Dancing with the Invader

Australian Historical Studies, 2017

The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2016

A Distinctive Voice in the Antipodes: Essays in Honour of Stephen A. Wild, 2017

1998

The purpose of this paper is to consider the ways in which traditional Aboriginal spatial organization influenced how western Victorian Aboriginal people understood Europeans. To come to terms with this understanding, it is essential to explore notions of violence and invasion in traditional Aboriginal formations. For example, if a history of invasion within and between Aboriginal groups can be shown to have existed, then the question of the relevance of the ethnic origin of the invader must be examined - presumably, whether the invaders were foreign and enemy Aboriginal people, or foreign and enemy non-Aboriginal people, would not be of any particular consequence to the dispossessed clan. Regarding European associations with 'tenure' of Aboriginal land, western Victorian clans had to come to terms with three classes of Europeans: sea sojourners; land sojourners; and settlers. Clans attempted to understand their experiences of these three different classes of Europeans withi...

1992

History aims to present articles and information in the field of Australian ethnohistory, particularly in the post-contact history of the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Historical studies based on anthropological, archaeological, linguistic and sociological research, including comparative studies of other ethnic groups such as Pacific Islanders in Australia, will be welcomed. Future issues will include recorded oral traditions and biographies, narratives in local languages with translations, previously unpublished manuscript accounts, resumes of current events, archival and bibliographical articles, and book reviews. Aboriginal History is administered by an Editorial Board which is responsible for all unsigned material in the journal. Views and opinions expressed by the authors of signed articles and reviews are not necessarily shared by Board members. The editors invite contributions for consideration; reviews will be commissioned by the review editor.

The Social Archaeology of Australian Indigenous Societies, 2006

This paper explores the changing face of archaeological approaches to the impact of external influences on Aboriginal culture during the Holocene. My approach is epistemological, empirical and focuses on origins of the so-called Australian Small Tool Tradition (ASTT). Despite near abandonment of the issue by younger generation archaeologists, senior members of the discipline have kept the external influences flame alive. One of these torch bearers is Harry Lourandos who, in the final two pages of his 1997 magnum opus − Continent of Hunter-Gatherers, stated that to understand the ‘prehistory’ of Australia we need ‘to look beyond regional prehistories to those of the wider cultural area or sphere of social interaction’ (1997, pp. 334-335). However, Lourandos was quick to point out that he was not suggesting that ‘cultural changes of the late Holocene in Australia were due solely to external influences, but rather to an interplay of internal and external forces’ (1997, pp. 334-335). Here I concur with Ian Lilley (2000, p. 39) who noted that Lourandos ‘is to be applauded for revisiting the question of external connections [between New Guinea and Australia] during the Holocene’. Yet in this ‘post-colonial’ (or more accurately decolonising) era, Lourandos sets a challenge − to redefine and revitalise investigations of external influences without encouraging anachronistic diffusionist studies underwritten by colonial tenets (cf. Bradshaw rock-art debate – see McNiven and Russell, 1997 for discussion). This paper engages with that challenge. In doing so I take an historical approach to reveal how external influences studies in Australian archaeology developed their colonialist underpinnings and subsequently maintained relevance linked to the known introduction of the dingo. In the wake of this post-colonial critique I argue that an external influences research agenda for ASTT origins collapses, thus opening the way for the development of new models to account for the introduction of the dingo. In this connection, the final section of the paper refocuses and redefines an external influences research agenda for Australian archaeology based on new information supporting the hypothesis that the dingo was introduced to mainland Australia via Torres Strait around 3500 years ago.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2020

Aboriginal History, 2020

Aboriginal individuals – often men – who went with the colonists on their travels in colonial New South Wales performed various, often vital, roles. While this is well known, less attention has been paid to the ways in which relationships developed between the colonists and those guiding, or how these relationships were dependent on meeting the needs and desires of all involved. By teasing apart some of the earliest, shakiest beginnings of Aboriginal men travelling with and ‘guiding’ the colonists, this article suggests that guiding was negotiated from the outset – the product of intercultural dialogue and deliberation – and that it is a phenomenon that benefits from being more fully contextualised.