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Session
1.1: Heritage and narrative
1.
Slipping the shackles: material culture and chain
gang life (session keynote)
Dr Hamish Maxwell-Stewart
University of Tasmania
hamish.maxwellstewart@utas.edu.au
One of the problems of writing history
from below is that below decks archival sources are often hard
to find. Those that have survived have a nasty habit of turning
out to be something other than they appeared at first sight.
Thus, recent work on narratives purporting to be written by
convicts transported to 19th century Australia has demonstrated
that many were in fact shaped by editors who inserted moral
messages which reflected their own middle class values. This
paper will attempt to tackle this problem from the ankles up.
It sets out to explore chain gang life through an examination
of convict material culture, especially trousers-it is thus
textile, rather than, text based. Three articles which may
have been made, or substantially altered, by convicts will
be employed to explore a variety of existing assumptions about
chain gang life and the distribution of colonial power relations.
2.
The bells of Port Arthur: a cross-disciplinarian approach
to reconciling artefact and narrative
Lynette Ross
Former Heritage Officer, Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority
lynetteross@nsw.chariot.net.au
In 1847 a set of eight bells was manufactured
at the convict station of Port Arthur in Van Diemen’s
Land. The bells, comprising a ‘chime’, were destined
for use in the church at that place. After the closure of Port
Arthur in 1877 they were sent to the township of New Norfolk
where they were eventually dispersed to various churches and
institutions in the area. In 1994 the Port Arthur Management
Authority made a bid to have the bells returned to their point
of origin. The project culminated two years later with the
reunification of seven of the bells at Port Arthur where they
now form an integral part of the interpretation of the old
convict church.
The bells as a set have undoubted heritage value; they illustrate
industrial achievement and refinement of skills at the convict
settlement and give an insight into the social life of the community.
As well, the uniqueness of their design and their position as one
of Australia’s few chimes to be manufactured in the nineteenth
century gives them a national significance.
Piecing together the story of the bells was not an easy task and
required a cross-disciplinarian approach incorporating the skills
of archaeologist and historian. While the bells themselves can
be read as text, revealing information about their manufacture
and use, the link between artefact and narrative could only be
truly made by analysis of the written and oral record. This double-edged
approach will be explored in this paper.
3.
Corner talk: an Annales influenced narrative from the Corner
Country
of NSW
Sarah Martin
sarah@pcpro.net.au
Olive Downs is a remote Corner Country
historic Kidman pastoral complex embedded in a cultural landscape
of significance to Indigenous people. It is located approximately
60 km north of Tibooburra on Sturt National Park, in the extreme
North-West Corner of NSW. The Indigenous Cultural Heritage
is interpreted using principles of the Annales school to create
a theoretical framework. The disciplines of archaeology, anthropology
and history are combined to document the short term events
from initial contact to the present, define and discuss medium
term structures, and look for long term structures which may
be as applicable to current history and the future as that
of the recent and distant past. The artefacts and features
recorded at Olive Downs, ranging from the focal element, the
Mura track of Warri Warri Creek, to stone artefacts such as
leilira blades and seed grinding equipment, to horseshoes,
windmills and AGA stoves are treated as “texts in which
the context of the material remains provides the basis for
the construction of contemporary meaning” (Peebles 1991:111-12
after Leroi-Gourhan 1974). The success of this approach can
be judged by its ability to interpret aspects of the Corner
Country narrative by cutting across the boundaries of Indigenous
and non-Indigenous history.
4.
Evolving communities: linking people of the past to people
of the present
Karen Williams
fourofus@cyberone.com.au
Combining archaeological analysis
of artefacts with information obtained from a variety of sources
such as social history, visual arts, oral history and community
(cultural) development provides insights into aspects of the
cultural landscape such as spirituality, community values and
emotional attachment to place. The stories told about artefacts
and people are sometimes limited to the economic and environmental
aspects of a cultural landscape. To gain access into the more
intangible social aspects of the relationship, archaeologists
need to look to sources outside of material culture. This paper
uses examples from the Aboriginal and European cultural landscapes
of Oaks Estate, ‘Melrose Valley’ and ‘Stirling
Park’, which are all located in and around Canberra in
the ACT. It uses the contexts of a 19th century railway camp
site, a complex of Aboriginal sites and the remnants of an
early 20th century construction workers’ settlement to
illustrate how an interpretation of artefacts that incorporates
evidence compiled from insights from community participation,
oral histories and historic documentation and narratives provided
by contemporary paintings can link people and landscape of
the past to the people and landscape of the present and contribute
to a sense of continuity.
Session
1.2: Archaeology and the arts of agency
5.
A stone is a stone is a stone: finding the people behind
them
Pip Rath
University of Sydney
prath@bigpond.net.au
Many of the highly retouched obsidian
artefacts from West New Britain, Papua New Guinea almost shout
out ‘look at me, I’m not just any old stone, I’m
valuable’. Certainly recent studies have provided tantalising
hints of these artefacts’ roles within pre-Lapita societies
(Araho, 1996; Araho et al. 2002; Rath and Torrence, 2003; Torrence,
2004) and the relations they may have mediated. To date most
of the research has focused on the stemmed artefacts. Sadly,
few of these objects have been found in situ. Consequently,
determining the roles and the relationships they mediated demands
production contexts are approached in new ways. I argue that
how an object becomes will tell us something of why it became.
This paper presents some of the archaeological models and tests
developed to link the artefacts to the social relations and
processes involved in and mediated by their production. By
finding ways to recognise these processes in the archaeological
record, it is hoped that the people behind the stones will
become more visible.
6.
Domesticating the tula: implications of consumer studies
for understanding the introduction of new technologies in
Australian prehistory
Dr Kathryn Przywolnik
Archaeologist, Central Aboriginal Heritage Unit
NSW Department of Environment and Conservation
kathryn.przywolnik@npws.nsw.gov.au
One of the main tenants of the 'new'
literature on social approaches to artefact analysis in archaeology
and anthropology is that objects and humans stand in a reciprocal
relationship. Objects 'teach' humans how to use them as much
as humans learn, through the very material circumstances of
the object's function. In contemporary consumer studies, domestication
of new technologies can be explained through phases of adoption,
analogous to a series of trials. Traditional models for the
adoption of new technologies place the consumer in a passive
role of integration and acceptance. Recent research however
has suggested that a new technology cannot become successfully
adopted unless it passes various trials regarding the new technology's
functionality and utility, and it's relationship with the consumer's
social environment and capabilities. This paper summarises
recent work on contemporary consumer cultures, and assesses
the implications of this work to the study of the introduction
of new stone tool technologies in Australia during the Holocene,
using the tula adze, a classic arid zone stone tool type, as
a case study.
7.
Theoretically possible: Agency and narrative in stone tool
residue analysis
Michael Haslam
School of Social Science, University of Queensland
m.haslam@uq.edu.au
Stone tool residue analysis is no
longer a novelty method concerned with the search for bloodstained
artefacts. Over the past decade the range of sites, artefact
types and analysts employed in residue studies have grown significantly.
Despite this increase, however, the theoretical sophistication
of published studies has advanced very little. In this paper
I argue for the role of ideas developed by theorists interested
in various aspects of archaeological agency, in both conducting
and interpreting residue analyses. In addition, I examine issues
surrounding the integration of residue studies into larger
archaeological projects, and put forward a case for narrative
devices as important components in such integration. Finally,
I present a case study from the Maya city of Copan, Honduras,
through which some of the ideas discussed can be applied. This
paper represents a step towards a ‘theoretically possible’ goal:
a meaningful framework for the design, interpretation and integration
of stone tool residue analysis.
8.
Agate and carnelian ornaments, human agency, and the dynamics
of social complexity in Iron Age Mainland Southeast Asia
Dr Robert Theunissen
Honorary Associate, School of Human and Environmental Studies.
UNE
Robert.G.Theunissen@team.telstra.com
Within neo-evolutionary narratives
of social change in mainland Southeast Asia, the Iron Age appearance
of agate and carnelian ornaments - evidencing long distance
exchange, increasing wealth, prestige and social differentiation
- is often viewed as symptomatic of the rise of social structures
such as chiefdoms. Such views, however, do not adequately recognise
the role or agency of human actors in social complexity dynamics.
The analysis of agate and carnelian ornaments, and their burial
context at the Thai cemetery site of Noen U-Loke, illuminates
how the beads were perceived and used by individuals within
an Iron Age society. It is suggested that the exotic qualities
of agate and carnelian beads, their wearability, extreme rarity
and durability, led them to be exploited by aspiring elites
competing for prestige and resulted in changes in social complexity
at the site. The precise nature of social complexity change
that results is argued to depend on the pre-existing mechanisms
that incipient elites used to translate wealth into prestige
and ultimately social status and power, prior to the appearance
of the beads. In Iron Age mainland Southeast Asia, agate and
carnelian beads should therefore be viewed as having an active
role in increasing social complexity as social tools of human
agents, rather than simply being regarded as symptoms of specific
neo-evolutionary forms of social complexity such as chiefdoms.
9.
From external influence to internal dynamics: Toward an agency
of community in Formative Copán
Dan Cummins
The University of Queensland
d.cummins@uq.edu.au
It
has long been assumed that sociopolitical complexity at Copán,
Honduras, evolved largely as a consequence of external influence
from neighbouring communities. Whether invoking Early Formative
Mixe-Zoquean colonists, the presence of 'Olmec' burials,
the migration of Cholan-speaking Maya in the Terminal Formative
or refugees from the early Classic eruption of Illopango, culture
change at Copán
has characteristically been defined as resulting from interaction
with distant communities. Consequently, Copán is often
positioned as a 'periphery' community that was a passive recipient
of technological and ideological knowledge. In this paper,
I present a critique of this perspective and offer an alternative
model that recognises the agency of the Copán community
in this interchange of ideas and materials. Acceptance of the
recursive relationships between individuals, small groups and
'communities' in
the broader patterns of social interaction facilitates a re-evaluation
of the existing narrative. Examination of the manner in which
material culture was employed in the performance and assertion
of this fluid social identity becomes the critical objective.
Employing analysis of the domestic jar, a utilitarian ceramic
vessel that had considerable longevity throughout the Middle
and Late Formative periods (1000-100 B.C.), I explore the nature
of formal and decorative change in this vessel type, principally
in terms of the internal composition of the Copán assemblage.
I argue that a complex dynamic involving both interaction and
intra-action of several groups and small 'communities' was
engaged in the absorption, rejection and re-distribution of
ideas and objects. External influence as a catalyst for social
change can then be re-evaluated in light of the internal dynamics
in which such influence was actively negotiated.
10.
The issue of agency in the conservation of divine heritage
Dr Denis Byrne
Manager, Cultural Heritage Research Unit, Department Of Environment and Conservation
(NSW)
denis.byrne@npws.nsw.gov.au
The great majority of listed heritage
sites in Asia consist of religious objects, structures and
places. One of the things heritage practitioners working in
Asia have so far managed to avoid coming to terms with is the
empowered nature of this heritage. Arguably a solid majority
of people in the region consider these objects and places to
be animated by power. The extensive circulation of ‘gossip’ regarding
the nature and extent of the efficacy of these objects and
places, these days aided by the print and electronic media,
constitute a form of significance assessment. This is a significance
assessment process that is similar to that which operates in
heritage conservation but opposite to it in that instead of
privileging physical fabric over efficacy it is purely concerned
with the differential ability of objects and places to ‘perform’.
The recent surge in popular religion in places like Thailand,
Taiwan and China means that the need for heritage practitioners
to be able to deal with concepts like empowerment, agency and
supernatural efficacy is more urgent than ever.
Session
1.3: Collecting and colonialism
11.
Objects of desire: Stone artefacts, antiquarianism and ‘aura’ in
archaeological heritage management in Australia
Dr Rodney Harrison
Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, ANU
rodney.harrison@anu.edu.au
This paper examines the management
of stone artefacts and archaeological sites in NSW. Drawing
on notions regarding the relationships between objects and
humans from Alfred Gell’s anthropological theory of art,
and Walter Benjamin’s work on ‘aura’, it
attempts to understand recent Indigenous, non-Indigenous ‘specialist’ and
non-Indigenous ‘non-specialist’ discourses on stone
artefacts which have arisen in this field. I contend that the
issues raised by Benjamin with regard to the authenticity of
art in the age of mechanical reproduction have re-emerged with
great vigour in Indigenous heritage discourses in Australia.
Such issues surrounding the authenticity and ‘aura’ of
archaeological objects demonstrate competing discourses on
the relationship between objects and memory in archaeological
heritage management in Australia, and a rather ‘post-modern’ re-emergence
of antiquarian discourses relating to stone artefacts.
12.
Anatomy of a collection: the life history of an assemblage
Bridget Mosley
GSE, Macquarie University
bmosley@gse.mq.edu.au
Recent writing has focussed on life
narratives of artefacts but less attention has been paid to
narratives of assemblages. Here I trace the life history of
a collection of Aboriginal stone artefacts currently housed
at Mt Wood homestead on Sturt National Park in far western
New South Wales. Rather than ending with discard, the narrative
of the collection as an assemblage begins once artefacts were
removed from the archaeological record, collected from the
property by William Thomas, the last manager of Mt Wood as
a working pastoral station. Thomas’ actions reflect the
meanings and values he attributed to the artefacts, themselves
embedded in the wider historical narrative of antiquarianism.
The most recent chapter in its life history is my own interaction
with the collection, recording it as part of my doctoral research.
From the context of the collection and the physical traces left
on the artefacts from previous stages in their lives it is possible
to trace a history, a web of relationships between people and things.
In counterpoint to this is the relationship of each artefact to
the other within the assemblage. Each interaction adds to its cultural
biography and informs our reading of the changing politics of value.
13.
Variation amongst glass artefact assemblages at Cossack,
Western Australia
Moss Wilson
Centre for Archaeology, UWA
mosswilson@hotmail.com
Aboriginal glass artefacts can provide
a model of Aboriginal activity in the contact period. I have
attempted this by identifying and examining variation between
glass artefact assemblages at Cossack, the pearl diving centre
of Northwest Australia from 1864 to 1910. Eleven sites were
neighbouring Cossack were excavated, and a total of 2,995 glass
pieces were recovered. Through examining the physical attributes
of the glass pieces recovered from these sites I interpreted
548 of these pieces as Aboriginal artefacts. A range of site
functions across the area are hypothesised including the use
of flaked glass and utilised glass fragments in woodworking
and in the processing of shellfish. These results also highlight
the cross-cultural aspects of Cossack in the historical period:
the locations of the sites indicate that Aboriginal people
lived at Cossack, although physically separate from the town.
14.
Remembering Charlotte Waters differently: an archaeology
of interaction in the western Simpson Desert
Ingereth MacFarlane
Visiting Fellow, Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Australian National
University
ingereth.macfarlane@anu.edu.au
The construction of the Overland Telegraph
Line altered the spatial history of Australia at national and
local scales. It tends to be remembered as a technological
and political achievement: an agent of modernity that brought
instantaneous connection with the rest of the world from 1872,
as intended. However, an unintended outcome of its installation
was the emergence of a continuous 'contact zone' cut through
the country and lives of the local Indigenous people.
These general, large-scale processes
were played out locally in individual people’s lives
at particular places; in this case, at the waterhole renamed
'Charlotte Waters' in 1865, the site of a telegraph repeater
station. An enigmatic object – a hand-carved facsimile
of a pipe bowl – was recovered amongst the surface scatter
of pre-colonial and colonial bulldozed and recycled debris
that now remains there. While
all objects can tell a story, some objects can tell good stories – they
have the power to assemble many different lines of evidence,
acting as an index to multiple connections that spiral out
from and into the place. Tracing this object’s spatial
and historical context takes us closer into the complex interactions
which produced this particular place through time.
15.
Artifice and artefact in the rememberings
of New Italy
Maria Cotter
University of New England
mcotter@une.edu.au
In 2002 the New Italy Settlement in
northern New South Wales, was listed on the State Heritage
Register of New South Wales
as a landscape of State Cultural Heritage Significance (Gardiner & Cotter,
2002). In this paper the archaeological and memorial fabric of
New Italy, supplemented by documentary and oral histories are
used to develop a social narrative of the New Italy Settlement
Area. This narrative is explained through reference to the multifaceted
term artifice. Artifice as ingenuity and artifice as false memory
or façade are both at the crux of the complex narrative
that is New Italy and is the key to explanations of the role
of artefacts in the memorialisation of this unique cultural landscape.
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