned with Aboriginal images to advertising for Northern Territory tourism that emphasizes the timelessness and great antiquity of Aboriginal culture. Each of these feeds into a nationalistic discourse which reposits Aboriginal culture as Australian culture (Byrne 1996). Appropriation also operates at a global level, with arguments for aspects of Australian archaeology being of world significance, an importance which overrides indigenous significance and value. These examples of appropriation involve issues of hegemony not applicable to indigenous appropriation of European culture during the early contact period (e.g., use of metal and glass) and more recently (e.g., use of cars). Similarly, appropriation of material culture items of one Aboriginal group by another Aboriginal group (e.g., southeastern Australian groups appropriating didgeridoos—a traditional musical instrument of northern Australia) is a form of diffusion not based on a colonial relationship.
The discipline of Australian archaeology has only recently begun to engage meaningfully with Aboriginal people. In the earlier part of the twentieth century, archaeologists, both amateur and professional, conducted research with little or no interaction with indigenous Australians. With the discipline becoming a profession during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Aboriginal people increasingly demanded greater involvement in archaeological research and in what became known by the U.S. term as “cultural resource management” (CRM) (Moser 1995a,b; Smith 2000). In particular, a debate over who owns the past became a major issue, initiated largely by Aboriginal people who felt they were not being considered in relation to research on their cultural heritage (McBryde 1985). Support from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies for the return and cremation of arguably the most famous Australian Aboriginal skeletal remains, those of Truganini (Trukanini), marks the beginning of the decolonizing process in Australian archaeology. While strictly speaking Truganini’s remains were not archaeological, Aboriginal Tasmanians and their bodies were part of the birth of prehistoric archaeology as Paleolithic survivals in the foundational work of Lubbock (1865, 1870). Truganini’s remains were handed back to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and were laid to rest during a private ceremony in 1976 (Moser 1995b: 158; Ucko 1983:15; West 1994). In this example, Truganini’s return coincided with growing awareness that she was not simply “the last Tasmanian”—a relic of a scientific past—but the exemplar of a tragic history for thousands of contemporary Aboriginal Tasmanians. In this sense, Truganini’s return represented an acknowledgment of ongoing indigenous rights, rather than of a dead indigenous past which more belonged to others in a scientific present.
At the 1982 Australian Archaeological Association (AAA) annual meeting, Ros Langford (1983) delivered a broadside on Australian archaeology. Her paper set in train a paradigmatic shift in the discipline, much as did Vine Deloria Jr.’s scathing critique of American anthropology in his 1969 book Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. Langford’s paper, presented on behalf of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, echoed views held by many mainland Aboriginal peoples in stating (Langford 1983:2), “We say that it is our past, our culture and heritage, and forms part of our present life. As such it is ours to control and it is ours to share on our terms. That is the Central Issue of this debate.” The issue of control was linked directly with the broader issue of Western scientific research on indigenous peoples who were subject to colonial powers. In light of these calls for control, AAA passed a motion stating (Allen 1983:7), “That this conference acknowledges Aboriginal ownership of their heritage. Accordingly, this conference calls on all archaeologists to obtain permission from Aboriginal owners prior to any research or excavation of Aboriginal sites.”
While many archaeologists by 1982 took consultation with Aboriginal custodians as a given, the ownership and control issue was not passed unanimously (Allen 1983:8–9). A year later the Australian Academy of Humanities held a symposium on the topic of who owns the past, which revealed that Australian archaeologists were taking the Aboriginal ownership and control question seriously (McBryde 1985). These two events heralded a new wave of Australian archaeology as liaison between archaeologists and Aboriginal people throughout the 1980s moved beyond simple consultation to the point where research agendas, at least where human burials were concerned, became negotiated, cross-cultural affairs (Pardoe 1985). Increasing numbers of Aboriginal people became actively involved in site surveys (particularly those associated with the dramatic increase in CRM assessments for developments), excavations, and site management (Creamer 1990). In some cases, Aboriginal elders and corporations sought out archaeologists to undertake research of their historical past, including both the pre-European contact and the contact periods. After much philosophical and pragmatic debate, soul searching, and some court battles (see below), many museums agreed to Aboriginal demands for repatriation of cultural materials (Hubert 1989; Meehan and Attenbrow 1990). However, Australia has no legislation that enshrines repatriation of human remains as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 does for the United States (Thomas 2000; Mihesuah 2000; Watkins 2000). Indeed, a variety of commonwealth (federal) and state legislation, policies, and attitudes interact with the varied circumstances of indigenous people in different regions of Australia, making for a patchwork of local outcomes rather than the consistent application of a single framework. In many ways, the Australian repatriation scene better reflects the cultural and spiritual diversity of indigenous Australia than does NAGPRA for the United States (Kehoe 1998:214).
Changes in field practice and museum policy gave Aboriginal people demonstrable control over their heritage and helped redress the power imbalance that had existed for so long. In all cases, however, only a few members of Aboriginal communities had the opportunity to work with archaeologists. As a result, pressure was placed on archaeologists to produce short community reports written without technical jargon (plain-English reports), summarizing research methods and results for local Aboriginal communities (Pardoe 1990). Eventually the importance of consultation and feedback led to the development of the first code of ethics of the Australian Archaeological Association (Davidson 1991; Davidson et al. 1995:83; Beck and McConnell 1986). Principle 5 of the code acknowledges that “the indigenous cultural heritage rightfully belongs to indigenous descendants of that heritage” (Davidson et al. 1995:83, emphasis added). Despite continuing developments in working relationships between Aboriginal peoples and archaeologists during the 1990s (Davidson et al. 1995), the following sections reveal a range of deep-seated philosophical hurdles that continue to create tensions.
During the 1960s and 1970s, various Australian states enacted legislation to protect indigenous archaeological sites. This legislation was a direct result of lobbying by the archaeological community which had set itself up as steward of Australia’s prehistoric past. Hence, most legislation described these archaeological sites as “relics” and made explicit reference to their scientific value (Edwards 1975; Flood 1989; Smith 2000; Ward 1983). As Sullivan (1985:146) noted, this style of legislation was “written more or less” by Euro-Australians for the benefit of prehistoric archaeologists. As such, it embodied the “values of the dominant majority” (McBryde 1986:24). Despite the good intentions of many archaeologists who pushed for protective legislation, it soon became apparent that the focus on preserving relics had many problems. Critical was the general failure of much legislation to recognize Aboriginal rights to their own cultural products, which promoted alienation of Aboriginal people from the protection process. In the case of Queensland’s Aboriginal Relics Preservation Act of 1967–76, legislation was aimed at protecting relics that resulted from a “perceived pristine and pure ‘tribal’ past” and that such remains should be the property of the Crown (D. Trigger 1980). Trigger noted that with relics legislation, “the equation is simple: Aboriginality (Aboriginal ‘culture’) equals ‘relics’ equals the past” (1980:152). This view went hand in hand with a convenient assumption “that the sites (and their creators) were dead” (Ucko 1983:14). Treating and conceiving of “true” or “legitimate” Aboriginal culture as an archaeological resource from the prehistoric past at once monumentalized the pristine past and provided it with an epitaph (Byrne 1996). As Mary-Louise Pratt observed in her study on colonial descriptions of South America (1992:134):
The European imagination produces archaeological subjects by splitting contemporary non-European peoples off from their precolonial, and even their colonial, pasts. To revive indigenous history and culture as archaeology is to revive them as dead. The gesture simultaneously rescues them from European forgetfulness and reassigns them to a departed age.
Stone and earthen engineering works constructed by Aboriginal peoples of western Victoria illustrate the alienation process. Over the past thirty years, archaeological research has documented elaborate engineering works such as channels and weirs which have been interpreted with the aid of nineteenth-century historical observations as eel-trapping devices (Clarke 1994; Coutts et al. 1978; Lourandos 1980; Williams 1988). These trapping facilities have become prominent in Australian archaeological discourse because of their significance in theories of Late Holocene intensification (Lourandos 1997). Despite this significance, at no time was it pointed out that such facilities continue to be made and used by Aboriginal people of the region. Indeed, in 1995 one of us (McNiven) witnessed Aboriginal people rebuild a temporarily dismantled eel trap across a creek that was identical in function to so-called prehistoric sites. Significantly, the Aboriginal men who rebuilt and used the trap thought it amusing that archaeologists believed such actions belonged to the prehistoric past.
Reviving the past as an archaeological phenomenon allowed the emergence of what Ellis (1994) calls the archaeological paradigm of culture heritage management. According to Ellis’s proposition, this model equates Aboriginal cultural heritage with archaeological sites—with material traces of a scientifically legitimate, examinable, and significant past. Therefore only places that exhibit physical evidence of past human activity are labeled cultural heritage sites. Sites without archaeological evidence, such as many Dreaming sites, sacred sites, and sites of historical association, or sites with ongoing cultural significance generally, are omitted from this scheme. Thus institutionalized heritage management privileges an archaeological past at the expense of contemporary Aboriginal concerns (Byrne 1996:91). Apart from placing many Aboriginal (nonarchaeological) sites in danger due to lack of legislative protection, it also tells Aboriginal people that sites are only recognized to have cultural heritage significance if they are significant for archaeological research and Western scientific-historical voyeurism (Smith 2000:115). Aboriginal cultural sites become defined narrowly along archaeological lines at the expense of nonphysical attributes. In this connection, Mulvaney notes that for rock art sites in the Northern Territory (1993:110),
the mythological meaning is contained in more than just the painted images, though often the art at a site is the only tangible (constructed) manifestation of the mythological world. For the custodians the art is secondary to other considerations, such as the Dreaming association of the place. In contrast, for the researcher, casual visitor or tourism promoter, the art is the primary focus of their concerns.
The issue of site context also has broader relevance for defining cultural landscapes. Archaeological research tends to see landscapes in term of sites with varying significance values based on what they can say about the past. Aboriginal people, like Native Americans, see all archaeological sites as significant and interrelated components of a contemporary cultural landscape (Anyon and Ferguson 1995:915; Sullivan 1985:149, 152). Thus, protecting only “important” or “representative” sites as isolates and allowing the broader environmental (cultural) context of these sites to be destroyed is seen to reinforce the Western notion of sites as archaeological resources to be quarried for scientific data on past lifeways. It also inadvertently colonizes an indigenous, totemic landscape of continuous spiritual meaning and power centers with a secular, commodified landscape of discontinuous resource nodes (Strang 1997). Seeing archaeological sites as cultural heritage necessitates an integrated (cultural) landscape approach that acknowledges the important role sites (both archaeological and other sites) have in maintaining indigenous cultural identity and a sense of place (Ellis 1994; L’Oste-Brown et al. 1998; Ross 1996).
It is easy to see how this alienation of past places from present places follows from the European experience, first at home in Europe where the prehistoric remains were long abandoned and far removed from modern concerns, and then in the colonies of empire, whose indigenous peoples were, to colonial eyes, culturally remote and incomprehensible. Nevertheless, the inescapable links between past and present are visible also in Europe, where the thousands of ancient churches are both historical monuments and places of contemporary spiritual activity. Accordingly, there are uneasy comparisons and some outright conflicts, when the present needs of the congregations interfere with the archaeological integrity of the building fabric. Strikingly, some Christian communities in Europe have given up their ancient buildings, preferring to define their faith through how a group of people behave in the present, rather than by the church buildings that are physical remnants of a past.
The archaeological paradigm sends a clear message to Aboriginal people; the dominant society interprets real Aboriginal culture as a thing of the past. So it is that archaeologists become the experts on Aboriginal cultural heritage sites, and Aboriginal people rely on the expertise of intellectuals and academics to identify and interpret these sites. This deeply problematic outcome is responsible for many continuing tensions between archaeologists and Aboriginal people.
The negative effects of describing Aboriginal cultural heritage sites as archaeological sites is a key issue for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups, even in situations where activities associated with certain sites—such as stone-tool manufacture sites—are indeed a thing of the past. The Tasmanian Aboriginal Land Council (TALC) has similarly assertively described the situation thus (TALC 1996:293):
For some archaeologists the sites created by our ancestors are described as archaeological sites. What you recover from these sites is archaeological data. By describing our sites and the information they contain as “archaeological” you claim our heritage as your own.
Furthermore (TALC 1996:294):
Discussing the language you use to describe our heritage is not an exercise in telling you how to be “politically correct.” Rather, we are using your everyday language to help us to understand how you think about our sites. When you stop using the possessive adjective “archaeological” to describe our sites, you will have started to accept that we are the rightful owners and custodians of our heritage.
In these statements, TALC has identified the issue of the language of archaeology as a potent force in and of colonial appropriation. Few Australian archaeologists have explicitly engaged in the reflective discourse of their own language.
The use of scientific language to describe Aboriginal cultural heritage has the effect of distancing this heritage from its owners and sanitizing material remains for study and display. The use of a uniquely Western discourse of science, among other things, has resulted in the creation of a past that identifies historical episodes as scientific phenomena and people as specimens. Aboriginal culture becomes both subject and object of study. Producing the Aborigines as an object of study and locating them on a temporal and spatial map are aspects of the process termed “subjectation,” the simultaneous and mutually reinforcing actions of subordination and objectification (the production of “the Aborigines” as an object of study) that emerged from the colonial process (Attwood 1989; Russell 2001). This approach has it roots in Enlightenment philosophies of the late eighteenth century that sought to (re)describe, (re)classify, and objectify the world, and to bring research and understanding of the world under the hegemonic control of the state.
Within colonial Australia, academic and popular representations established the Aborigines as composed of a series of immutable, distinctive, idiosyncratic attributes (or essences), which circumscribed their specificity and begged the focus of European attention. As Said remarked (1993:8),
imperialism [and] colonialism are supported and perhaps even impelled by impressive ideological formations that include notions that certain territories and people require and beseech domination, as well as various forms of knowledge affiliated with domination.
Academic disciplines such as archaeology originally established and later reiterated the primacy of European authority. Thus the ontological status of the Aborigines is only ever stipulated in terms of an antithetical relationship; that is, they are antipodal to the European observer who becomes expert in the culture she or he observes. The Aborigines are to be found only where the colonizers are not, and they are to be from a time in the past and not the observer’s present. The antithetical colonizer/colonized relationship, Said (1993:70; cf. Fabian 1983:118–123) reminds us, relies on “the authority of the observer, and of European geographical centrality, [which] is buttressed by a central discourse relegating and confining the non-European to a secondary racial, cultural, ontological status.”
The greatest risk posed by this view is that the past can only ever be written from the perspective of the archaeological discipline. This approach simultaneously turns Aboriginal cultural heritage into an academic commodity and denies in Western eyes the legitimacy of indigenous or nonscientific views of the past (TALC 1996:295). This commodification of cultural heritage is illustrated by the term “cultural resource management.” In the late 1980s, archaeological consultants and government heritage officers in Australia began replacing the term CRM with CHM, cultural heritage management. This change was in direct response to criticism by Aboriginal people that their cultural heritage was not a resource. In Australia—as in the United States—the term “resource” is usually associated with natural resources such as minerals that are exploited for commercial value. Many Aboriginal people felt that their material heritage was being defined as a resource because it was viewed by the broader community as a scientific resource to be quarried by archaeologists for data to include in publications (symbolic capital) that were the basis of status and power. Thus, far from being a simple semantic quibble, Aboriginal people felt this single word was an inappropriate way to describe (and define) their cultural heritage. Essentially all Australian archaeologists appreciated the value of this critique, and we now speak of CHM, not CRM. Significantly, the term CRM does not seem to have the same negative connotations for Native Americans (Anyon and Ferguson 1995), although the same overtures of “resource” apply—of something that has utilitarian value because it can in some way be usefully exploited (Hanna 1997:77; Syms 1997:53; Yellowhorn 1997:257, for a Canadian perspective on this issue).
A specific example of subjectation and the privileging of scientific discourse is found in descriptions of Aboriginal cave burials of the Central Highlands of Queensland. Since the nineteenth century most of these sites have been subjected to disturbance, nearly half have been ransacked, and the bark coffins removed by Euro-Australians. The removal of this material raises the question of how and why this grave robbing could occur when Euro-Australian graves were generally considered sacred and rarely looted. The sanctity of the Aboriginal graves has been systematically neutralized by a process of subjectation that reduces the graves to mere ethnological specimens, relics of an appropriated, scientific past and culturally disengaged curios (McNiven 1996). In archaeological discourse, the elaborate bark coffins, which are a feature of these graves, are referred to as either bark cylinders or burial cylinders. All archaeological researchers and cultural heritage consultants working in the region over the past thirty years have used these clinical designations. The neutralizing and scientizing effect of the term “cylinder” enables people to feel comfortable when they view, open, and/or collect such remains. In marked contrast, the term “coffin,” as recommended by McNiven (1996), is emotive, bringing forth notions of religious sanctity. Breaking open a bark cylinder to look at its contents (human remains) becomes simply a physical act of entering secular space to examine scientific specimens; breaking open a coffin is an act of desecration and the defilement of a sacred place. Similarly, crawling into a burial cave becomes a secular act of entering a geological feature; entering a “burial crypt,” a term recommended also by McNiven (1996) for these sites, gives the act of entry a whole new phenomenological meaning and significance.
Archaeology abounds with other examples of subjectation and what Odawa Native American Cecil King (1997:116) eloquently refers to as the “linguistic cages” of scientific discourse. In particular, the use of scientific terminology reduces the degree to which the past is seen as human. This dehumanized past is seen in archaeological writings that make no mention of “people” and present a past frequented by artifacts, bones, and charcoal fragments. The use of an exclusive language—a language which privileges the Western discipline of archaeology and simultaneously reduces the degree to which nonspecialists can interact within the discipline—is a key component of what we consider to be the colonial culture of archaeology. This approach dehumanizes the past and imposes an appropriated, quasi-scientific veil over human history that is ultimately the focus of study. Perhaps this is why so many archaeologists find it difficult to write archaeology books for the general public; we have lost the language of human agency and the capacity for grand narrative. Storytellers somehow got swept away in New Archaeology’s quest for testable hypotheses, evolutionary models of human behavior, and myopic statistical manipulations. Importantly, we are not arguing for a simplification of archaeological discourse. Alternatively, we suggest that a review of the language used would enable the writing of a postcolonial archaeology, or at least a reflection on and questioning of existing colonial practices.
For more than a century, Euro-Australians have explicitly stated that the actions of Aboriginal people prior to European colonial settlement did not constitute what would traditionally be called history (Attwood 1996a, 1996b). Manning Clark (1968:4) in the opening pages of his monumental A History of Australia, remarked that, of the way of life of the Aboriginal peoples “before the coming of European civilization, little need, or indeed can, be said.” For Clark (1968:3, 5) history is the realm of civilizations, not for those who failed to “emerge from a state of barbarism.” It was a widely held belief that Aboriginal people had no history prior to the coming of Europeans. In this sense, Aborigines had cultures and lifeways that commanded the attention of anthropologists and prehistorians, while Europeans had civilization and history and the attention of historians.
Trigger (1985:34) notes that “the original differentiation between history and anthropology was a product of colonialism and ethnocentrism. Anthropology was initiated as the study of peoples who were alleged to lack history.” Although Daniel Wilson coined the term “prehistory” in the context of Scottish archaeology (The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, 1851), the term had universal currency. Wilson subsequently applied the term to the Americas and the Native American past in his Prehistoric Man (1862). He opens Prehistoric Man with, “The object aimed at in the following work is to view Man, as far as possible, unaffected by those modifying influences which accompany the development of nations and the maturity of a true historic period” (Wilson 1862:vii). At the same time, according to Glyn Daniel (1964:10), John Lubbock seriously considered using the world “antehistory” instead of “prehistory” for his own 1865 book Pre-Historic Times. But ever since its conception, the value of the term “prehistory” was questioned. In the 1950s, Daniel (1964:10) pointed out that some scholars
have complained that prehistory was a stupid name, because it was essentially a misnomer; it meant, logically and etymologically, the time before history, and surely . . . there was, strictly speaking, no time in the past of man before he had any history. History was essentially human, unless one referred to natural history. What was prehistory . . . but the earliest past of history? This is, I suppose, logically correct—not that logic seems to enter very much into nomenclature; names most often grow up and are not carefully thought out.
Wilson and Lubbock cemented the view that societies with writing had a history while those without writing had prehistory. The prefix “pre” immediately positions societies that did not possess writing, such as Aboriginal Australians, into the beginnings of a European developmental sequence. While the term “prehistory” was coined to be interchangeable with the phrase “early European,” paradoxically in colonial contexts such as Australia and America the term “prehistory” signified “pre-European.” The label prehistory is part of the arsenal of the colonizer to represent the colonized as primordial, ancient, and somehow less worthy. “Prehistoric” and “prehistory” are the colonial products of social evolutionism and a hierarchical structuring of cultures. In this connection, it is irrelevant what currency and value the term “prehistory” has in the context of the European past. Exported to other parts of the globe, particularly colonial contexts, the term is an insult to indigenous peoples, their pasts, and their ancestors.
Questioning the usefulness and pejorative overtones of the word “prehistory” is not simply an issue for “watchdogs of political correctness” (Nicholas and Andrews 1997b:xiv). They continue:
the term prehistory is often misconstrued to mean “without history,” implying that archaeologists present or support the view that indigenous peoples had no history. What prehistory actually refers to is archaeology done without use of, or access to, written records by the investigators of past human societies—a tremendous difference, and this meaning is conveyed by all standard archaeology textbooks. (Nicholas and Andrews 1997b:xiv–xv)
Because of the power of archaeology to create both a temporal and a cultural disjuncture between contemporary indigenous people and their ancestors, a pervasive feeling has emerged among Australian archaeologists that the terms “prehistory” and “prehistoric” are pejorative and obsolete. Colin Pardoe (1990) was one of the first Australian archaeologists to explicitly state and publish his stand on the inappropriateness of the term “prehistory” in the Australian indigenous context. He noted that in 1988 the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies forwarded a motion to educational bodies that “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history is the history of Australia, and as such can not be segregated or relegated to the outskirts of Australian society or to ‘prehistory’ ” (cited in Pardoe 1990:208). Such a view stemmed from the fact that “Aboriginal Australians have regularly objected to a European view of the past that makes a distinction between history and prehistory” (Pardoe 1990:208). John Mulvaney (1990:157) nicely summarized the situation thus:
While this is a world-wide convention applied to time before writing, to Aborigines it seems racist. They judge it to imply an inferior status, embracing both biological evolution and simplistic culture. If Europeans can have history, they consider it offensive to lumber them with prehistory. They are satisfied that their oral traditions, rituals and sacred places constitute history. To a people without writing, history need not be something written down. Whatever conventional academic definitions dictionaries provide of “prehistory,” therefore, the fact remains that its use is both misleading and offensive to those people with the greatest stake in Australia’s past. There are strong emotive and educational reasons why history departments should treat the entire human saga of colonising this continent as a single entity. Historians apply the designation Ancient History to several millennia in the Near and Middle East, for example, so perhaps the Ancient History of Australia could serve a similar function as a dignified label to the past before AD 1788 (or AD 1606).
And the critique continues through to the present. Hemming (2002:60) states:
The use of “prehistory” in Australian archaeology . . . has helped create a false dichotomy between contemporary Aboriginal people and their pre-European pasts. Archaeology subordinates “real” Aborigines to a pre-colonial past it labels as prehistoric.
One area where the terms “prehistory” and “prehistoric” continue to create problems for Australian archaeologists is with archaeological sites dating to the period of European settlement, that is, to the past two centuries. In much cultural heritage legislation and in many cultural heritage (archaeological) impact assessments associated with developments, non-Aboriginal sites or sites associated with European culture are usually designated historical heritage. This designation continues despite a general reluctance of heritage managers to use the pejorative term “prehistoric” in relation to Aboriginal sites dating to before European settlement. As such, a situation has arisen where sites are often designated either Aboriginal or historic. For example, Victoria, like all states in Australia, has an Aboriginal sites register for Aboriginal sites and a separate historic sites register for non-Aboriginal (mostly European) sites. To undertake archaeological excavation of contact sites from the earlier colonial frontier can require a permit from Aboriginal Affairs Victoria (for the Aboriginal cultural materials) and a separate permit from Heritage Victoria (for the European cultural materials). Clearly this administrative divide becomes increasingly complex and fuzzy (Lightfoot 1995:203) in contact contexts where material culture items in their biographical travels pass (perhaps repeatedly) from one cultural group to another (Wolski 2000). In a sense, the administrative divide has the potential to set up a catch-22 situation where the designation of Aboriginal or European for particular items of material culture requires detailed archaeological analysis, analysis that can only take place with an excavation permit from the relevant Aboriginal and/or European sites authority.
One area where the archaeological paradigm continues to clash with Aboriginal values is site management and the conservation of cultural heritage significance values. A fundamental tenet of cultural heritage management philosophy is conserving site significance through physical preservation. For example, Article 6 of the International Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management (ICAHM) Charter for the Protection and Management of the Archaeological Heritage states (Cleere 1993:404):
The overall objective of archaeological heritage management should be the preservation of monuments and sites in situ including long-term conservation and curation of all related records and collections etc. . . . Local commitment and participation should be actively sought and encouraged as a means of promoting the maintenance of the archaeological heritage. This principle is especially important when dealing with the heritage of indigenous peoples or local cultural groups.
While the overall thrust of the ICAHM Charter is commendable, the assumed equation of conservation with preservation once more reflects archaeological values and the Western scientific tradition (Byrne 1991; McNiven 1994a). These values underpin the status of museums and the collection and preservation of material culture in general—of cultures as old objects rather than new people.
For some Aboriginal Australians, as with many indigenous peoples of the world, conserving the significance of a cultural heritage site or object may involve allowing its physical destruction. Examples include Western Desert Aboriginal people masking sacred rock art motifs by repainting and Kakadu peoples masking sacred rock art with mud to stop inappropriate observation by Europeans (Mulvaney 1993:111). That many Europeans, including cultural heritage managers and archaeologists, consider such actions as destructive is exemplified by the uproar that surrounded the overpainting of Wandjina figures in the Kimberley some years ago (Bowdler 1988; Mowaljarlai and Peck 1987; Mowaljarlai and Watchman 1989; Mowaljarlai et al. 1988; Ward 1992). In other cases, letting burials naturally erode away is seen as conserving their spiritual significance among certain groups of Aboriginal Australians (Pardoe 1985:66) and Native Americans (Kluth and Munnell 1997:116).
Perhaps the most widely discussed and contentious example of conserving the cultural significance of archaeological materials through physical destruction (i.e., nonpreservation) is the repatriation and reburial of Aboriginal skeletal remains from museums (Donlon 1994; Lahn 1996; Mulvaney 1991; Pardoe 1985). While most archaeologists understand why many Aboriginal people wish to have their ancestral remains reburied, the outrage over the call by members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community for the repatriation of excavated occupation deposits highlights the confusion that persists over the differences between conservation and preservation.
In 1995, TALC took members of La Trobe University’s School of Archaeology to court in order to obtain a large collection of Pleistocene archaeological materials which the university legally excavated (Allen 1995; Auty 1995; Smith 1999). TALC stated that materials excavated by the archaeologists must be returned to Tasmania as these were of “great spiritual and psychological importance” and that reburial of these materials was necessary to “heal the wounds” created by excavation (Murray and Allen 1995:871). La Trobe objected to these demands, stating that the sites consisted “partly of garbage discarded by humans” and contained “no human bones or teeth, ornaments or art which might be considered sacred” (Murray and Allen 1995:871–872). The La Trobe archaeologists also questioned the validity of cultural attachments of present Tasmanians to these sites, given that the last evidence for use of the caves was more than 10,000 years ago (Murray and Allen 1995:873; Maslen 1995:31). Alternatively, it was argued by the La Trobe team that the cultural materials were of immense scientific significance on a world scale and should be researched. This scientific significance was in effect seen to supersede any cultural or spiritual rights that may be held by Tasmanian Aboriginal communities as “rightful” indigenous owners.
The interaction highlighted the difficulty of dealing with information, concepts, and abstractions drawn from different knowledge systems (Smith 1999). For the Tasmanians the materials needed to be reburied in order to conserve their cultural and spiritual significance. While that would destroy the integrity, value, and power of the materials in scientific terms, to the Tasmanians it represented a case of cultural conservation by nonpreservation and the political emasculation of science. The Tasmanian government supported TALC’s demands (to repatriate and possibly to destroy the excavated materials), which we read as an explicit statement that put Aboriginal significance values above scientific values. While such a decision may have been politically expedient, it signaled a major change in government attitudes toward the importance of the social dimensions of cultural heritage and an endorsement of Aboriginal self-determination. The academics involved, concerned about the long-term implications of the approach, noted that “if excavation means reburial in ways which lead to the effective destruction of the cultural materials or sites then it would be unethical for any of us to dig” (Murray 1996a:320; McGowan 1996).
This debate between academic archaeologists and Aboriginal communities around the issues of conservation and preservation suggests to us that the academy in many cases lags behind current archaeological and cultural heritage practice in the public arena. For many years now, Australian archaeologists and cultural heritage officers have been assisting Aboriginal people to excavate disturbed burials that are immediately, or within a few months, reburied nearby in a safe location (McNiven 1991; Pardoe 1992). Furthermore, in the realm of salvage archaeology many projects merely shift Aboriginal cultural materials (e.g., stone artifacts) immediately to the side of the impact zone of development. In a strictly scientific sense, such actions destroy the archaeological context of the materials, but from an indigenous heritage perspective, such actions conserve the cultural (particularly spiritual) significance of the materials as they remain close to where the “old people” last used them within their cultural (landscape) context.
The sites from southwest Tasmania at the center of the repatriation affair were described as exhibiting world archaeological significance (Cosgrove and Allen 1996; Morell 1995; Mulvaney 1983). In terms of world prehistory, this high significance value is well justified: interpretation of the material remains provided rare insights into human lifeways from Ice Age Australia (Allen 1996; Cosgrove 1995; McNiven 1994b; Jones 1990). However, some archaeologists took this world significance issue further; Rhys Jones, for example, argued that “Australia’s deep historical sites are part of the universal history of humankind” (cited in Morell 1995:1425). However, Aboriginal people see the issue of world significance and universal heritage very differently (TALC 1996:294): “From our perspective the claims that parts of our heritage belong to all ‘mankind’ and that they are of ‘world significance’ are one more example of the continuing appropriation of our land and our heritage.”
The debate over differing Aboriginal and archaeological perspectives on the issue of world significance is not new in Australia. This issue, emerging in the late 1970s, accelerated and intensified throughout the 1980s following calls for the repatriation of Aboriginal skeletal remains, particularly those from the Murray-Darling basin (Doig 1991; Langford 1983:4; Mulvaney 1981, 1989; Webb 1987; Wettenhall 1988–1989). The dual processes of appropriation and dissociation are perhaps best illustrated by this archaeological meta-narrative of world prehistory. Notions of world prehistory, arising out of research into the deep past, are frequently couched in terms that deny indigenous interests. They also revolve around Western scientific questions and interests ultimately concerned with more than local history. Under the guise of writing a world prehistory for all humanity, indigenous people’s pasts and interests have been subsumed (Ucko 1989).
Repatriation disputes bring into sharp focus the potential conflict between scientific (archaeological) significance and cultural (Aboriginal) significance, and between conservation and preservation. We would argue that much of this potential for conflict results from the use of a significance value, in this case scientific significance, which is set at the same conceptual level as cultural significance. This classificatory scheme, which under present Australian standards includes other significance values such as historical and educational, fixes Aboriginal people simply as an interest group, alongside such other stakeholders such as archaeologists and developers, in terms of archaeological sites (Marquis-Kyle and Walker 1992). This interest group model, which currently pervades archaeological and cultural heritage management in Australia, is fundamentally flawed as it externalizes Aboriginal people to their own heritage (Boyd et al. 1996). Furthermore, the model underpins calls by well-meaning archaeologists that consultation between indigenous peoples and archaeologists “must be a dialogue between equals” (Swidler et al. 1997b:14; Sullivan 1985:153). We argue that the model needs to be replaced by a host and guest model that sees Aboriginal people not as equal stakeholders but as the owners and controllers of their heritage. As such, they may wish (or not wish as the case may be) to have non-Aboriginal guests research their cultural sites on their own terms and conditions. Thus the host and guest model of cross-cultural interaction initiates the possibility of a further decolonization of archaeological practice. However, as a dehegemonizing strategy, the host and guest model may only truly succeed when it is enshrined in legislation, or at the very least interpreted legally as a dimension of native title rights (Godwin 2001:21).
Most Aboriginal people, like nearly all cultures of the world, use religious cosmology to frame the past and construct historical narratives. This is a universal approach and one of the defining features of humanity. However, most Westerners tend to give religious narratives pejorative labels such as “myth, superstition, legend, fable, fantasy” (Davidson 1991; Anyon et al. 1997:84). In an attempt to bring about a reconciliation between indigenous Australians and archaeologists, many Australian archaeologists have dispensed with the idea that the scientific narratives of the past are innately superior to indigenous constructions of the past. To operationalize this stance, some archaeologists have attempted to find syncretism between the divergent belief systems of Western science and Aboriginal cosmology. Davidson (1995:4), for example, suggests that compatibility between the Aboriginal view that Aboriginal people have always been in Australia and the archaeological view of human colonization by an immigrant population at least 40,000 years ago can be gained by stating that humans only “became Aborigines” after they entered Australia. In our dealings with Aboriginal communities in southern and eastern Australia, this view has little currency. Indeed, we suspect that few archaeologists understand the irony of Aboriginal people quoting the 40,000 years figure for the benefit of the non-Aboriginal population. When Aboriginal people quote 400,000 years or even 500,000 years of occupation, as we have heard said by Aboriginal elders, it is clear that they want us to understand in our terms that they have been here for a “bloody long time” (Russell 2001). Archaeologists might be impressed by the number of zeros on a radiocarbon date, whereas Aboriginal people are impressed that archaeologists are learning what they knew all the time!
For some Australian archaeologists, reconciliation is possible by showing the factual basis and scientific validity of certain Aboriginal oral history and even myths (Campbell 1967). Flood (1995:140–141) recalls an “interesting myth” told by South Australian Aboriginal people about rising seas creating Kangaroo Island. She suggests that the “story seems to be based on fact” given our current understanding of sea level rises associated with temperature rises after the Last Glacial Maximum. As Bednarik (1995) reflects, are Aboriginal people “supposed to applaud science for re-discovering something that has been a cornerstone of their metaphysics since the ‘Dreamtime’?” (cf. Echo-Hawk 1997:91). Bednarik continues (1995:80), “The fact here is that eustatic fluctuations are a scientific hypothesis presented for falsification, and not a fact, while Aboriginal stories are abstracted factual witness accounts handed down orally. So, who should be verifying whose ‘accepted fiction.’ ”
The use of archaeology in native title land claims in Australia is an example where Aboriginal people have initiated the step of drawing on archaeological knowledge to help substantiate oral testimony (Lilley 2000). However, while many archaeologists believe such work demonstrates the value of archaeology to indigenous people, it needs to be kept in mind that the work is being done simply to win court cases. Aboriginal people are using Western knowledge as a weapon to fight the colonial legal system—a non-Aboriginal system with non-Aboriginal rules. Aboriginal people employ archaeological knowledge because they feel compelled to do so. Indeed, every time archaeological information is presented as evidence, it is a tacit acknowledgment of the contempt that the broader non-Aboriginal community has for the veracity of Aboriginal oral history. In the routine framework by which Australian courts address and judge indigenous land claims, a key role is taken by the anthropologists who gather together and collate indigenous knowledge in a “claim book.” Thus indigenous knowledge is brought to legal notice as it is translated by academics trained within the intellectual framework of scientific research.
Similar problems arise when European historical records are used to test the validity of Aboriginal oral testimony. This became very clear in the celebrated case of the building of a bridge at Lake Hindmarsh, South Australia, when questions concerning the existence of sites associated with secret Aboriginal women’s business were tested by their consistency with historically documented reports. Initial anthropological reports indicated these sites would be threatened by development, and bridge construction was banned by the federal government. However, a subsequent investigation by the South Australian state government, undertaken without Aboriginal support, concluded that claims for sacred sites were spurious, and the construction ban was lifted (Bell 1998; Kenny 1996; Weiner 1999).
Perhaps an even greater philosophical challenge for the reconciliation process is to state that Western scientific and Aboriginal cosmological views of the past can never be reconciled (Davidson 1991:249). For example, a fundamental aspect of the Lightning Brothers project, a study of the rock art and archaeology of Wardaman country, is the acknowledgment that while archaeological research may reveal insights into the antiquity of Wardaman rock paintings, such chronological insights “should never undermine the other reality that to some [Wardaman] they may be timeless, Dreaming actualities (rather than representations)” (David et al. 1990:83; see Williams and Mununggurr 1989 for a discussion of Aboriginal concepts of nonlinear time). No ontological syncretism is attempted to reconcile the two different narrative forms. The approach taken by the Lightning Brothers project recognizes not only two systems of knowledge but also the potential of the scientific system to undermine the Wardaman system. This can only occur if attempts are made to reconcile the two knowledge systems; imposing a linear time frame—as revealed by radiocarbon dating—on the cyclical time frame of Wardaman cosmology is one example.
Many Aboriginal people do not accept archaeological constructions of their past as legitimate. In response to this criticism, some archaeologists have suggested that archaeological narratives are simply “another way of telling . . . the human history of Australia” (Murray 1996b:75). This so-called democratized view is seen to have legitimacy because “Aboriginal and Europeans have shared a common history” since 1788 (Allen 1988:82–83; Attwood 1992), while all Australians share the prehistoric cultural heritage of the continent. A number of problems undermine the intuitive appeal of this approach. First, the acceptance of divergent views is within broader society, not within archaeological discourse; the privileged position of archaeology remains unchallenged. Second, many would argue that Europeans and Aboriginal Australians have never shared the same history because each has been positioned on different sides of the colonial frontier—as colonizer and colonized respectively (McGuire 1992:816–817). Furthermore, most Aboriginal people see European attempts to incorporate “prehistoric” Aboriginal heritage into a broadened Euro-Australian heritage as an example of colonial appropriation. While Euro-Australians may be keen to share their history with Aboriginal Australians as an act of reconciliation, the legacy of colonialism ensures that the reverse situation will not come easily. For this reason many Aboriginal people believe they are the rightful and exclusive custodians of mission sites, which Euro-Australians often consider classic contexts of shared history.
Harrison and Williamson (2002) use the term “shared histories” to explain and explore archaeology of the postcontact period. Some of the sites examined dating to this period include missions, outstations, and reoccupied pastoral sites. Many of the contributors acknowledge that they are using the shared history paradigm as developed by Murray (1996c).
In Australia, missions are one of the most commonly investigated contact period site types. These sites are also often designated shared sites (Harrison 2002; McIntyre-Tamwoy 2002). The missionary period in Australia began in 1823 with the establishment of mission stations in New South Wales. In 1836, as Victoria was being settled, the first mission stations were established. Despite being locations to which Aboriginal people were forcibly removed, these were also locations where kinship ties were forged and new connections made. Mission sites today are often highly regarded by indigenous Australians who seek to manage and control this heritage (L’Oste-Brown et al. 1995). This high social significance often stems from the fact that mission sites provided locales for resistance to colonial oppression in ways that might appear counterintuitive.
At one level, mission sites appear to be European sites, at another shared sites (Harrison 2002:39). However, for many Aboriginal people these sites are designated Aboriginal and nothing more. On Fraser Island off the Queensland coast, one of us (McNiven) was the cultural heritage officer in 1993, undertaking a range of heritage activities including site recording and management. Of the hundreds of Aboriginal sites on the Island—including shell middens, stone artifacts scatters, scarred trees, sacred lakes, ceremonial grounds, and burial places—only one site was considered too culturally important and sensitive for McNiven to visit. Badtjala elders told him that he could not enter the Bogimbah mission, an early Aboriginal reserve operating between 1897 and 1904. Although strictly speaking the Badtjala people did not have the legal or administrative power to prevent access to Bogimbah, their connection to it, and perception of ownership over it, were clearly paramount.
A more significant problem with archaeologists’ calls for shared rights in the Aboriginal past is the lack of recognition of the tremendous power differential between indigenous and archaeological voices. As Murray (1996b:75, 85) rightly points out, part of the “power of archaeology” is its ability to “provide an additional source of information for constructing Aboriginality.” The potential of this power is illustrated by the Kimberley region of western Australia, where many local Aboriginal people took deep offence at inferences by Grahame Walsh that the Bradshaw rock art may have been made by non-Aboriginal people. Walsh’s radical interpretations were seen by Aboriginal people to undermine their ancestral ties to their lands and to question their identity (McNiven and Russell 1997). That most Australian archaeologists are sympathetic to these concerns has nothing to do with “political correctness” as Walsh (2000) purports; it is simply a rejection of scholarship underwritten by colonial tenets (McNiven and Russell 1997).
In many ways, the issue of Aboriginal identity, as constructed by Aboriginal people themselves, as well as its public representation within the broader community, is central to the reconciliation debate. Aboriginal concerns about the way their own pasts are presented “cannot be resolved simply by Aboriginal people and archaeologists accepting that each other’s view of the past is different but valid. The problem is more than a clash of belief systems—it is a clash of powers to control constructions of identity” (McNiven 1998:47, emphasis added). It simply does not matter how much archaeologists consult and hand out community reports; the archaeological story is from the dominant, hegemonic side of the frontier. Few Aboriginal people have any opportunity to engage in public archaeological discourse because of their marginalized status within Australian society. Furthermore, Murray’s (1996b:77) post-processualist call for a “polyvocal” archaeology where the “Australian public will be able to make an informed choice between competing accounts of the past” may inadvertently promote cultural imperialism as Aboriginal views are smothered by archaeological views of the dominant culture. Consequently, polyvocalism may reinforce the colonial divide between black and white Australia. By the same token, such a divide would also persist if Aboriginal people deny non-Aboriginal Australians any stake in that archaeology. The degree to which Euro-Australians have a stake in Aboriginal heritage is a complex issue as it goes to the heart of Australian national identity (Byrne 1996; Lattas 1992; Murray 1992). If Australians push for a singular (shared) national identity, then appropriation of Aboriginal heritage will continue to grow. However, it remains to be seen whether or not a more pluralistic national identity that covets cultural diversity and even semiautonomous indigenous states (such as exists for Torres Strait Islanders) will subvert appropriation.
For Australian archaeology, the goal should be the creation of a community-based archaeology built around partnerships between indigenous communities and archaeologists that employ mutually acceptable research agendas and interpretative frameworks. Such partnerships should be neither appropriationist nor hegemonic, but mindful of the host and guest relationship and respectful of indigenous cultural sensitivities (McBryde 1992:265). During the 1990s, many Australian archaeologists and Aboriginal communities experimented with such partnerships (Davidson et al. 1995). At that time, Murray (1996d:733) pointed out that in many contexts we “simply do not know what partnership means and we have little concrete evidence for predicting the ways in which the politics of ownership, control and exclusion will play themselves out.” With the turn of the new millennium, fundamental tenets of successful partnership projects can be elaborated within the broader context of the host and guest model. Yet issues remain.
Some archaeologists suggest that censorship may be an issue in situations where archaeological research reveals information that challenges Aboriginal views of their past (Allen 1983:8; Biolsi and Zimmerman 1997b:15; Murray 1992:13; 1996b:82; Nicholas and Andrews 1997c:10–11). We find it difficult to believe that any indigenous community, working within a partnership research project, would deliberately censor archaeological information they genuinely believed to be contradictory to their own oral traditions simply for political expediency (Colley 2002:86). In this connection, Echo-Hawk (2000:288) argues that “scholars have a responsibility to go where the evidence goes, and we should resist any impulse to tell only inoffensive, esteem-building stories to either colleagues or constituencies.”
Censorship, defined as a prohibition on public dissemination (i.e., publication), is most likely to be an issue in two situations: first, when archaeologists out of the blue present a draft manuscript of a publication to a community and ask for permission to publish results. If the community had no prior idea of the nature of the research results and no opportunity to be a part of the publication writing process, then the community may take offence and reject the publication request. In this situation, it is not the archaeological research results per se that cause offence but the process that led to the reporting of those results. As Colley (2002:87) points out, while some archaeologists might find the concept of permission to publish unacceptable, “in practice such arrangements are usually a matter of common sense and politeness.” The second issue arises when archaeological research reveals materials (e.g., sacred items) whose cultural significance might be jeopardized by publicity. For example, survey or excavation may reveal cultural materials that have secret/sacred associations for indigenous people (Dongoske and Anyon 1997:190). For this reason some archaeological projects employ elders to participate in archaeological excavation so that if sacred materials are uncovered, appropriate mitigation measures (e.g., reburying the materials and closing down the excavation) can take place (Allen 1995:43). Put simply, scientific significance should not override indigenous demands that information on these cultural materials not enter the public realm.
A key issue for all partnership projects is for archaeologists and indigenous communities to not only define research agendas but also continually reassess if and how research results are going to be presented to the outside world. Through continual dialogue and negotiation, archaeologists can become more fully aware of potential changes in the social, political, and cultural implications of their research. By the same token, regular dialogue will ensure that Aboriginal groups are kept continuously informed of results as they unfold.
The power of archaeology is far from democratic if it places Aboriginal people in a position of having constantly to reassess and redefine their identity in light of new archaeological discoveries and interpretations (Murray 1996b:83; Biolsi and Zimmerman 1997b:8). In this sense, reconciliation between archaeologists and Aboriginal people will only take place when Aboriginal people gain greater control of their lives and identity. It is for this reason that all state governments in Australia, along with the Australian Archaeological Association, have taken the counterhegemonic step of supporting Aboriginal demands for the right to veto archaeological research. This right to veto is a blunt measure of Aboriginal success in controlling archaeological research. Alternatively, a measure of archaeology’s success in making itself relevant to Aboriginal people will be when Aboriginal people have the desire to set archaeological research agendas and initiate partnership projects. These desires may be expressed voluntarily or may come as a result of archaeologists asking, What archaeological issues interest your community (Whiteley 1997:196)? While some older archaeologists see such moves as a threat to the sanctity of academic freedom, our experience is that most younger archaeologists would see it as the ultimate compliment. Perhaps the true test will be whether or not Aboriginal constructions of their past are accepted as legitimate within archaeological discourse.
One of the first casualties of this new partnership approach will be abandonment of the New Archaeology/processualist emphasis on using the archaeological record simply to explore universal models of human behavior (McGuire 1997:75). Indigenous peoples do not want their cultural heritage to be alienated and reduced to a laboratory for Western positivist science (Trigger 1980:672; 1985:29–32). In its place we may well see the rise of highly localized and particularistic research agendas emphasizing local cultural history and local community desires and needs.
One key area where we see increasing use of archaeological expertise by indigenous communities is in the area of oral tradition. The approach to the archaeology of oral tradition we advocate does not (con)test indigenous oral traditions but rather weds archaeological practice with indigenous processes of constructing historical narratives. Thus the archaeology of oral traditions needs to be set within a research process that focuses on situations where complementarity and compatibility between different knowledge bases is not only the goal but also essentially guaranteed. The key to ensuring complementarity is for the indigenous and archaeological research partners to discuss what types of new information archaeological research is capable of providing and tailor archaeological research so it produces information that augments understanding of the traditional story (David et al. 2004). If epistemological complementarity cannot be found, then it is recommended that no integration of oral traditions and archaeology take place.
One obvious advantage of uniting archaeology with oral tradition is that it reinstates indigenous peoples as active agents in the construction and elaboration of their own histories. Oral traditions are no longer represented within a colonial guise as time-locked to a traditional and unchanging past (Echo-Hawk 2000:288). In contrast, oral traditions become reactivated as dynamic history that is available for reinvigoration and recontextualization by new generations of indigenous peoples if they so wish. In a sense, archaeological value-adding of traditional oral histories provides a mechanism by which younger generations of indigenous peoples can reconnect with their heritage by actively engaging in its augmentation. As a result, new generations will feel they are more part of the stories because they have been actively involved in the construction of these stories. Archaeology provides elders with a new mechanism by which they can engage younger generations to connect with their heritage. New archaeological insights should not undermine the authority of elders if they have full control of the research process (McGhee 1997:235). In some cases, indigenous communities may be more than happy for archaeological research to be undertaken to test the historical accuracy of certain dimensions of oral traditions and histories (Schmidt and Patterson 1995). However, it needs to be kept in mind that the kind of archaeology being engaged is not traditional archaeological practice. At the very least the archaeology used will be contractual or partnership in scope. Yet the recovery of divergent archaeological information does not indicate that the oral tradition is historically wrong or inaccurate. The divergence may simply reflect different symbolic and metaphoric strategies employed in the construction of oral traditions to convey historical information. Holl (1995:193) makes the point that “oral accounts are . . . a particular kind of historical record.” Furthermore, “in order to be able to understand their meanings and grasp their complexity, researchers must study the dynamics of at least a part of the social system and the contexts within which the accounts were used and recorded.” In this connection, Denton (1997:121) makes the interesting observation that some oral traditions may also have been refined in the past using archaeological and landscape evidence. In this sense, oral tradition and archaeology research may have more in common than we think.
In our experience, while research may become localized, Aboriginal communities assume that archaeologists use state-of-the-art analytical techniques. Such an assumption requires that archaeologists, including consulting archaeologists, keep up to date with advances in the discipline. To do otherwise undervalues the potential significance of archaeological materials which many Aboriginal people read as being disrespectful. This issue is becoming increasingly significant as more indigenous organizations establish their own geographical information systems to manage their cultural sites and enter into high-level negotiations with government bodies and with private corporations involved with mining ventures, and so on. With these increasing skill demands, some indigenous communities are giving support to their members undertaking university training, by both formal degrees and specially designed short certificate courses, in archaeology and in cultural heritage management. Such changes have also placed demands on universities to provide more relevant information on the ever-changing sociopolitical landscape of researching indigenous archaeological materials (Nicholas 2000; Wiseman 1998).
In extending the metanarrative of world prehistory and drawing directly on the tenets of colonialism, Aboriginal heritage is frequently incorporated into discourses of nationalism. In 1999 a group of Australian tourists were killed in a flash flood at Interlaken in Switzerland. Although none of those killed were Aboriginal the memorial ceremony was marked with the haunting (recorded) sound of a didgeridoo. Aboriginal culture, as is so often the case, was appropriated and repackaged in an attempt to create a signifier of the Australian nation. While such actions might appear banal and innocuous, these are extensions of the colonial tenets we have outlined above—disassociation and appropriation. The display resonates with the argument that the Aboriginal history and prehistory of Australia is “the inheritance of all Australians” (Mulvaney 1981:20). Although it is reasonable to see archaeological interpretations of the Aboriginal past as the product of a shared discourse and liable to multiple readings, appropriating Aboriginal culture for nationalist agendas is problematic.
Theorizing the possibility of a decolonized archaeology is much more than an exercise in semantics. It is an exercise that is likely to reveal very real and applicable results; it is also an exercise we must undertake. As Zimmerman (1997:56) has noted, “The profession of archaeology must change the most because it stands to lose the most.” A sobering and thought-provoking reality is that as public money for archaeology decreases, it is Aboriginal funds designated for heritage assessments and subsequent archaeology that may save our profession. Working with and for indigenous community organizations and including the wishes and concerns of those communities into our research agendas will fundamentally change the way archaeology is practiced. Needless to say there are going to be a range of Aboriginal views; despite popular representations, Aboriginal Australia is far from being homogeneous. In contemporary Australia there are more than one hundred Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) language groups divided into thirty-five regional administrative councils funded by the federal government as well as hundreds of registered ATSI organizations. Expecting a unified indigenous response owes much to the heritage of colonialism. It is almost impossible to predict how substantial will be the changes that come from partnerships; we need to see how things will unfold.
In this chapter we have outlined a number of issues that reflect and act on Australian archaeology’s colonialism. Central to our argument is the contention that indigenous archaeology, as practiced in a settler colony such as Australia, has a legacy that connects it (however unintentionally) to the domination strategies of the colonial project. We have highlighted some issues, including the privileging of archaeological discourse in the construction of historical narratives, the failure to recognize the power differential in the public representation of indigenous and scientific knowledge systems, the distancing and dehumanizing nature of the language of science, a misunderstanding of the difference between conservation and preservation, the failure to operationalize indigenous ownership of their heritage through the host and guest model of cross-cultural interaction, and the appropriation of the indigenous past in the guise of shared history for the purpose of nationalism. While important advances have been made to overcome these inadequacies, archaeologists must remain vigilant and continue to engage with these issues and accelerate the process of academic decolonization.
This chapter is the result of discussions with colleagues and members of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities over many years. In particular, we thank Luke Godwin, who continually challenges us to find new horizons in Australian indigenous cultural heritage research. Chris Chippindale, Bruno David, Luke Godwin, and Laurajane Smith kindly provided helpful and incisive comments on earlier versions of this chapter.
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