TIM MURRAY

D.Litt. FSA FAHA; Emeritus Professor of Archaeology,

La Trobe University and  Honorary Professorial Fellow University of Melbourne

The event will be held in person at the Stanford Archaeology Center as well as via Zoom.  To connect to this event via Zoom, please register using the button above.

Abstract: 

My goal in this discussion  is to very briefly examine the development during the 19th century of some of the arguments (and sources of information/inspiration) about the history of pre-European Australia. In doing this I will reflect on some historiographical matters raised by the divergent yet common histories of antiquarianism and archaeology. Some of this reflection will involve a quite superficial comparison of the practice of antiquarianism in the United States and Australia in the late 18th to the late 19th centuries.n I will also make some observations about discussions related to  how we might define and understand the differences between the practices of amateurs and professionals in this crowded field. The core of my discussion considers the emergence of a sense of problem for all participants – did Aboriginal Australia have a history, and if it did, how was this to be written, and what might this mean to the European colonists and their successors? Implicit in these questions is the recognition that at that time the interests of contemporary indigenous people were thought to be hardly worth mentioning, let alone being considered by the authors of those histories. This obviously stands in stark contrast to our contemporary circumstances. Exploring the why  and the how of that fundamental transformation is a task way beyond my brief this afternoon, but  perhaps we might get to dig a little deeper in the Q and A.

I need to observe that some aspects of what I will discuss touch on very sensitive matters related to race and identity, particularly the issues that are raised by what Reginald Horsman described as racial Anglo-Saxonism. Even the most superficial engagement with mid-to-late 19th century European discourse about the nature of human history clearly reveals patterns of thinking about the meaning of racial diversity that are simply repellent by the standards of today. But this does not mean that we should not try to understand that thinking in its own terms - especially as it is also clear that quite a bit of it lurks in the shadows of contemporary discussion about ethnicity and identity.