Pub Date : 2021-11-03DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2021.1994685
A. Roberts, S. Freeman, Daryl Wesley, V. Levchenko, L. Barry, Luc Bordes, Katheryn Litherland, J. Litherland, Joshua S. Haynes, A. Paterson
Abstract In this article we present the results of a morphological analysis of four mostly complete non-returning boomerangs and one shaped wooden fragment recovered in 2017 and 2018 from Cooper Creek near Innamincka in South Australia’s far northeast. This archaeological collection forms one of only six known/published wooden artefact assemblages in the country. We also detail the results of the direct accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C) measurement of the artefacts which range from circa 275–175 BP (1650–1830 cal AD, median ages reported). Given that the age estimates obtained for the artefacts are from the recent period, we have complemented the morphological analysis by interpreting the assemblage within the context of ethnohistorical records and Traditional Owner knowledge. The assemblage reveals a variety of forms and functions representative of the diverse cultural activities and daily lives of the Aboriginal people who lived near significant waterholes in the Cooper Creek region during this period. The boomerangs also preserve manufacture and use-wear traces, providing insights into the life histories of each implement. In addition to their likely use as projectiles, our results indicate that the boomerangs were probably used for fighting, hunting, digging, fire management and possibly in ceremonies. Predictions for climate change in the region threaten to alter the conditions that allowed the preservation of these artefacts which may negatively affect the potential survival of other wooden objects that remain in the environment.
摘要在这篇文章中，我们对2017年和2018年在南澳大利亚州东北部Innamincka附近的Cooper Creek发现的四个最完整的不回飞镖和一个形状的木制碎片进行了形态学分析。这批考古藏品是该国仅有的六件已知/已出版的木制工艺品之一。我们还详细介绍了人工制品的直接加速器质谱放射性碳（AMS 14C）测量结果，其范围约为275–175 BP（1650–1830 cal AD，报告的中位年龄）。鉴于获得的文物年龄估计来自最近一段时期，我们通过在民族历史记录和传统所有者知识的背景下解释组合来补充形态分析。该组合展示了多种形式和功能，代表了这一时期居住在库珀溪地区重要水坑附近的原住民的多样文化活动和日常生活。回旋镖还保留了制造和使用的磨损痕迹，可以深入了解每个工具的使用历史。除了它们可能被用作投射物外，我们的研究结果表明，回旋镖可能被用于战斗、狩猎、挖掘、消防管理，甚至可能用于仪式。对该地区气候变化的预测可能会改变保护这些文物的条件，这可能会对环境中其他木制物品的潜在生存产生负面影响。
{"title":"Morphological analysis and radiocarbon dating of non-returning boomerangs from Cooper Creek/Kinipapa (Northeast South Australia)","authors":"A. Roberts, S. Freeman, Daryl Wesley, V. Levchenko, L. Barry, Luc Bordes, Katheryn Litherland, J. Litherland, Joshua S. Haynes, A. Paterson","doi":"10.1080/03122417.2021.1994685","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2021.1994685","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article we present the results of a morphological analysis of four mostly complete non-returning boomerangs and one shaped wooden fragment recovered in 2017 and 2018 from Cooper Creek near Innamincka in South Australia’s far northeast. This archaeological collection forms one of only six known/published wooden artefact assemblages in the country. We also detail the results of the direct accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C) measurement of the artefacts which range from circa 275–175 BP (1650–1830 cal AD, median ages reported). Given that the age estimates obtained for the artefacts are from the recent period, we have complemented the morphological analysis by interpreting the assemblage within the context of ethnohistorical records and Traditional Owner knowledge. The assemblage reveals a variety of forms and functions representative of the diverse cultural activities and daily lives of the Aboriginal people who lived near significant waterholes in the Cooper Creek region during this period. The boomerangs also preserve manufacture and use-wear traces, providing insights into the life histories of each implement. In addition to their likely use as projectiles, our results indicate that the boomerangs were probably used for fighting, hunting, digging, fire management and possibly in ceremonies. Predictions for climate change in the region threaten to alter the conditions that allowed the preservation of these artefacts which may negatively affect the potential survival of other wooden objects that remain in the environment.","PeriodicalId":8648,"journal":{"name":"Australian Archaeology","volume":"88 1","pages":"31 - 48"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44959734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-27DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2021.1991623
N. Pearson
{"title":"Shipwrecks of the Roaring Forties: Researching Some of Australia’s Earliest Shipwrecks","authors":"N. Pearson","doi":"10.1080/03122417.2021.1991623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2021.1991623","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":8648,"journal":{"name":"Australian Archaeology","volume":"88 1","pages":"110 - 111"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42880752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-24DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2021.1972387
Marvin Martin
ship names accompanied by the arrival date, captain, senior officers, and ordinary seamen. The shared experience of quarantine itself also produced a sense of camaraderie amongst civilian detainees. Both transient and enduring relationships are reflected in the sandstone carvings, as the extended shared residence itself forged new personal friendships, trade union sentiments, and romantic partnerships. Our authors also interpret the presence of such inscribed name clusters as reflecting an emerging collective identity associated with a new turn-of-century sense of Australia’s Commonwealth nationalism. The authors’ evocative material stories also explore proud experiences of Australia’s migrant and multicultural past. Quarantine Station inscriptions commemorate a rich global array of immigrants whose initial experience of Australia was the liminal space of (health) detention. Stone carvings depict an exotic range of languages, with Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese languages represented, in addition to Greek and Russian Cyrillic script. With their emphasis on ‘storytelling’, the authors weave numerous examples of these stone inscriptions into wider narratives and negotiations of arrival, transit, shared labour, skilled professions and new migrant identities. Finally, the Station’s inscriptions communicate the dynamics of global commerce and cross-cultural exchange. A history of the China Navigation Company (CNCo) accompanies the authors’ reading of the accomplished inscription. Running steamers into Sydney from 1886, three of the CNCo’s small fleet of four ships appeared in the Quarantine Station’s sandstone carvings. Their ‘most accomplished’ image depicts the company’s logo encircled by two dragons – this specific inscription incorporating a modified amalgam of heraldic elements culturally significant to both Chinese and British historic mythologies. Carved as a monument to the “SS Taiyuan”, the tilted rock face carving was first created in 1894, and subsequently reinscribed with later additions linked to the ship’s five separate voyages to quarantine in Sydney Harbour. Based around the narrative structure of ‘storytelling’, this handsome volume offers an outstanding example of how ephemeral cultural materials illuminate powerful stories of lives experienced under extended quarantine. It captures the boredom of isolation, the fear of disease, the pride of military and nautical service, the trauma of global wars and dislocations, the trepidation of emigration, and the experiences of multi-cultural identities. It not only acknowledges these themes as essential elements in the making of contemporary Australia but links them to the delicate inscriptions of Sydney’s Quarantine Station. Scholarly, accessible and (disturbingly) relevant, this volume demonstrates the intrinsic value of ‘storytelling’ within archaeological research.
{"title":"The Bible in Buffalo Country: Oenpelli Mission 1925–1931","authors":"Marvin Martin","doi":"10.1080/03122417.2021.1972387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2021.1972387","url":null,"abstract":"ship names accompanied by the arrival date, captain, senior officers, and ordinary seamen. The shared experience of quarantine itself also produced a sense of camaraderie amongst civilian detainees. Both transient and enduring relationships are reflected in the sandstone carvings, as the extended shared residence itself forged new personal friendships, trade union sentiments, and romantic partnerships. Our authors also interpret the presence of such inscribed name clusters as reflecting an emerging collective identity associated with a new turn-of-century sense of Australia’s Commonwealth nationalism. The authors’ evocative material stories also explore proud experiences of Australia’s migrant and multicultural past. Quarantine Station inscriptions commemorate a rich global array of immigrants whose initial experience of Australia was the liminal space of (health) detention. Stone carvings depict an exotic range of languages, with Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese languages represented, in addition to Greek and Russian Cyrillic script. With their emphasis on ‘storytelling’, the authors weave numerous examples of these stone inscriptions into wider narratives and negotiations of arrival, transit, shared labour, skilled professions and new migrant identities. Finally, the Station’s inscriptions communicate the dynamics of global commerce and cross-cultural exchange. A history of the China Navigation Company (CNCo) accompanies the authors’ reading of the accomplished inscription. Running steamers into Sydney from 1886, three of the CNCo’s small fleet of four ships appeared in the Quarantine Station’s sandstone carvings. Their ‘most accomplished’ image depicts the company’s logo encircled by two dragons – this specific inscription incorporating a modified amalgam of heraldic elements culturally significant to both Chinese and British historic mythologies. Carved as a monument to the “SS Taiyuan”, the tilted rock face carving was first created in 1894, and subsequently reinscribed with later additions linked to the ship’s five separate voyages to quarantine in Sydney Harbour. Based around the narrative structure of ‘storytelling’, this handsome volume offers an outstanding example of how ephemeral cultural materials illuminate powerful stories of lives experienced under extended quarantine. It captures the boredom of isolation, the fear of disease, the pride of military and nautical service, the trauma of global wars and dislocations, the trepidation of emigration, and the experiences of multi-cultural identities. It not only acknowledges these themes as essential elements in the making of contemporary Australia but links them to the delicate inscriptions of Sydney’s Quarantine Station. Scholarly, accessible and (disturbingly) relevant, this volume demonstrates the intrinsic value of ‘storytelling’ within archaeological research.","PeriodicalId":8648,"journal":{"name":"Australian Archaeology","volume":"88 1","pages":"112 - 114"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41491113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2021.1975714
C. Bird, J. Dortch, Fiona Hook
The presence of artefacts made from fossiliferous chert in the Perth metropolitan area and broader Swan Coastal Plain, extending from Geraldton to Dunsborough (Figure 1), has been an enigma for more than 40 years. The evidence from archaeology is inconsistent with regional geology and, as a consequence, geologist John Glover postulated the existence of offshore sources drowned by rising sea levels (Glover 1975, 1984; Glover and Cockbain 1971). Ward et al. (2019a; see also O’Leary et al. 2017; Ward et al. 2019b) claimed that new geological evidence makes this explanation untenable and therefore propose that long-distance trade from the Eucla area near the South Australian border be reconsidered as an explanation. However, their argument ignores the substantial archaeological evidence that led Glover to his original conclusion, as well as more recent investigations in southwestern Australia. Glover (1975) originally identified two main types of chert in archaeological contexts in the southwest of Western Australia: opaline and chalcedonic chert (referred to as Plantagenet chert), and fossiliferous chert (sometimes referred to as Bryozoan chert in the literature). Other chert types do occur, but in negligeable quantities. Plantagenet chert is common in archaeological assemblages along the south coast from Albany to Esperance, and is clearly derived from local onshore sources of silicified Plantagenet Group rocks. It is recorded in some inland areas, but there is no evidence that this material travelled as far as the west coast. Fossiliferous chert is found in archaeological sites along the west coast. No local sources are known, but it most closely resembles chert from the Eucla area. However, the large quantities of fossiliferous chert found in some sites suggested that it was unlikely to have travelled long distances, and the percentage of fossiliferous chert shows a fall-off from west to east, suggesting a westerly source. Thus, Glover proposed the hypothesis that fossiliferous chert derived from offshore sources drowned by rising sea levels. The effect of distance from source on the composition and characteristics of archaeological stone assemblages under different scenarios of procurement has been well-investigated. Broadly, the representation of stone in assemblages diminishes as distance from source increases, and in the case of highly-valued materials, particularly where highquality materials are scarce, a range of economising behaviours is normally observed. Assemblages along the south coast of Western Australia show precisely this pattern with respect to local Plantagenet chert. A study of the distribution of chert along a transect inland from Bremer Bay showed that the percentage of Plantagenet chert in assemblages diminishes with distance from coastal sources in a characteristic falloff curve. Assemblages inland of Bremer Bay also showed clear evidence of economising behaviour such as reduced size of artefacts and more intensive reductio
{"title":"A comment on Ward et al.’s ‘Insights into the procurement and distribution of fossiliferous chert artefacts across Southern Australia from the archival record’","authors":"C. Bird, J. Dortch, Fiona Hook","doi":"10.1080/03122417.2021.1975714","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2021.1975714","url":null,"abstract":"The presence of artefacts made from fossiliferous chert in the Perth metropolitan area and broader Swan Coastal Plain, extending from Geraldton to Dunsborough (Figure 1), has been an enigma for more than 40 years. The evidence from archaeology is inconsistent with regional geology and, as a consequence, geologist John Glover postulated the existence of offshore sources drowned by rising sea levels (Glover 1975, 1984; Glover and Cockbain 1971). Ward et al. (2019a; see also O’Leary et al. 2017; Ward et al. 2019b) claimed that new geological evidence makes this explanation untenable and therefore propose that long-distance trade from the Eucla area near the South Australian border be reconsidered as an explanation. However, their argument ignores the substantial archaeological evidence that led Glover to his original conclusion, as well as more recent investigations in southwestern Australia. Glover (1975) originally identified two main types of chert in archaeological contexts in the southwest of Western Australia: opaline and chalcedonic chert (referred to as Plantagenet chert), and fossiliferous chert (sometimes referred to as Bryozoan chert in the literature). Other chert types do occur, but in negligeable quantities. Plantagenet chert is common in archaeological assemblages along the south coast from Albany to Esperance, and is clearly derived from local onshore sources of silicified Plantagenet Group rocks. It is recorded in some inland areas, but there is no evidence that this material travelled as far as the west coast. Fossiliferous chert is found in archaeological sites along the west coast. No local sources are known, but it most closely resembles chert from the Eucla area. However, the large quantities of fossiliferous chert found in some sites suggested that it was unlikely to have travelled long distances, and the percentage of fossiliferous chert shows a fall-off from west to east, suggesting a westerly source. Thus, Glover proposed the hypothesis that fossiliferous chert derived from offshore sources drowned by rising sea levels. The effect of distance from source on the composition and characteristics of archaeological stone assemblages under different scenarios of procurement has been well-investigated. Broadly, the representation of stone in assemblages diminishes as distance from source increases, and in the case of highly-valued materials, particularly where highquality materials are scarce, a range of economising behaviours is normally observed. Assemblages along the south coast of Western Australia show precisely this pattern with respect to local Plantagenet chert. A study of the distribution of chert along a transect inland from Bremer Bay showed that the percentage of Plantagenet chert in assemblages diminishes with distance from coastal sources in a characteristic falloff curve. Assemblages inland of Bremer Bay also showed clear evidence of economising behaviour such as reduced size of artefacts and more intensive reductio","PeriodicalId":8648,"journal":{"name":"Australian Archaeology","volume":"87 1","pages":"326 - 329"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46151008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2021.1991522
M. Porr, Ella Vivian-Williams
We would like to thank all commentators for their excellent insights and feel honoured that so many distinguished scholars took the time to engage with our brief analysis and arguments. The responses have value not only in relation to the Forum piece but also as independent contributions to the Dark Emu debate. We hope that the comments will allow a new phase of engagement with the perception and understanding of Australia’s deep past, its relationship to present issues, and the positioning of archaeology in this respect. The responses show that Dark Emu and the debate around it can be understood in many different ways by Indigenous and other readers. They also demonstrate that issues surrounding Dark Emu have been discussed in deeply informed and conceptually sophisticated ways in previous decades. Several comments contain valuable reflections in this respect and both the archaeological community as well as the broader public can profit from these significant insights. Together with several commentators, we hope that the current discussions will initiate new archaeological research projects and the reassessment of existing collections. However, the Dark Emu debate will not be resolved with more empirical evidence alone. Almost all commentators have mentioned that Dark Emu replicates social evolutionist and progressive thinking. This understanding has been rejected by academia a long time ago. The enthusiastic reaction towards Dark Emu in the broader public sphere, however, seems to show that this thinking appears to be alive and well. We have argued that Dark Emu presents Aboriginal societies and people in overly Western modernist terms. While several commentators have stated that the key distinction of Dark Emu between hunter-gatherers and farmers is just a semantic issue, few have engaged with the question why Dark Emu’s core argument seems to necessitate a rejection of hunting and gathering as a mode of being (that is itself defined and constructed in modernist terms). Dark Emu is less about social evolutionism as a progressive vision of the whole of human history. It is more about the definition of humanity in relation to the distinction between a ‘state of nature’ and a ‘state of society’. Dark Emu is about countering the perception of Aboriginal societies on the basis of a number of dichotomies that are still largely guiding the discourse around Aboriginal people such as passive/active, wasteful/industrious, productive/unproductive, static/progressive. These dichotomies can be traced back to the establishment of modern social theory from the seventeenth century onwards (Bhambra and Holmwood 2021). Dark Emu is an attempt to modernise traditional Aboriginal societies to gain cultural recognition and political participation. But in doing so, the book replicates the ‘state of nature’/‘state of society’ division that is widely rejected in the social sciences, because it has been recognised as the basis of unrestricted exploitation of natural re
{"title":"Response","authors":"M. Porr, Ella Vivian-Williams","doi":"10.1080/03122417.2021.1991522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2021.1991522","url":null,"abstract":"We would like to thank all commentators for their excellent insights and feel honoured that so many distinguished scholars took the time to engage with our brief analysis and arguments. The responses have value not only in relation to the Forum piece but also as independent contributions to the Dark Emu debate. We hope that the comments will allow a new phase of engagement with the perception and understanding of Australia’s deep past, its relationship to present issues, and the positioning of archaeology in this respect. The responses show that Dark Emu and the debate around it can be understood in many different ways by Indigenous and other readers. They also demonstrate that issues surrounding Dark Emu have been discussed in deeply informed and conceptually sophisticated ways in previous decades. Several comments contain valuable reflections in this respect and both the archaeological community as well as the broader public can profit from these significant insights. Together with several commentators, we hope that the current discussions will initiate new archaeological research projects and the reassessment of existing collections. However, the Dark Emu debate will not be resolved with more empirical evidence alone. Almost all commentators have mentioned that Dark Emu replicates social evolutionist and progressive thinking. This understanding has been rejected by academia a long time ago. The enthusiastic reaction towards Dark Emu in the broader public sphere, however, seems to show that this thinking appears to be alive and well. We have argued that Dark Emu presents Aboriginal societies and people in overly Western modernist terms. While several commentators have stated that the key distinction of Dark Emu between hunter-gatherers and farmers is just a semantic issue, few have engaged with the question why Dark Emu’s core argument seems to necessitate a rejection of hunting and gathering as a mode of being (that is itself defined and constructed in modernist terms). Dark Emu is less about social evolutionism as a progressive vision of the whole of human history. It is more about the definition of humanity in relation to the distinction between a ‘state of nature’ and a ‘state of society’. Dark Emu is about countering the perception of Aboriginal societies on the basis of a number of dichotomies that are still largely guiding the discourse around Aboriginal people such as passive/active, wasteful/industrious, productive/unproductive, static/progressive. These dichotomies can be traced back to the establishment of modern social theory from the seventeenth century onwards (Bhambra and Holmwood 2021). Dark Emu is an attempt to modernise traditional Aboriginal societies to gain cultural recognition and political participation. But in doing so, the book replicates the ‘state of nature’/‘state of society’ division that is widely rejected in the social sciences, because it has been recognised as the basis of unrestricted exploitation of natural re","PeriodicalId":8648,"journal":{"name":"Australian Archaeology","volume":"87 1","pages":"324 - 325"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47765507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2021.1986651
Geraldine Mate, Sean Ulm
Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic is transforming the global labour market, including the Australian archaeological profession. This, the fourth in a series of comprehensive surveys of Australian professional archaeologists undertaken in early 2020, provides longitudinal data on trends in the state of the archaeological profession in Australia. Findings include the early impacts of COVID-19. Headline results show a young (average age 42 years), well-qualified (92% holding an Honours degree or higher), well-renumerated (average salary AUD102,430) workforce focused on Indigenous archaeology (65%), working in the private sector (60%), and predominantly based on the eastern seaboard (78%). Longitudinal data show an expanding archaeological industry in Victoria and a softening of demand in all other states and territories, particularly Western Australia. Sex and age data show a profession dominated by females (58%) with increasing numbers of young females in the career pipeline (average age of males 46 years and females 40 years). Indigenous participation rates in professional archaeology remain low (1.9%). The impact of COVID-19 had a considerable effect on confidence in stability or growth in the coming year, with a slump of 15% across the profession after the declaration of the pandemic. But confidence remained positive at 58% overall. Data show slowing wages growth (6.5% over 5 years compared to the national average of 11.4%) and a continuing profound gender pay gap of 18.8%, or on average males taking home $17,800 more than females.
{"title":"Working in archaeology in a changing world: Australian archaeology at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Geraldine Mate, Sean Ulm","doi":"10.1080/03122417.2021.1986651","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2021.1986651","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic is transforming the global labour market, including the Australian archaeological profession. This, the fourth in a series of comprehensive surveys of Australian professional archaeologists undertaken in early 2020, provides longitudinal data on trends in the state of the archaeological profession in Australia. Findings include the early impacts of COVID-19. Headline results show a young (average age 42 years), well-qualified (92% holding an Honours degree or higher), well-renumerated (average salary AUD102,430) workforce focused on Indigenous archaeology (65%), working in the private sector (60%), and predominantly based on the eastern seaboard (78%). Longitudinal data show an expanding archaeological industry in Victoria and a softening of demand in all other states and territories, particularly Western Australia. Sex and age data show a profession dominated by females (58%) with increasing numbers of young females in the career pipeline (average age of males 46 years and females 40 years). Indigenous participation rates in professional archaeology remain low (1.9%). The impact of COVID-19 had a considerable effect on confidence in stability or growth in the coming year, with a slump of 15% across the profession after the declaration of the pandemic. But confidence remained positive at 58% overall. Data show slowing wages growth (6.5% over 5 years compared to the national average of 11.4%) and a continuing profound gender pay gap of 18.8%, or on average males taking home $17,800 more than females.","PeriodicalId":8648,"journal":{"name":"Australian Archaeology","volume":"87 1","pages":"229 - 250"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43351935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2021.1991399
Stefani A. Crabtree, Sarah C. Klain
Colonial representatives can be unreliable narrators, as their descriptions were often value judgements of how closely people adhered to similar material and non-material cultures of the coloniser’s place of origin. Yet often they are some of the only narrations we have, and so we must filter through biases to examine Indigenous lifeways at contact. This is true for Jesuit contact with Aztecs, for Caesar’s contact with the Gauls, and of course for colonial contact with Aboriginal Australians. With appropriate caution, we can use these narratives to better understand the past, leveraging the past as a calibration dataset for understanding our present and future. Dark Emu challenges the assumptions of what the term ‘hunter-gatherer’ meant in early colonist narratives. Recent research suggests that humans were critical as seed dispersal agents and were engaged in practices that helped promote animal reproduction (Baynes-Rock 2020; Crabtree et al. 2019). According to Pascoe, this places these cultures within the purview of farming. Yet Porr and Vivian-Williams suggest that Pascoe engages with the antiquated progression of a cultural-historical trajectory from hunting-gathering to farming that he refuted for most of his career. A large challenge for Pascoe, other scientists and science communicators, is recognising the complexities and, at times contradictions, inherent in interweaving different knowledge systems. Weaving Western scientific knowledge, knowledge gleaned from unreliable colonial representatives, and knowledge from contemporary Aboriginal people to triangulate the past is an inherently political endeavour. The debates on dominant past Aboriginal lifeways and what this means for society today is particularly fraught due to the persistent social inequities faced by Indigenous peoples worldwide. Successful collaboration in interweaving knowledge systems generally involves iterating through cycles of knowledge mobilisation, translation, negotiation, synthesis and application (Teng€ o et al. 2017). All knowledge systems are imperfect and any effort to iterate through cycles of knowledge weaving are imperfect, but these efforts can help diverse groups reach applications of this knowledge that are more acceptable than neglecting the steps of this process. Scientific research often infers patterns in the absence of hard data, building models based on our understanding of current and past trends. To build the most parsimonious model, we base them off observable truths. These observations, by necessity, have to be simple and somewhat irrefutable, and we build up complexity from the simplest beginnings. In a recent paper that Porr and Vivian-Williams cite, for example, Crabtree et al. (2021a) build models based on underlying geographic features of the Last Glacial Maximum supercontinent of Sahul. They include data from Binford’s ‘Constructing Frames of Reference’ on human travellers coupled with ethnographic observation, as well as models of visibi
殖民地的代表可能是不可靠的叙述者，因为他们的描述往往是对人们与殖民地相似的物质和非物质文化的紧密程度的价值判断。然而，它们往往是我们仅有的一些叙述，因此我们必须过滤掉偏见，审视接触中的原住民生活方式。耶稣会与阿兹特克人的接触，凯撒与高卢人的接触都是如此，当然，殖民地与澳大利亚原住民的接触也是如此。在适当谨慎的情况下，我们可以使用这些叙述来更好地理解过去，利用过去作为理解我们现在和未来的校准数据集。Dark Emu挑战了早期殖民主义叙事中“狩猎采集者”一词的含义。最近的研究表明，人类作为种子传播剂至关重要，并参与了有助于促进动物繁殖的实践（Baynes Rock 2020；Crabtree等人2019）。根据帕斯科的说法，这将这些文化置于农业的范围内。然而，Porr和Vivian Williams认为，Pascoe参与了从狩猎采集到农业的文化历史轨迹的陈旧发展，他在职业生涯的大部分时间里都驳斥了这一点。帕斯科、其他科学家和科学传播者面临的一大挑战是认识到不同知识体系交织所固有的复杂性，有时甚至是矛盾性。编织西方科学知识、从不可靠的殖民地代表那里收集的知识以及从当代原住民那里收集的信息来对过去进行三角化，本质上是一项政治努力。由于世界各地土著人民持续面临的社会不平等，关于过去占主导地位的土著生活方式以及这对当今社会意味着什么的辩论尤其令人担忧。在交织的知识系统中，成功的合作通常涉及知识动员、翻译、协商、合成和应用的循环迭代（Teng€o等人，2017）。所有的知识系统都是不完美的，任何在知识编织周期中迭代的努力都是不完善的，但这些努力可以帮助不同的群体实现这些知识的应用，而不是忽视这个过程的步骤。科学研究经常在缺乏硬数据的情况下推断模式，根据我们对当前和过去趋势的理解建立模型。为了建立最节俭的模型，我们把它们建立在可观察的真理的基础上。这些观察必须是简单的，而且有点无可辩驳，我们从最简单的开始就建立了复杂性。例如，在Porr和Vivian Williams最近引用的一篇论文中，Crabtree等人（2021a）根据萨胡尔最后一次冰川盛期超级大陆的基本地理特征建立了模型。其中包括Binford的“构建参考框架”中关于人类旅行者的数据，再加上民族志观察，以及整个大陆的能见度模型，以及关于整个大陆旅行相对困难或容易程度的数据。在进行了1250亿次模拟后，作者确定了最常行驶的路线，称之为“高速公路”。与天体物理学、流行病学或经济学中的模型一样，作者遵循简约原则：根据可测试、可观察的事实构建模型，只有在检查这些事实时，才能构建出新的复杂性（Romanowska等人，2021）。在后续文章中，Crabtree等人（2021b）指出，他们计划在简单模型的基础上探索更多的社会问题。然而，Porr和Vivian Williams认为，Crabtree等人对可测试、可观察的数量的依赖，通过“让现代观众能够接触到深刻的过去，因为它是西方现代性的语言”，“消除了从过去学习和挑战现在的选择”。我们认为，当计算模型与传统和当地生态知识的数据交织在一起时，可以
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Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2021.1991490
P. White
It is hard to disagree with much of this Forum’s argument. Belief in ‘progress’, notably measured by material well-being and based on intensive agriculture, is indeed at the heart of many present-day worldviews, at least in Western societies. And while this is likely to be evolutionarily unsound in the long-term, few of us actively move into different lifestyles to give up much of what we get from it. Dark Emu, as many have pointed put, has bought right into the belief that materiality is the way to define progress. Has Australian archaeology done the same? Yes and no. Dark Emu’s public success is very clearly because it portrays Aboriginal people in the way many white Australians would like them to be. At a time – in the last decade – when there has finally been a stronger move to recognise Aboriginality as an important part of our society, portrayal of Aboriginal people as agriculturalists, curators and manipulators of the Australian environment, which is now becoming harder for us to manage, was almost bound to be acceptable. Had Pascoe written accurately about the nuanced variations with which different societies managed their local environments in different parts of Australia, he would undoubtedly have had much less recognition. That is what has befallen the various attempts by archaeologists, anthropologists and geographers (e.g. Gammage 2011; White 2011) to do just this. So at one level I count Dark Emu a success, in that it has encouraged recognition of Aboriginal perspicacity and adaptiveness. It is ‘a tragedy’ only from one perspective. What about Australian archaeology? The paper says that ‘innovative resource managers’, ‘efficient adaptive strategies’ and ‘searching for new resources’ is the ‘language of Western modernity’, based on the bedrock idea of material progress. But another way of looking at it is to think of these interpretations using the philosophy and language of modern evolutionary biology, which is not ‘progressive’ at all. Approaches using modern evolutionary theory help explain, in fact, just how the long-term inhabitants of this continent succeeded in continuing to live here, using techniques which we now strive to understand. And indeed, the only example cited is the integration of Aboriginal burning practices with current Euro-Australian fire management, which I see as a prime example of the adaptation of techniques derived from both cultures. What such analyses do not readily encompass, it is true, are aspects of life’s ‘social and spiritual dimensions’ that the Forum’s authors seek to include. These dimensions, I would argue, are not actually ‘left out’ of modern archaeology: they are included in other analyses, notably rock art. And they are, as is usually recognised, much harder to elucidate from the archaeological record, however readily they may be offered to us by Aboriginal research partners. It is interesting and probably significant that nothing of the kind the authors would like us to experience and deve
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Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2021.1991509
Katherine Woo
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Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2021.1991432
J. McDonald
I guess I must be a glass-half-full person. While recognising the intellectual thrust and many issues raised by this Forum piece and agreeing that few Australian archaeologists have engaged with Dark Emu and its propositions, I don’t think that Dark Emu is a tragedy – either for Aboriginal people – or for the relationship that Australian archaeology has with Aboriginal people. And I take exception to the statement therein that ‘Australian archaeology is also complicit in the erasure of Aboriginal diversity and alterity that is an effect of Dark Emu’s project and, as such, [is] responsible for the erasure of options to learn from the past and challenge the present’. Dark Emu’s significant achievement has been in the popularising of some of the complexities around resilience and persistence of Aboriginal people on this continent – another cog in the History Wars wheel, post the Native Title era – overturning longheld misconceptions about the hapless wandering of ‘mere’ hunter-gatherers which have been promulgated through most Australian’s education over the last 50 (100?) years (or at least since the history curriculum became a talking point). I rejoice in the fact that Australian children and youth are now being taught a different interpretation from that which was taught previously, based on the journals of foundational white explorers of this continent. Our history lessons in the sixties and seventies were focussed on these same explorers – the ‘discoverers’ of this vast continent, after whom many of our rivers and deserts and ranges are still named – despite the fact that many of them failed to survive their journeys, in part because they were dismissive of the Indigenous peoples they encountered – flourishing in the lands they traversed. The fact that it is the writings in these explorers’ journals that Pascoe mobilises in his narrative to demonstrate how firmly Aboriginal people were in place (contra terra nullius), constructing more permanent dwellings, harvesting bountiful seeds in times of plenty (no doubt to support ceremonial aggregations), has been well known to historians for decades. And indeed, Dark Emu builds on more detailed syntheses such as those by Bill Gammage (2011) and Rupert Gerritson (2008) – (see review by Peter Veth, this issue). But not since The First Footprints series (Contact Films 2013) has this type of narration captured the imagination and broader interest of the Australian public. Dark Emu is a history discourse – based on the interpretation of written texts. It engages little with the archaeological evidence which has continued to be generated over the last several decades. Nor, as Sutton and Walshe (2021) have pointed out, does it engage with the entire land rights and Native Title discourse generated by anthropologists over the last 20 years. And I guess therein lies its major flaws. I agree with the view expressed in The Tragedy that we need to consider Aboriginal Australian lifeways in a frame which transcend
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