In Australia, Lourandos' approach to Aboriginal archaeology has generated more heated debate than any other in the discipline. Yet over the years many of his ideas about the Aboriginal past have come to merge into conventional wisdom, while his role in changing academic and popular perceptions has remained largely unacknowledged. Here we three- archaeology students of the 1980s, and now colleagues - interrogate Harry through a series of emailed questions and answers about the place of his own ideas, and of archaeology in general, in a post-colonial Australia

Barker, Bryce

David, Bruno

Lourandos, Harry

McNiven, Ian J.

English

University of Southern Queensland ePrints

'2>bS'. ~~~ So:­Edited by Bruno David, Bryce Barker and Ian JMcNiven Aboriginal Studies Press 305.89915 First published in 2006 by Aboriginal Studies Press © Bruno David. Bryce Barker and Ian JMcNiven © in individual chapters remains with the authors Reprinted 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means. electronic or mechanical. including photocopying. recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book. whichever is the greater. to be photocopied by any educational institution for This book is dedicated to Harry Lourandos, its education purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to who paved the way to a social archaeology ofIndigenous Australia. Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Aboriginal Studies Press is the publishing arm of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. GPO Box 553. Canberra, ACT 2601 Phone: (61 2) 6246 1183 Fax: (61 2) 62614288 Email: asp@aiatsis.gov.au Web: www.aiatsis.gov.au!asp National Library of Australia Cataloguing-In-Publication data: David, Bruno, 1962- . The social archaeology of Australian indigenous societies. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 0 85575 499 O. 1. Aboriginal Australians/Sociallife and customs. 2. Social archaeology! Australia. 3. Australia! Antiquities.!. Barker, Bryce. II. McNiven, Ian. III. Title. Printed in Australia by Ligare Pty Ltd Front cover photograph: Cygnet Repu of Mabuyag island. Zenadh Kes (Torres Strait). painting a Kaigas (shovelnosed shark), his maternal totem (awgadh). at Puluw Kod in 2001. Kind permission from Cygnet Repu to reproduce the photo. Photo courtesy of Ian J McNiven. Cover design by Phil Scamp, Arts Imaging, Monash University 1­Contents Figures and tables vii Acknowledgements ix Contributors x Part 1 The emergence of social archaeology in Australia 1. 	 The social archaeology of Indigenous Australia Ian J McNiven, 2 Bruno David and Bryce Barker 2. 	 An interview with Harry Lourandos Harry Lourandos, 20 Bruno David, Bryce Barker and Ian J McNiven 3. 	 Harry Lourandos' life and work: an Australian archaeological 40 odyssey Sandra Bowdler Part 2 Tyranny of text 4. 	 Unpacking Australian~istory Bruno David and 52 Tim Denham 5. 	 Hierarchies of knowledge and the tyranny of text: archaeology, 72 ethnohistory and oral traditionsJn Australian archaeological interpretation Bryce Barker 6. 	 Colonial diffusionism and the archaeology of external 85 influences on Aboriginal culture Ian J McNiven 7. 	 Harry Lourandos, the 'Great Intensification Debate: and the 107 representation of Indigenous pasts Deborah Brian Part 3 Anthropological approaches 8. 	 Footprints of the ancestors: the convergence of anthropological 124 and archaeological perspectives in contemporary Aboriginal heritage studies Luke Godwin and James F Weiner 9. 	 Earth, wind, fire, water: the social and spiritual construction 139 of water in Aboriginal societies Marcia Langton 10. The social, economic and historical construction of cycad palms 161 among the Yanyuwa John J Bradley 11. Landscapes with shadows of once living people: the Kundawira 182 challenge Amanda Kearney and John J Bradley 12. Towards an experiential archaeology of place: from location 204 to situation through the body Franca Tamisari and James Wallace Part 4 Late-Holocene change 13. Hunter-gatherer social complexity at Roonka, South Australia 226 F Donald Pate 14. Social dynamism in the archaeology of the Western Desert 242 Peter Veth 15. Environmental change and variability in south-western Victoria: 254 changing constraints and opportunities for occupation and land use John Tibby, A Peter Kershaw, Heather Builth, Aline Philibert and Christopher White 16. Landscapes in western Torres Strait history Cassandra Rowe 270 17. North of the Cape and south of the Fly: discovering the 287 archaeology of social complexity in Torres Strait Melissa Carter Part 5 Extending the boundaries 18. Destablising how we view the past: Harry Lourandos and the 306 archaeology of Bodmin Moor, south-west England Barbara Bender Publications by Harry Lourandos 319 References 322 Index 368 Figures and tables Figures Chapter 2 An interview with Harry Lourandos Figure 1. Harry Lourandos (right) and Rhys Jones (left) excavating at Rocky Cape South cave in 1965 (photo courtesy of Harry Lourandos) 21 Chapter 3 Harry Lourandos' life and work: an Australian archaeological odyssey Figure 1. Harry Lourandos at Mount Cameron West in 1969 (photo courtesy of Harry Lourandos). 42 Chapter 10 The social, economic and historical construction of cycad palms among the Yanyuwa Figure 1. The study area 163 Chapter 13 Hunter-gatherer social complexity at Roonka, South Australia Figure 1. Map showing location of the Roonka Flat archaeological site, lower Murray River, South Australia Figure 2. Map showing location of larger Aboriginal burial sites (more than twenty individuals) in the Murray-Darling river system, south-eastern Australia (after Littleton 1999) 227 230 Chapter 14 Social dynamism in the archaeology of the Western Desert Figure 1. Location of key sites discussed in the text lying within the Western Desert and arid margins 243 Chapter 15 Environmental change and variability in south-western Victoria Figure 1. Lake Surprise and its immediate catchment 258 vii Figure 2. Location of Lake Surprise, Mt Eccles Figure 3. Age-depth curve for the Lake Surprise sediments Figure 4. Lake Surprise environmental sequences Chapter 16 Landscapes in western Torres Strait history Figure 1. Torres Strait showing major island groups Figure 2. Badu 15 Figure 3. Archaeological site Badu 15 pollen percentage diagram plotted against depth and age Figure 4. Multi-dimensional Scaling (MDS) ordination in two dimensions for combined pollen and spore presence/absence data set (stress 0.2) Chapter 17 North of the Cape and south of the Fly Figure 1. The Torres Strait with, inset, the eastern islands of Mer, Dauar and Waier (after McNiven & Feldman 2003) Figure 2. Ethnohistorically recorded clan divisions on Mer Island and the location of stone walled fish traps (after Haddon 1908, p. 170) Tables Chapter 4 Unpacking Australian prehistory Table 1. Prejudicial homologues used in the interpretation of Australian Aboriginal and New Guinean cultures Table 2. Gradients of prejudice often implicit to the interpretation of hunter-gatherers in Australia and agriculturalists in New Guinea, reflecting nineteenth-century evolutionary thinking Table 3. Geographical and historical prejudices implicit to the interpretation of Australian and New Guinean places and peoples Chapter 14 Social dynamism in the archaeology of the Western Desert Table 1: Occupation phases and language movements (after Veth 2000) and likely art correlates Chapter 16 Landscapes in western Torres Strait history Table 1. Badu 15 radiocarbon dating results (adapted from David et ai. 2004b) 258 260 268 273 274 277 281 289 299 60 63 67 252 276 Acl<nowledgements First and foremost, warmest thanks to Harry Lourandos for the inspirations that led to this book. Thanks also to Gary Swinton of the School of Geography and Environmental Science at Monash University for drafting the figures. And a big thank you to the publishing team at Aboriginal Studies Press at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra, in particular Gabrielle Lhuede and Rhonda Black for their continued support. viii ix Contributors Contributors Bryce Barker is a senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Southern Queensland, and is currently Head of Anthropology. He is a Fellow of the Aus­tralian Anthropology Society and is an editor ofAustralian Archaeology. barker@usq.edu.au Barbara Bender teaches at the Department of Anthropology, University College London. She has spent the last twenty years working on the social construction of landscape the prehistoric, historic, and contemporary with a particular interest in contested landscapes and landscapes of movement and exile. She is also concerned with finding ways to involve non-academics in discussions and presentations of their variable and changing notions of being in or out of place. Sandra Bowdier graduated from The University of Sydney with an honours degree in anthropology in 1971, and from the Australian National University with a PhD in prehistory in 1979. She has taught archaeology at the Univer­sity of Papua New Guinea, the University of New England and the University of Western Australia, where she has been professor of archaeology since 1983. She has carried out research into the archaeology of NSW, Tasmania, Victoria Iand Western Australia, as well as the Papuan Gulf and South-East Asia. " sbowdler@cyllene.uwa.edu.au John J Bradley has worked for over two decades with the Yanyuwa people of the south-west Gulf of Carpentaria. An anthropologist, he has concen­trated on issues ofland and kin relationships as well as issues of memory as the point of emotional engagement with country. He has produced an Indigenous atlas of Yanyuwa country and is presently working on new understandings of song lines. John.bradley@arts.monash.edu.au Deborah Brian is a researcher and doctoral candidate at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Her early research work, under the super­vision of Harry Lourandos, explored the potential of taphonomic methodolo­gies to provide more detailed readings of evidence for past cultural change. Her current research is an interrogation of the logical and discursive aspects of explanations of past cultural change in the Australian context, in the context of broader interests in Australian historiography, the politics of identity and the social construction of the past. Heather Builth has spent over ten years researching Gunditjmara aquacul­ture in south-western Victoria. She is currently an ARC Research Fellow in the School of Geography and Envir/{nmental Science, Monash University: She is a landscape archaeologist specialising in past Indigenous land management, and also works with Indigenous communities on applying this knowledge to current ecological and cultural heritage issues. Heather is a director on the board of the Glenelg-Hopkins Catchment Management Authority. heather.builth@arts.monash.edu.au Melissa Carter's PhD thesis represents the first investigation into the pre­European archaeology of the Murray Islands, eastern Torres Strait. Her major interests are island colonisation and subsistence history, and she is currently developing new research on the ethnoarchaeology of the Solomon Islands. Melissa is presently employed as an archaeological consultant for the Austra­lian Museum Business Services in Sydney, NSW. melissac@austmus.gov.au Bruno David is QEII Fellow with the Programme for Australian Indigenous Archaeology, School ofGeography and Environmental Science at Monash Uni­versity. He has undertaken cultural historical research in Australia, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the USA. He has published widely on social aspects of archaeology, and is currently researching the archaeology of village life, oral tradition and rituals with local community groups in Torres Strait. bruno.david@arts.monash.edu.au Tim Denham is based at the Programme for Australian Indigenous Archaeol­ogy, School of Geography and Environmental Science at Monash University. His research focuses on early-to-mid-Holocene plant exploitation and early agriculture in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. tim.denham@arts.monash.edu.au x xi Contributors Luke Godwin is Director of Central Queensland Cultural Heritage Manage­ment. He has been active in cultural heritage management in Queensland and NSW for more than twenty years, with particular reference to resource extraction and large-scale infrastructure development. A significant com­ponent of his practice is the provision of strategic advice on project design and management to a wide range of Aboriginal organisations and develop­ment proponents. 19odwin@irock.com.au Amanda Kearney has carried out fieldwork in the south-west Gulf of Carp en­taria with the Yanyuwa people, and has more recently held a research position in Jinbunken, the Institute of Research and Human Studies at Kyoto Univer­sity in Japan. Her work is inter-disciplinary and moves between anthropology, archaeology, cultural geography, ethnography and ethnohistory. Peter Kershaw is Professor of Geography and Environmental Science and Director of the Centre for Palynology and Palaeoecology at Monash Univer­sity. He has researched and published extensively, over the last thirty-five years on the history of vegetation in the Australasian-South-East Asian region and its applications to the elucidation of past climate change, biomass burning and human-environment relationships. peter.kershaw@arts.monash.edu.au Marcia Langton is Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies, University of Melbourne, and lectures at the School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Melbourne. Marcia has published extensively on Aboriginal affairs, including land, resource, and social impact issues; Indigenous dispute processing; policing and substance abuse; gender; identity processing; art, film, and cultural studies. marciall@unimelb.edu.au Harry Lourandos, formally of the University of Queensland (Anthropology and Archaeology), has published extensively on Australian Aboriginal archae­ology and ethnography, emphasising social perspectives, in international pub­lications such as World Archaeology, Quarternary International, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society and with Cambridge University Press. Ian J McNiven is Senior Lecturer and Co-director of the Programme for Australian Indigenous Archaeology, Monash University. His research focuses on the archaeology of Australian Indigenous maritime cultures and the colo­nial history of archaeology. Ian.McNiven@arts.monash.edu.au Contributors Donald Pate is Associate Professor of Archaeology at Flinders University and Editor-in-chief of Australian Archaeology. Pate received graduate and post-doctoral training in anthropological archaeology at Brown and Harvard universities, and was an Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Australian National University. He commenced research in Australia in 1983 with a focus on bio-archaeology. donald. pate@flinders.edu.au Aline Philibert obtained two masters degrees from France and Switzerland on ecological dimensions of environmental health, specialising in terrestrial and aquatic population dynamics and environmental toxicity. She obtained a PhD in palaeoecology at the Univer~ity ofQuebec in Montreal, Canada, after having worked on the long-term impact of forest cutting and wildfire on biogeochem­ical dynamics in boreal lakes and in arctic ponds. Her recent work in Aus­tralia explored long-term human-environmental interactions (measured over millennia) in south-western Victoria. She is currently based in Quebec, where her present work focuses on human impacts on the environment and environ­mental health (cardiovascular status), especially by aquatic proxy records in Canadian native populations and in the Brazilian Amazon. philibert.aline@courrier.uqam.ca Cassandra Rowe is a recent graduate of the Centre for Palynology and Palaeo­ecology within the School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University. Her doctoral research explored the environmental history ofwest­ern Torres Strait, documenting natural and human causes for vegetation change. Her research focuses on how palynology, fire history and environmen­tal change in the seasonal tropics can inform on people-land relations through history. She is based in the Department ofArchaeology and Natural History at the Australian National University, and at the School of Geography and Envi­ronmental Science, Monash University. cassandra.rowe@arts.monash.edu.au Franca Tamisari, a sociocultural anthropologist, has carried out research work in north-east Arnhem Land since 1990. Her main research interests are often inter-disciplinary in nature, focusing on art, aesthetics, performance, and bicultural education, with a particular attention to dance and Australian Indig­enous law. Since 2002 she has taught and conducted research at the School of Social Science, University of Queensland. She also taught at The Univer­sity of Sydney (1996-2001) and at the Dipartimento Studi Storici, University Ca'Foscari ofVenice, where she is currently seconded until the end of2006. She has published nationally and internationally. tamisari@unive.it or f.tamisari@uq.edu.au xii xiii Contributors John Tibby is an Australian Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University ofAdelaide, whose main interest is in reconstructing human impacts on the environment and past climate regimes using diatoms. He has worked on lakes in Australia, Turkey, Kenya and Indonesia on timescales ranging from less than 100 to over 20 000 years. john.tibby@adelaide.edu.au Peter Veth is Director of Research at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra. He has carried out long-term research on the evolution of desert societies in Australia and globally. He has also carried out collaborative multi-disciplinary work in Torres Strait, the Aru Islands, East Timor and the remote Pacific. Peter also holds an Adjunct Senior Research Fellowship at the Australian National University. peter. veth@aiatsis.gov.au James Wallace is a PhD candidate in the School of Social Science, Anthropol­ogy, Archaeology, Criminology and Sociology, at the University of Queensland His research interests are interdisciplinary and include issues associated with archaeological theory, ethnography, relationships of people with place, experi­ence, perception and intentionality. James F Weiner is a consultant anthropologist based in Canberra and is Visit­ing Fellow in Resource Management in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Austra­lian National University. Formerly Lecturer in Anthropology at the Australian National University and University of Manchester, he has conducted fieldwork I since 1979 in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, and since 1998 in ,I i eastern Queensland. james.weiner@anu.edu.au Christopher White is based at the School of Geography and Environmen­tal Science, Monash University. He is completing his doctoral research on environmental change and variability in south-western Victoria, exploring its implications for the history of Indigenous regional occupation and land use. Part 1 The emergence of social archaeology in Australia Bevel-edged tool dating to the last 1000 years. It was used by an Aboriginal woman in~southeast Queensland to process the starchy rhizome ojBungwall Jern (a local staple plantJood). xiv 

An interview with Harry Lourandos

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An interview with Harry Lourandos

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