1,720,980 research outputs found
'Now, are you going to believe this or not?': addressing neglected narratives through the maritime cultural landscape of Point Pearce Aboriginal Mission/Burgiyana, South Australia
No full textThis thesis investigates the maritime cultural landscape of Point Pearce Mission/ Burgiyana, in the Yorke Peninsula/Guuranda region of South Australia. The research seeks to understand Indigenous maritime activities within a defined conceptual framework through a case study-based, inductive and interpretive approach. This interpretation perceives the participation of Indigenous peoples in Australia’s maritime industry as an important component of Australian maritime heritage with the potential to shed light on a number of areas including boatbuilding, labouring in the shipping trade—both at sea and on land—and working in the fishing economy. Previous archaeological research has not employed a maritime cultural landscape framework to explore issues of importance to Indigenous communities. The framework, arguably one of the most popular in the maritime archaeology field, is derived from research conducted in Europe and hence has had a Western focus and research agenda. Further, maritime archaeological studies have neglected Indigenous missions as potential sites/landscapes and, similarly, archaeological research at missions has largely ignored maritime aspects. This study is based upon the collection of 13 oral histories, as well as terrestrial, coastal and underwater archaeological investigations and primary archival research. The data was collated taking into account the 11 thematic facets of the maritime cultural landscape as advocated by Westerdahl (2008, 2011). The latter information was then used to explore the usefulness and suitability of the maritime cultural landscape approach in an Indigenous Australian post-contact context. In particular, an assessment of the maritime cultural landscape was conducted in this research to consider whether it provided the necessary suite of methods (and associated rationale) to accommodate a cohesive recording of areas important to Indigenous Australian communities (i.e. beliefs, knowledges and lived experiences) and whether it provided a useful interpretive structure. The research reveals that the maritime cultural landscape framework is generally, with qualifications, suitable for the investigation of Indigenous Australian post- contact contexts and is worthwhile in the sense that it can foreground the contribution of Indigenous peoples in Australia’s maritime industry. The aforementioned 11 thematic facets of the maritime cultural landscape are demonstrated in this research to be flexible across contexts, however several issues emerge from this case study. These issues have been broadly grouped into five themes as follows: 1) Colonial archives and local histories often silence Aboriginal peoples; 2) Maritime cultural landscape facets need to encompass non-Western systems of knowledge; 3) Maritime archaeology discourse and underpinning attitudes need to be deconstructed; 4) Maritime archaeology in Australia is generally Eurocentric; and 5) Oral histories are an integral source for exploring Indigenous maritime cultural landscapes. Consequently, it is argued that the maritime cultural landscape approach should be adopted more frequently, taking into account Indigenous themes in maritime archaeology, although the research process should be carefully examined for Eurocentricity. Additionally, the outcomes of the project illustrate that Indigenous maritime cultural landscapes are not only a prominent part of the Australian landscape, but also provoke reconsiderations regarding how we see the relationship between maritime and Indigenous archaeology. The implications of these findings are that the seascape framework is not the only concept available within maritime archaeology for investigating Indigenous contexts. As a result, it is proposed that maritime archaeologists should consider employing a maritime cultural landscape framework within other themes of cultural contact, as well as at missions situated on other waterways and in similar contexts in other countries
Aboriginal missions and post-contact maritime archaeology: a South Australian synthesis
No full textThe post-contact maritime archaeological research of Aboriginal missions has hitherto been an un-developed area of study. This paper argues that research in this area is now required to investigate the 'hidden histories' of Indigenous peoples in relation to the lacustrine, riverine and coastal waterways of the late 19th and early 20th century Australian land and waterscape. As such this paper presents a synthesis of information on this topic including an analysis of available literature and historical sources to better understand Indigenous peoples' activities in the post-contact maritime land and waterscape. Ultimately, it is also argued that the maritime archaeology of Aboriginal missions has the potential to contribute knowledge about cross-cultural exchange and cultural continuity . This study is timely because many maritime mission sites are deteriorating and their associated intangible heritage is in need of preservation
A framework for recording shipwreck landscapes: a case study from Port MacDonnell, South Australia
No full text[Extract] Maritime archaeology has not fully explored the relationship between shipwrecks and their impacts on local communities. Shipwreck events play a part in a long-term process where the place continues to alter the surrounding environment and becomes a landscape. When a wreck occurs near shore or onshore in a remote area, it impacts on the land and creates archaeological signatures. However, when a ship wrecks near a settlement, its impact can also alter the actions, attitudes and dynamics of local communities. The effects of wrecks can affect the landscape over time through artefacts being moved and removed, folklore and place names
Routes of removal: Vessel biographies and the island transfer of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Queensland, Australia
No full text<i>Please God Send Me A Wreck: Responses to Shipwreck in a 19<sup>th</sup> Century Australian Community</i>. Brad Duncan and Martin Gibbs. New York: Springer, 2015, 243 pp. $129.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-4939-2641-1
Get PDFThe title of Brad Duncan and Martin Gibbs's 2015 book, Please God Send Me a Wreck, rapidly conveys the contradiction between wrecks as crises and wrecks as boons— savior and salvor, altruism and opportunity. This third volume in the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology (ACUA) and Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) series When the Land Meets the Sea represents the work of the state maritime archaeologist (New South Wales Heritage Branch) and a professor of Australian archaeology (University of New England), respectively. This Springer-published set covers archaeological work on single, or a collection of related, sites that encompass both underwater and terrestrial investigations. The recent addition, in the genre of anthropologically oriented archaeological essays, adopts the nineteenth- and twentieth-century communities of Queenscliffe, in the southern Australian state of Victoria, as a case study. It casts the community as the central protagonist in a landscape where shipping mishaps take center stage. Pilot, lighthouse, hydrographic, lifeboat, and customs services act as the key players, orchestrating responses to shipping mishaps encompassing stranding, wrecking, rescue, salvage, looting, caching, beachcombing, and souveniring
Maritime heritage in crisis: Indigenous landscapes and global ecological breakdown
No full text[Extract] Reading the preface of Richard M. Hutching's provocative Maritime Heritage in Crisis, I found myself agreeing with the prominent archaeology professor who argued that archaeologies' colonialist agenda, driven by capitalism and producing elitist, racist and pro-development narratives, is "old news" (xii–xiii). However, by the conclusion of the book, Hutchings had convinced me that this "head in the sand" attitude is no longer sustainable. Archaeologists and resource managers model themselves as experts", "saviors" and "specialists", yet hide behind these roles like the pianists on RMS Titanic – part of the problem yet blind to the fact. For decades, archaeology and cultural resource management (CRM) have been complicit in the destruction of Indigenous heritage in colonial states like Canada and America – the settings for this volume. Yet, as argued by Hutchings in his frank, first person voice, this destruction is as inherent today, to the point that he describes it as a type of "violence" (96). Through controlling heritage, archaeology and CRM dominate the production of knowledge about Indigenous pasts, and so control these people (101)
The 'maritime cultural landscape' approach as a framework for addressing neglected narratives: Point Pearce Aboriginal Mission/Burgiyana, South Australia
No full text[Extract] Maritime activities at Point Pearce Aboriginal Mission/Burgiyana (1686-1966) in South Australia form the basis of an oral history, archaeological, and archival case study. This research assesses whether the maritime cultural landscape framework, a Western maritime archaeological concept, is applicable to Indigenous missions. The results of research at Point Pearce/Burgiyana indicate that care must be taken when applying maritime archaeological theories and associated attitudes to Indigenous archaeology ('with, for and by' Indigenous peoples). However, the application of a Western framework contributes towards the decolonization of maritime archaeology by accommodating the beliefs, knowledges, and lived experiences of Aboriginal peoples
Rich pickings: an analysis of opportunistic behaviour at Rangitoto Island, Aotearoa/New Zealand
No full textRangitoto Island, Aotearoa/New Zealand, is the location of a graveyard of abandoned vessels and three communities of baches (circa 1910s–1930s)—small and modest holiday homes. In 2014, an archival and archaeological investigation of 11 discarded watercraft located at Boulder Bay and the bach communities of Beacon End, Rangitoto Wharf and Islington Bay revealed evidence of salvage and reuse of abandoned vessel materials in the construction, modification and use of the island’s baches. This evidence in turn provides insight into opportunistic behaviours of communities unassociated with the maritime industries that created ships’ graveyards, and consequently affords a more well-rounded understanding of post-depositional site formation processes. Influenced by social and economic impacts, the Rangitoto Island bach communities’ resourcefulness enhances our knowledge of behaviours towards ships as sources of material
Seascapes of 'Submarine Squatters': Commercial Dugong fisheries of North Queensland
Get PDFSubmarine squatting, dugong fishing on the Queensland (Australia) coast during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is a poorly understood livelihood. This study provides a fine-grained interpretation to expand our knowledge of the operation of commercial dugong fisheries through the practices of two commercial dugong fishers, John Lionel Ching and Daniel Dewar, operating in the Newry Island Group. Archaeological surveys of the Newry Island Group and nearby Stewarts Peninsula have highlighted the ephemeral nature of the commercial dugong industry in the seascape today. Despite this ephemeral landscape, contextualising the archival and archaeological research within a seascape framework has enriched our understanding of the daily lives of the commercial dugong fishers. It is important to acknowledge that a seascape approach is rarely applied to non-Indigenous archaeological contexts in Australia. The seascape approach used here has been successful in encompassing Western systems of maritime knowledge
‘In my memory, it says Rarawa’: abandoned vessel material salvage and reuse at Rangitoto Island, Aotearoa / New Zealand
No full textTogether, archaeological evidence and oral histories better inform our understanding of the interaction between abandoned vessel sites and communities. While the maritime and historic archaeological record can reveal salvage and reuse activities, material culture does not always reflect a direct link between the two. In this study of abandoned vessel material salvage and reuse at Rangitoto Island, Aotearoa / New Zealand, oral histories collected from the owners of baches—small and modest holiday homes—serve as a linkage tool that tie the two together. Furthermore, the archaeological and historical significance of this tangible and intangible cultural heritage serves to foreground the Rangitoto Island community’s current struggle to have this legacy recognised
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