The A.G. Francis Collection
Dear colleagues,
Today’s blogpost comes courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and was written by their archive volunteer Frances Crook.
Kemal Baran, Monica Barnes, Alicia Colson, Jonty Trigg
One of the great joys of volunteering in the Society’s Archive is opening an inauspicious-looking, acid-free box file to find yet another treasure. This proved to be the case when I lifted the lid on the first of the boxes containing A.G. Francis’s notebooks, sketches, photographs and collection of postcards. A.G. Francis OBE, MB, FRCS, FSA was elected a Fellow of the Society in February 1929.
During the 1920s he appears to have conducted a study of English parish churches with a view to recording and analysing surviving Anglo-Saxon fabric and artefacts. It seems likely, particularly from the evidence of the photographs and postcards in the collection, that he visited many of the churches himself. Although most counties of England are covered in the collection, there is a significant focus on churches in Lincolnshire, as well as Essex, Hampshire, Kent and Sussex. In addition to the photos and postcards, the careful sketches of ground plans and architectural features, often helpfully including measurements, will provide anyone interested in this area with a great wealth of information. Another important aspect of the material is the attention given to fonts, and is thus especially useful as a historical record, given that fonts have been so often damaged and moved over the years.
In short, A.G. Francis’s material forms a valuable resource for the study of parish churches and is complemented by other such collections preserved in the Society’s Archive, including E.S. Prior’s volumes of photographs of English medieval sculpture and Captain E. Jones’s work on baptismal fonts.
The collection has been catalogued in detail and can be accessed on the online catalogue.
Image: FRN/099, Notes on St Peter, Diddlebury, Shropshire
Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Hi all,
Today’s posting comes courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of London. As ever, we value any contributions to the blog – please feel free to get in touch if you have an idea that you would like to blog, or indeed any other relevant announcements etc. ‘
Jonathan Trigg
Searching for Fellows in the Archive
A frequent question we receive in the Archives is what material we hold on specific Fellows.
Very often the enquirer would simply like to know whether someone was FSA or perhaps when they were elected. Currently, the only way to find this out is to email the Archivist. Behind the scenes we are busy working on a publicly accessible database but this will take a little while longer. (NB – the database will cover historic Fellows only; so there are no data protection implications.)
We hold Blue Papers (nomination forms) consistently from 11 March 1847 onwards, with some dating back to 1811. Before then, we have some registers of Fellows but the main record of elections are the minutes of meetings. All minute books to 1921 have been digitised, with those up to 1835 already available online. We are also gradually adding searchable text to the catalogue records, so that searching for Fellows by name in the catalogue will bring up meetings where they were proposed, elected or exhibited items. For example, searching for William Stukeley already results in 13 minute book entries, whether he was exhibiting a scale wooden model of Stonehenge or an intaglio with the head of Hercules.
Correspondence of Fellows with the Society has only been kept to the mid-20th century, with the bulk being from the 19th century. Archive volunteers are currently cataloguing this collection, so this too will be searchable by name online before too long. In the meantime, the Archivist may be able to provide details of specific names or dates. Records of the 18th-century correspondence are already available online.
The Society no longer collects material relating to Fellows such as their personal correspondence, research notes, sketchbooks or other papers. However, we do have a large number of such collections, mostly from the 19th and early 20th century – scroll through the collections archive to get an idea of how varied they are! Very often what we hold are small sections of a Fellow’s life and work – for instance, most of Mortimer Wheeler’s papers are in the UCL archive, but he bequeathed to the Society the collection of notebooks, photographs and maps relating to his and Katherine Richardson’s work on hill forts in Northern France.
It is extremely unlikely that we have significant material relating to any Fellow who cannot be found by name in the catalogue. Useful additional resources are the National Archives Discovery catalogue and Archives Hub, both aggregate catalogues that facilitate searching across hundreds of repositories in the UK.
Of course you are always welcome to get in touch with the Archivist at archives@sal.org.uk for further help with your research!
House Divided Part 3
Dear Colleagues,
Here is the third and final part of Tim Murray’s brilliant blog series, House Divided. Thank you so much for putting this together, Tim. It is truly appreciated.
Jonathan Trigg
HOUSE(S) DIVIDED: EXPLORING THE CONSEQUENCES OF HISTORY: #3
In the second Blog I focused discussion on the possibility of agriculture as a litmus of what Australians were now prepared to believe about the nature of Indigenous Australia. However, in considering the existence of agriculture in pre-contact Australia, much more fundamental transformations were set in motion.
At the most basic level, the possibility of agriculture tended to break down once firm boundaries that had underwritten concepts of savagery, barbarism and civilization, and the processes of social evolution that had been part of the intellectual fabric of the west since the mid-19th century. What was in prospect was the possibility that pre-contact Australians were not the significant outliers of social evolution that had previously underwritten both conscious and unconscious attitudes towards Indigenous Australians since first European settlement in the late 18th century.
Previous justifications for Indigenous dispossession, especially the doctrine of terra nullius (that Australia had belonged to no one before European settlement) , were directly linked to the absence of agriculture in Australia. In short, because Australian societies were ‘pre-agricultural’, they did not ‘belong’ to the original occupants. On this basis land could be legally possessed by Europeans without the tiresome business of negotiating treaties or indeed of making purchases. Thus, Australia was held to have been settled by a process of appropriation and not by theft. Significantly, unlike other settler colonies such as New Zealand and North America, no treaties between Indigenous peoples and settlers were negotiated.
It is important to recognise that in the decades prior to the publication of Dark Emu (especially after World War II), attitudes towards Indigenous Australians had been changing. Most obvious was the passage of a referendum in 1967 which allowed the Federal government to make laws about Indigenous people, and for those people to be counted as part of the Australian population. It is a very clear measure of the scale of the change in popular attitudes from (at best) indifference to embracing a national polity that included Indigenous Australians, that the referendum was passed with the support of 90.77% of votes cast.
Momentous as this change was, it is widely understood that activism by Indigenous and settler Australians existed before 1967 and most certainly after it. The closing decades of the 20th century saw great changes in the lives of Indigenous Australians with the recognition of land rights, the over-turning of the legal principle of terra nullius (that had underwritten the ‘legality’ of earlier appropriations), the incorporation of Indigenous voices in State and Federal Parliaments and in government bodies, and the much broader engagement of Indigenous Australians in Australian society – be it in film, literature, dance, music, or art.
Notwithstanding these changes, it was often expressed that the history of encounters between Indigenous and Settler Australians had created a terrible darkness at the heart of Australian society that fundamentally eroded its moral legitimacy. This obviously posed a serious challenge to all Australians which resolved itself as a straightforward question: how were Australians to be reconciled with that history? In sum the advances made with the 1967 referendum represented the beginning of an answer, not the end of it.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart
In 2015 the Federal government convened a Council to frame the terms of a referendum that would at some future stage be put to the Australian people. The purpose of the referendum was to formally recognise Indigenous Australians in the national Constitution. Some two years (2017) later the council released a formal statement of objectives and principles that had been agreed upon by delegates to a meeting at Uluru (otherwise known as Ayers Rock) as the symbolic heart of Australia and of its Indigenous peoples. The Statement was as follows:
We, gathered at the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, coming from all points of the southern sky, make this statement from the heart:
Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands and possessed it under our own laws and customs. This our ancestors did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation, according to the common law from ‘time immemorial’, and according to science more than 60,000 years ago.
This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature’, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.
How could it be otherwise? That peoples possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred link disappears from world history in merely the last two hundred years.
With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood.
Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.
These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness.
We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.
We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.
Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.
We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.
In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.
In essence the Statement called for major changes to the Australian Constitution and the reform of government structures to ensure that the rights of Indigenous Australians (particularly those related to sovereignty and freedom from racial discrimination) be acknowledged and understood. The Statement identified three crucial elements of this process: A First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution, a process of treaty-making (referred to as a Makarrata Commission, and a process of truth-telling wherein the story of Indigenous Australia both before and after dispossession would be told. Thus: Voice, Treaty, Truth would form the basis of a national reconciliation that would address the consequences of colonialism.
The Statement proved to be a step too far for the Liberal government that had convened the Council. Later in 2017 it rejected the Voice proposal as being so radical that it would have no chance of success at a referendum. A change of government in May 2022 prompted the new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (on the night of his election victory) to endorse the Uluru Statement and committed to implementing it in full.
The Referendum
The referendum question and constitutional amendment were announced by the Prime Minister on 23 March 2023 and were settled following consultation with the First Nations Referendum Working Group.
The referendum question and constitutional amendment were set out in the Constitutional Alteration Bill that was passed by both Houses of Parliament on 19 June 2023.
The question that was put to the Australian people at the 2023 referendum was:
“A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
Do you approve this proposed alteration?”
The proposed law Australians were asked to approve at the referendum would have inserted a new section into the Constitution:
“Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples
129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice
In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:
I. There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
II. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
III. The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers, and procedures.”
Between March 2023 and the referendum date of 14th October 2023 the proposed changed to the Constitution received widespread and intense discussion. One significant feature was the very clear divide that began to take shape between what were loosely described as the ‘political, cultural, and economic elites’, and ‘ordinary’ Australians. Equally significant was the developing focus of debate about the difference between recognising Indigenous Australians as the ‘first’ people of the nation in the Constitution, and the proposal that Indigenous people would acquire a status different to other Australians (through the creation of the Voice). For many Australians this smacked of the politics of separatism on the grounds of race, which should be resisted.
The Australian Archaeological Association was an active participant in these discussions, using the authority it had gained through 50 years of research into the human history of Australia to advocate for the ‘Yes’ case. On the 6th of June the following communique was released:
The Australian Archaeological Association Inc. (AAA) supports the Referendum in which Australians will decide to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia and to establish a Voice to government to represent them. As an organisation the AAA is proud of the roles that members have played in raising awareness among all Australians of the ancient and enduring connections of Australia’s First Peoples to this continent, in supporting First Peoples to protect cultural heritage, and in moving our discipline away from antiquated colonial practices. The AAA hopes that the Voice will inspire all Australians to celebrate and actively protect Indigenous heritage, a distinguished part of Australia’s heritage. The AAA stands behind the recognition of First Nations people in the Constitution as an important first step towards realisation of the calls for Voice, Treaty, and Truth as articulated in the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
Notwithstanding such high profile support the referendum was defeated. To be successful In Australia, referenda must achieve what is known as ‘the double majority’ of votes: at least four of its six states, as well as a majority overall, including votes in its territories. Voting in Australian referenda is compulsory. The following table reports the outcome:
| Australian Indigenous Voice referendum | ||
| Choice | Votes | % |
| No | 9,452,792 | 60.06 |
| Yes | 6,286,894 | 39.94 |
| Valid votes | 15,739,686 | 99.02 |
| Invalid or blank votes | 155,545 | 0.98 |
| Total votes | 15,895,231 | 100.00 |
| Source: Australian Electoral Commission – Tally Room[258] | ||
The national picture makes the outcome clear, with only the Australian Capital Territory (the seat of the Federal government) voting Yes.
| Breakdown of voting by state and territory | |||||||
| State/territory | Yes | No | Invalid | Turnout (%) | |||
| Votes | % | Votes | % | ||||
| New South Wales | 2,058,764 | 41.04 | 2,957,880 | 58.96 | 57,285 | 90.80 | |
| Victoria | 1,846,623 | 45.85 | 2,180,851 | 54.15 | 39,038 | 91.00 | |
| Queensland | 1,010,416 | 31.79 | 2,167,957 | 68.21 | 27,266 | 88.25 | |
| Western Australia | 582,077 | 36.73 | 1,002,740 | 63.27 | 13,454 | 87.50 | |
| South Australia | 417,745 | 35.83 | 748,318 | 64.17 | 11,478 | 91.75 | |
| Tasmania | 152,171 | 41.06 | 218,425 | 58.94 | 3,967 | 92.03 | |
| Northern Territory[f] | 43,076 | 39.70 | 65,429 | 60.30 | 820 | 71.45 | |
| Australian Capital Territory[g] | 176,022 | 61.29 | 111,192 | 38.71 | 2,237 | 91.36 | |
| Total for Commonwealth | 6,286,894 | 39.94 | 9,125,294 | 60.06 | 155,545 | 89.92 | |
| Results | Obtained a majority in no state and an overall minority of 2,838,400 votes. Not carried. | ||||||
What does the failure of the referendum mean?
By any reckoning the referendum proved to be a significant failure for its proponents (and the Federal government that had supported them). As can be expected pundits (both real and imagined) pored over the entrails in search of an explanation. What had started in March 2023 as a near certainty had by October 2023 lost significant support. Was this due to inept campaigning on the part of the Yes proponents, in that they thought that the result was ‘in the bag’, or were other issues at play? Chief among these was the wide support for the argument that the Voice effectively enshrined two types of Australian citizenship based on an inequality that was firmly linked to race. The irony of that outcome was not lost on the voters, who were instead in search of a pathway to equality of opportunity and citizenship as Australians.
This blog is not the place to delve too deeply into the strategies adopted by the Yes and No campaigns, mainly because these issues are still very much under discussion generally. Was the proposal of a Voice a step too far, in that it is at least arguable that Australians would have supported a formal recognition of First Nations status of Indigenous people in the Australian Constitution, without moving further towards sovereignty or differential rights of citizenship?
Notwithstanding the fact that the aspirations of the Uluru Statement have received a serious setback, there can be little doubt that the referendum does not represent the high tide of Indigenous activism in Australia. Matters are still very much on foot, not least being the fact that several decades of land rights legislation have ensured that more than 50% of all land on the continent is now owned or controlled by Indigenous people. This simple fact underpins fundamental changes in the political economy of Indigenous Australia that will continue to evolve. That evolution will spill over into all aspects of Indigenous Australian life. Currently the Indigenous population represents slightly less than 4% of the total population of Australia. This surely indicates that whatever the political climate might be, the challenges of creating a post-colonial Australia where Indigenous and Settler Australians are reconciled, will also continue to evolve.
It should also be clear that the same evolutionary impetus will affect relationships between archaeologists, heritage managers and Indigenous Australians.
Tim Murray
EAA Session
Dear colleagues,
The below comes courtesy of HARN member Anna Gustavsson. Thanks for passing this on Anna!
Jonty Trigg
House Divided Part Two
Dear Colleagues,
Today’s blog sees the eagerly awaited part two of Tim Murray’s three part series of blogs on Australia. Thanks Tim! Enjoy.
HOUSE(S) DIVIDED: EXPLORING THE CONSEQUENCES OF HISTORY: #2
In blog #1 I very briefly described the archaeological impetus behind changing perceptions of what Australia was like before European settlement (and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples) – which began in 1788. The goal of that first instalment was to lay the groundwork for subsequent discussion about the reality (or otherwise) of agriculture in pre-European Australia. It also provided some background to the important changes in national perceptions of Indigenous Australia that have occurred over the past 60 or so years.
The history of Indigenous / Settler interactions in Australia is too complex to simplify beyond the transformation of the public perception of Indigenous Australians from being ‘outcasts in white Australia’, to citizens with a unique position in national society and culture. There is a very large literature surveying that transformation which has charted the recognition of the importance of the long antiquity of Indigenous occupation of the continent, and the unique aspects of Indigenous culture (especially in its artistic manifestations.
Archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians have played important roles in significantly expanding our understanding of Indigenous Australia. Nonetheless it is also vital that we understand that over the past 40 years Indigenous authors and commentators have become much more successful in adapting the work of specialists to address broader Australian society directly, in their own terms and to serve their own ends.
Institutions such as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander Studies (AIATSIS), established in 1964 by the Federal Government, have led the way in successfully hybridising ‘traditional’ and European knowledge and perspectives. A key element of that hybridisation has been the empowerment of Indigenous members to lead the Institute and manage its important work. Much the same transfer of power has occurred at both the State and Federal levels in fields as diverse as the management of cultural heritage, and the management of lands in both rural and urban settings. Importantly these fundamental transformations have been enshrined in legislation at both the State and Federal levels. In this way Indigenous people have become more deeply invested in the process of creating and disseminating knowledge about Indigenous Australia, thus moving from being passive consumers of the knowledge of others to become creators of their own.
This story has much in common with the histories of Indigenous / Settler relations in North America and New Zealand where similar strategies have been used to acknowledge the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination and, perhaps more important, the right to define their histories and identities. In this way the fact that European systems of knowledge have defined Indigenous identity in ways which are different to traditional systems, and that these have been privileged by colonisation, established a clear remit for Indigenous communities to ‘push back’, and to create alternative narratives. It has also provided a remit for Indigenous communities and organisations to have a direct input into the management of cultural heritage. The consequences of that input may be far-reaching – having the clear potential to foster conflicts between different ‘users’ of cultural heritage that will require transparent mediation.
In this way the commonplace observation that ‘history belongs to the victors’ (no matter whether it originated with Winston Churchill, Maximilien Robespierre or even Herman Goering) has, in Australia and elsewhere, morphed into a slightly different question: who owns the past?
For our present purpose we can tweak the question a bit further by observing that ‘ownership’ might apply to ownership (or control over) of the materials for making history, or to ownership (or control over) of their interpretations – and possibly both. In this way one of the core tasks of heritage managers has become, in effect, to manage access to the material resources of the past. This goes to the process of mediation between possibly divergent rights and interests I mentioned earlier.
Unsurprisingly such fundamental changes in the context of archaeology and heritage studies in Australia gives rise to ethical issues that might well pose challenges to the new order. These might be summarised as two questions:
- Who has the right to make knowledge about the pasts or presents of Indigenous people?
- In the event of there being disagreement about the nature of that knowledge, how can dissident voices be heard?
At this point it is vital to acknowledge that other forces also act to influence the kinds of pasts and presents we can create. Most obviously they might flow from control over access to research funds, or opportunities to publish. Years ago, Thomas Kuhn led an exploration of this aspect of knowledge production through his description of ‘normal science’ and of the complex processes that lay behind what makes some arguments ‘plausible’ (thereby worthy of support), and others not. Significantly Kuhn also recognised that ‘normal science’ tends to foster its own destruction through his auxiliary concept of scientific ‘revolutions’. In this way Kuhn acknowledged the obvious – that no system of control can exist unaffected by presence of dissident voices or dissident data (even in the most oppressive of totalitarian states). Kuhn thought that in science this would be a rational and transparent process mediating between rival accounts of scientific ‘reality’ by reference to the empirical data under review and the theoretical instruments used to understand them.
It should go without saying that things might be rather different in the human sciences. While it is generally acknowledged that ‘facts’ in the scientific sense of the word exist in archaeology (radiocarbon dates, stratigraphic profiles, descriptions of material culture), most often they exist with a complex matrix of theories that do not. Although archaeologists may well be resistant to the view that their reasons for preferring one explanation over another might well have more to do with cultural and socio-political factors than with some abstract epistemological basis of judgment, there is mounting evidence that such is the case. In this view, no matter whether one seeks assurance from either the context of justification or the context of discovery (or a combination of both), it can be argued that the values and meanings of different approaches to the past are assessed on primarily cultural (hence substantially unexamined) grounds. The presently overt bases for judgment such as testability, connectedness toother areas of knowledge, empirical fruitfulness, and synoptic power tend to act more as scientific or hermeneutical conventions appealed to during argument. It is a sobering thought that covert factors such as fundamentally unexamined (but culturally meaningful) presuppositions, the inertia of tradition or worse, authority, prejudice, ignorance, or fear might also have a significant role to play in establishing plausibility.
Of course opinions about the implications of this discussion will vary for a wide range of reasons – from the self-interest of proponents, to the beliefs of those committed to supporting the virtues of free inquiry. Nonetheless, the kinds of transformation in the power relations of Indigenous heritage management in Australia imply, to me at least, that the capacity to manage and regulate pasts entails an ethical duty on Indigenous communities and organisations, government entities, and archaeologists to ensure that rights of access and opinion are not just protected but enhanced. At root this is a simple restatement of the principle that ‘power implies responsibility’.
The ‘Dark Emu’ debate
Since the publication of ‘Dark Emu’ (Pascoe 2014) Australians have been encouraged to believe that Indigenous societies prior to contact were much more complex than hitherto imagined, and that colonisation effectively snuffed out most of that richness and complexity. In this second blog I very briefly background Pascoe’s claims (and the many objections that they have sparked) to support a reflection on the causes and consequences of this change of belief. ‘Dark Emu’ is an excellent example of the creation of new voices and new strategies for knowledge transfer that I outlined earlier.
It is also an excellent example of who gets to have ‘cut through’ with audiences other than archaeologists talking to themselves, especially when those same audiences reflect on the question of who has the greater authority to speak – the inheritors of Indigenous pasts, or a bunch of archaeologists who are part of the ‘machinery of colonialism’ that stole those pasts? Significantly, Pascoe is an Indigenous person first, and a skilled writer second. His appeal is to those Australians who seek to mitigate the consequences of colonialism and who are therefore even more receptive to Indigenous voices, even if the knowledge being claimed derives from the work of non-Indigenous people.
It cannot be surprising to find that the claims of ‘Dark Emu’ are a hybrid of archaeological, anthropological, and historical observations made by non-Indigenous people, and the new perspectives of people like Pascoe, who want to enhance the status of pre-contact Indigenous societies in the eyes of others. For him Australians need to understand that not all pre-contact Indigenous societies across Australia were the same. Indeed, Pascoe argues that pre-contact societies were a kind of arcadia dreaming across the millennia, a paradise lost due to colonisation. Most important for Pascoe is the claim that colonisers supported their right to steal land from the original occupants by stressing the ‘primitiveness’ of those people – a claim that he rejects. In his account (based on the work of Gammage (2012) and Gerritsen (2008)), but also using the archives of explorers such as Grey (1841) and Mitchell (1839)), Indigenous societies exhibited levels of social complexity similar to those displayed by agricultural societies, precisely because they were agricultural. For Pascoe the image of pre-contact Indigenous societies as being primarily based on foraging (therefore primarily based on consumption rather than production) is an artefact of colonialism – a history of Australia that has been written by the victors.
If that were not enough Pascoe ‘juices up’ the story by claiming that pre-contact Indigenous societies invented democracy (some 120,00 years ago), built the first complex systems of aquaculture, and baked the first loaves of bread, before Europeans put an end to this arcadia and despoiled its landscape and animals in the process.
In the febrile atmosphere of Australian Indigenous politics, this ‘radical re-telling’ of the history of Australia had a major impact. Politicians, ‘opinion-makers’, and ‘influencers’ were extravagant in their praise of this exercise in balancing the historical leger in favour of the oppressed and dispossessed. Voices of dissent – even among the community of archaeologists and historians – were few. Reviews of ‘Dark Emu’ in academic journals were generally supportive, although they did tend to point out that many of the claims made by Pascoe came from the work of archaeologists, and should not have been a shock to anyone. Reviewers tended to avoid discussing the more ludicrous of Pascoe’s claims, such as the presence of democratic societies in Australia some 120,000 years ago, instead stressing the importance of this ‘rethinking’ of Indigenous Australia to the contemporary political goal of reconciling Australian society. Thus reviewers avoided the charge of ‘punching down’ from the heights of academia.
Perhaps it is no surprise that there was little discussion of why the work of archaeologists and others had not achieved the social and cultural ‘cut through’ that ‘Dark Emu’ had so obviously achieved. It was one thing to point out that archaeologists such as Harry Lourandos (1997) and Elizabeth Williams (1987) had some time ago discussed the possible presence of trends towards social complexity in pre-contact Australian societies, which gained greater force by being linked to research on ‘complex hunter-gatherers’ (e.g. Arnold et al. 2016), and explorations of the meaning of ‘agriculture’ (see e.g. Harris 1977), but quite another to explain why this never seemed to resonate with other Australians. Was this a failure of communication, notwithstanding constant claims for the cultural importance of archaeological research? Or was it a problem with the source of the information – in that Australian society was primed to hear ‘radical rethinking’ from Indigenous Australians rather than archaeologists?
Australians had to wait until 2021 (seven years!) for a comprehensive response from Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe (an anthropologist and an archaeologist). Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate took aim at Pascoe’s claims concerning the nature of pre-contact Indigenous societies, dismantling the more obvious over-simplifications and flights of rhetorical fancy. Their forensic analysis dwelt at some length on exploring why being complex (like European societies) seemed to be so important for Pascoe, arguing that Indigenous societies had an internal logic and dynamic that was both singular and extraordinarily resilient. In this, pre-contact Australia was much more than its fantastic art or its complex kinship systems. It was, instead, itself. On this foundation Sutton and Walshe were able to dissect ‘Dark Emu’ to reveal that what Pascoe had claimed was ‘hidden’ or ‘ignored’ was not the result of a conscious process of deliberately forgetting. They were also able to stress that this same colonial society could itself transform to allow for the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology, and history to undertake the fundamental research that would provide the perspectives which Pascoe was able to draw upon for his own ends.
In this sense debate about the claims made in ‘Dark Emu’ came to be discussed and evaluated in a way which allows for us to make an informed judgement about this ‘new’ view of the history of Australia. Earlier I mentioned that answers to two important questions should shape the social and cultural context of Australian archaeology:
- Who has the right to make knowledge about the pasts or presents of Indigenous people?
- In the event of there being disagreement about the nature of that knowledge, how can dissident voices be heard?
It is a matter of some importance that the debate about ‘Dark Emu’ demonstrates that the right to produce knowledge can be shared, and that dissident voices (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) can be heard.
I shall reflect on this further in Blog #3 during the discussion of the fate of the referendum about the establishment of a permanent Indigenous Voice to the Australian Parliament that took place in 2022.
References
Arnold, Jeanne E., Scott Sunell, Benjamin T. Nigra, Katelyn J. Bishop, Terrah Jones and Jacob Bongers Entrenched Disbelief: Complex Hunter-Gatherers and the Case for Inclusive Cultural Evolutionary Thinking Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 23.2: 448–99, 2016.
Gammage, Bill. The Biggest Estate on Earth. How Aborigines Made Australia. Allen and Unwin, 2012.
Gerritsen, R. Australia and the Origins of Agriculture. Archaeopress, 2008
Grey, G. Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia during the Years 1873, 38 and 39. T. and W. Boone, London, 1841.
Harris, D.R. Alternative Pathways toward Agriculture. In Origins of Agriculture, edited by C.A. Reed. Mouton: 179–243, 1977.
Lourandos, H. Continent of Hunter-Gatherers: New Perspectives in Australian Prehistory. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Mitchell, T.L.Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia; With Descriptions of the Recently Explored Region of Australia Felix, and of the Present Colony of New South Wales. T. and W. Boone, 1839.
Sutton, Peter, and Keryn Walshe. Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers?: The Dark Emu Debate. Melbourne University Press, 2021.
Pascoe, Bruce. Dark Emu. Black Seeds : Agriculture Or Accident? Broome, Western Australia: Magabala Books, 2014.
Williams, Elizabeth. Australian Aborigines: Complex Hunter-Gatherers, Not simple farmers. Antiquity 61(232) 1987: 310-321.
Kind regards,
Jonty Trigg
Session #446 The Grand Tour between Tradition and Transformation
Dear all,
Conference details coming in thick and fast at the moment! This from our member Ana Cristina Martins:
Dear Colleagues,
This is a reminder of the approaching deadline for the CfP for our Session at the EAA 30th Annual Meeting (Rome, August 28-30, 2024):
Session #446 The Grand Tour between Tradition and Transformation: Narratives, Presentations, and Representations (Theme 3: The Life of Archaeological Heritage in Society)
Deadline: February 8, 2024
Session format: Regular Session (10-15 min. oral presentations)
Session Description:
«From the second half of the 17th to the early 19th century, European (mainly male) elites embarked on the Grand Tour: a transformative journey complementing their classical education. This expedition led them through diverse landscapes, rich in heritage, ultimately culminating in their much-anticipated destination: Rome, and for some, even South Italy and Greece. During the Grand Tour travelers not only experienced antiquity through the explorations of ruins, museums, and collections but also by attending opera and theatre performances, featuring ancient themes. These spectacles brought the ruins visited by the European elites to life on stage, establishing vivid images and concepts of the past in their minds.
Guided by tutors, the Grand Tour travelers documented their experiences in letters, diaries, and illustrated notebooks, which sometimes evolved into travel literature. The travelers ignited their passions, encompassing the beauty of landscapes, architecture, ruins, cultural traditions, socio-political structures, social gatherings, collecting, museums, the art market, and reproductions. They also bought artifacts to decorate their homes, both scientifically and artistically. This phenomenon thrived as transportation and accommodations improved, resulting in the social proliferation of the Grand Tour. Furthermore, it laid the foundation for a unified European culture with a strong scientific underpinning, notably through antiquarianism and archaeology.
The Grand Tour’s lasting influence is evident in how we study, preserve, and present history today. This impact is seen in narratives, collections, education, aesthetics, and tourist options. However, ongoing efforts aim to diversify and modernize this tradition by expanding geographic focus, amplifying marginalized voices, and utilizing digital technologies for more inclusive cultural practices.
We welcome contributions exploring various facets of the Grand Tour, including collecting, museums, art markets, archaeology, the fusion of Arts and Letters, itinerary design, identity formation, local development, and its contemporary relevance in both tangible and intangible realms. We also encourage submissions using digital technologies”.».
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– Those interested in participating can send an abstract (150-300 words) by Thursday 8th February 2024. Abstracts have to be submitted via the online form available after logging in at submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2024.
– Results of paper proposal evaluation will be announced by 25 March 2024.
– Please note that all first authors of papers must pay the 2024 EAA membership and conference registration fees by 25 April 2024. To register and pay both fees please go to: https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA2024/Registration
Current and past EAA Members can log in using their EAA credentials (EAA ID, username, password). New Members need to first create an EAA account at http://www.e-a-a.org. In case you need any assistance, please contact the helpdesk@e-a-a.org.
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Organizers: Ana Cristina Martins (Universidade de Évora), Kerstin Dross-Krüpe (Ruhr Universität Bochum), Maria Cristina Manzetti (University of Cyprus), Gloria Mora (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
All the best,
Jon (on behalf of Alicia, Kemal and Monica)
Call for Papers
Dear All
HARN’s long term friend and member Nathan Schlanger has sent us this very interesting call for papers for an EAA session. This year, EAA is in Rome from the 28th-31st August. Thanks Nathan!
Thank you and best regards,
HARN administrators,
Alicia, Jon, Kemal and Monica
Session # 794
Theme:
- Archaeological Sciences, Humanities and the Digital era: Bridging the Gaps
Title:
Old Excavations and Finds, New Data and Interpretations: The Use of
Archives in Current Archaeological Research Projects
Abstract:
The history of archaeology is a growing field of investigations which provides a range of
studies and insights based on rigorous historical methodologies, drawing on archival materials,
and organised into a veritable community with its research programs and widespread
publications.
Besides providing new knowledge on the practices and theories of archaeology worldwide,
these empirical (archive-based) investigations have also focused attention on the production,
conservation, dissemination and re-use of a range of documents produced by past archaeologists
in the course of their excavation or collection activities. In turn, this has generated renewed
interest in the archives of archaeology, be it in order to better understand the scientific, cultural
and social implications of the discipline, or to make practical use of archival materials as a
source of evidence and interpretations about the past.
This session aims to address both these conceptual and pragmatic dimensions of the archivesbased history of archaeology. Contributors are invited to address issues such as:
1) the scientific use of archival information: how, in our age of open science and (digital)
data-reuse, are the results of past research integrated in the current production of knowledge?
2) the organisation of archive-based research projects: who leads such projects, and what
division of labour between archaeologists, historians or archivists are at stake?
3) publication policy: to which audiences (scientific, laypeople) and in what publications are
presented the results of projects combining new and old archaeological data?
More generally, we welcome papers addressing broader methodological or theoretical issues
concerning the use of archives for the history of archaeology.
Keywords:
history of archaeology, history of knowledge, archaeological archives, data management
Affiliated with:
UISPP Commission for the history of archaeology
Organisers
Main organiser:
Schlanger, Nathan (France) 1, 1. Ecole nationale des chartes, Paris 2. UMR Trajectoires – 8215
schlanger1@gmail.com
Co-organisers:
Cataldi, Maddalena (Italy) 33. Ecole française de Rome
Hofmann, Kerstin (Germany) 44. Romano-Germanic Commission of the German Archaeological Institute
Plutniak, Sébastien (France) 55. Citeres Lab, CNRS, Tours
Rosner, Chloé (France) 6,76. Institut national d’histoire de l’art 7. UMR TEMPS 8068
HARN welcomes a new member
Dear all,
HARN’s latest member is Angelina Gabrielli. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Archaeology at the University of Verona in the Department of Culture and Civilisations. Concurrently, she is a graduating student at the Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni Archeologici at the University of Padova, where she is completing a postgraduate diploma specializing in archaeology. Her doctoral research focuses on the analysis of the History of Archaeology in Verona during the latter half of the 19th century, using the archival materials of Stefano De Stefani, a palethnologist and archaeologist of that period. Her research also concerns Roman Archaeology, particularly the history of the studies, Roman houses and villas, Roman collegia, and Roman baths. Her practical experience includes active participation in numerous archaeological excavations in Tarquinia, Aquileia, Negrar, and San Basilio in Polesine. She is on the editorial board of the Con(testi) book series for Quasar and also an author of the international British Archaeological Series.
Welcome to our community Angelina!
The HARN team
National Museums Scotland
Date for your diaries: Dan Potter of NMS is giving a talk on the Antiquities Market between 1880 and 1939 on 6th February 2024. It might be of interest to some of our members. More details can be found here: https://www.nms.ac.uk/buyingpowerevent
Jonty Trigg
Antiquitatum Thesaurus
Dear All,
We are grateful to HARN member Susan Dixon for sending us the following link. She writes:
“Here’s the link to the program for the 2nd of 4 Colloquia held as part of the Antiquitatum Thesaurus project’s work on early modern drawings of ancient objects. The Colloquia is in Munich, but one can attend via Zoom. A call-for-papers on the 3rd Colloquium should be issued shortly.“
Thanks Susan!
Best wishes,
Monica Barnes, Alicia Colson, Mustafa Kemal Baran, Jonathan Trigg
HARN Weblog 
