Revolution or reform?

Abstract

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 develop are cited here. What should archaeologists actually be doing that will positively improve the current situation? Saying everything we do is wrong is easier than working out how to set matters right. I do not want to say that our current ways of working with Aboriginal communities are perfect. As we all know, two-way learning is a constant process of adaptation and adjustment, usually leavened, as the authors realise, by goodwill as well as misunderstandings on both sides. Thus I will not agree with the authors, hold up my hands in horror and say present-day Australian archaeological practice is ‘a tragedy’. Like the rest of life, there are good and bad bits. We may need reform, we do need to keep paying careful attention to what our Aboriginal partners want and share leadership with