Thesis abstract: Specimens and Stone Tools: Aboriginalism and Depictions of Indigenous Australians in Archaeological Textbooks

This thesis explores the ways in which academic archaeological research has contributed to knowledge about past Aboriginal lifeways. In particular, it examines the specific construction of Indigenous Australian history in three archaeological volumes written by one of Australia’s most well-known ‘prehistorians’, John Mulvaney. These three texts are Mulvaney’s Prehistory of Australia published in 1969, 1975 and 1999, the last co-authored with Johan Kamminga.

The study is an attempt to consider specific ways in which an acknowledged academic archaeologist has taken an active and dynamic role in shaping Australian perceptions, politics, legislation and social opinions about Indigenous Australians’ past, through the production of knowledge. It uses key concepts of knowledge/power formulated by Michel Foucault, and Edward Said’s notion of Orientalism, to extract and analyse meaningful information from the text and images.

The study maintains that mainstream contemporary ‘prehistoric’ archaeology has largely remained unchallenged as a colonial Aboriginalist discourse on the Indigenous Australian past. Post-processual and post-colonial archaeological practices have become extremely popular in Australian archaeology, but have done little to dislodge the conventional notions of Aboriginality as expressed in textual discourse. This thesis explores the particular ways in which textual discourse continues to perpetuate colonial attitudes and depictions within our archaeological discipline.