http://mcu.sagepub.com/Journal of Material Culture

http://mcu.sagepub.com/content/3/3/283The online version of this article can be found at:

 DOI: 10.1177/135918359800300302

1998 3: 283Journal of Material CultureLynette Russell and Ian J. McNiven

Aboriginal PastMonumental Colonialism: Megaliths and the Appropriation of Australia's

  

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

can be found at:Journal of Material CultureAdditional services and information for    

  http://mcu.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

 

http://mcu.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:  

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:  

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:  

http://mcu.sagepub.com/content/3/3/283.refs.htmlCitations:  

What is This? 

- Nov 1, 1998Version of Record >>

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

283

MONUMENTAL COLONIALISM

Megaliths and the Appropriation of Australia’s AboriginalPast

⧫ LYNETTE RUSSELL

Museum Studies, Deakin University

⧫ IAN J. McNIVEN

Classics and Archaeology Department, University of Melbourne

Abstract

Colonizers often subjugate the colonized Other as an inferior form of

humanity. In the Euro-Australian settler-colonial context such ethnocentricviews legitimated the acquisition of indigenous lands. An important elementof this process of dispossession was the appropriation of indigenous heritageand the (re)presentation of indigenous archaeological sites as dimensions ofEuropean prehistory. In America and Africa last century, interpretations ofindigenous sites frequently invoked the prior occupation of an advancedrace who had close affinity with the European colonizers. Nineteenth-century representations of stone circles in Australia reveal similar attemptsto dissociate Aboriginal people from their past. The stone circles near MtElephant in Victoria provide an extreme example of this process wherein afallacious depiction of indigenous sites as European megalithic structuresensured Aboriginal dispossession and subsequent European (re)possession.The Mt Elephant representations subsequently gave rise to hyper-diffusion-ist claims early this century that Aboriginal stone circles reflected culturalinfluences from Egypt. Within the Australian context the processes of

dispossession and (re)possession were part of a more encompassingparadigm which held Aborigines to be the living Stone Age ancestors ofmodern Europeans.

Key Words ⧫ Australian Aborigines ⧫ colonialism ⧫ megaliths ⧫ MtElephant

Journal of Material CultureCopyright © 1998 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)Vol. 3(3): 283-299 [1359-1835(199811)3:3; 283-299;005799]

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

284

What is new usually wins its way by disguising itself as old.C.S. Lewis.

INTRODUCTION

Over the past two decades a diffuse range of academic discourse, underthe label of post-colonialism, has been devoted to disentangling and elu-cidating European colonial processes. Archaeologists have been slow toenter this discourse, a fact which may, in part, be due to the role playedby archaeology and related disciplines such as anthropology in the col-onial process (see Trigger, 1985: 4-5). It is our contention, however, thatsuch heavy critique of archaeology provides fertile ground for under-standing colonialism and associated processes of cultural interaction ina broad range of cultural contexts, both recent and past.

In this paper we address the appropriation of colonized people’s pastand heritage by colonialists and the representation of indigenous peopleas ancestral to the newcomers. In this connection, previous research hasrevealed how the ruins of Great Rhodesia (in Zimbabwe) were assumedto have been built by an earlier wave of European migrants (Kuklick,1991) while the Mississippi mound sites (in America) were seen astoo complex to have been constructed by the indigenes of the area(Silverberg, 1968). However, colonial misrepresentations of indigenousarchaeological sites have only recently been explored for the other focusof 19th-century European settler colonialism - Australia (see McNivenand Russell, 1997). We investigate the Australian situation further

through an examination of an almost forgotten but remarkably extremeand fallacious representation of Aboriginal ceremonial stone circles inwestern Victoria as European megalithic structures. These supposedstonehenges had no oral tradition amongst the Aborigines. By compar-ing both the American and African examples which were dependent onactual sites with the Australian case which was based on a fraudulent

depiction, we explore the underlying colonial roots of the polemic of’who owns the past’ and its relevance for understanding the roles of cul-tural heritage sites in processes of cultural interaction and within col-onial discourse.

COLONIALISM AND THE OTHER

Colonialism is not an act but a process constituted of interconnected

structures, events and actions. The primary motive of Australian

colonialism was access to land. This settler-colonial enterprise wasfounded upon a logic of elimination. European colonizers sought toreplace indigenous peoples and claim the land as their own (Rose, 1991:

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

285

46; Wolfe, 1994: 93). This dispossession was underwritten by a subtextin which the colonizer and the actions of colonialism were perceived aslegitimate, rightful and often even beseeched by the colonized. WithinAustralia the structures of colonialism continue to instruct, inform anddelimit Aboriginal-European discourse in both public and academicdomains. In terms of anthropology, Hamilton (1982: 91) has remarkedthat it ’is commonplace, [and] probably repeated too frequently, thatanthropology is a child of colonialism’.

It is generally agreed that anthropology has been the study of thoseperceived to be Other to the observer (Clifford, 1988; Clifford and

Marcus, 1986; Marcus and Fischer, 1986; Thomas, 1994). Stocking(1985: 112) has described anthropology as ’primarily a discourse of theculturally or racially despised’. The exploration of the Other as a con-struct of European-colonial discourse was explored extensively by Said(1978, 1993) in his now classic critique of Orientalism. Said’s principalthesis is that Western society, and scholarship in particular, has assem-bled and contrived a homogeneous, inferior and oppositional view ofOther cultures. Thus central to any study of other cultures is the

relationship between the Self (or the West) and the Other. The West isthe centre of the discourse of civilization, colonialism, and ultimatelymodernity. In contrast, the ’Other’, the dark side, are those peopleswho are forgotten and time-locked in the past, repressed and undevel-oped.

When Europeans began colonial expansion they frequently foundindigenous customs curious in the extreme. Not surprisingly, the colo-nizers sought to understand these customs through the mechanism ofcomparison. The salient ideological feature of comparison was that itreassured the reader that everything new was merely a variation of thatwhich was known and familiar. This also allowed the reader/observer to

comprehend the poetics and imagery of the indigenous landscapethrough a veil of British romanticism. Further, in seeking to makeindigenous customs comprehendible the colonial observers frequentlyoveremphasized the similarities between their own culture and theculture of Others. Revealing insights into this process are provided bythe cases of the Mounds of America, the ruins of Great Zimbabwe andAustralian megalith sites.

CREATING A PAST FOR A COLONIAL TERRITORY

Creating a non-indigenous past for colonial lands is an important if notcentral tenet underwriting and legitimating dispossession. This could beachieved by literally importing and implanting the homeland’s culturallandscape (Carter, 1987; Spurr, 1993), a process which is perhaps best

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

286

known through colonial paintings which reveal a Europeanized Aus-tralian landscape (Smith, 1984). Colonizers often justify their actions bydissociating the ’natives’ from their cultural heritage. Arguments areusually couched in terms which suggest that the indigenes are relativelyrecent arrivals and therefore are themselves colonizers. Alternative argu-ments purport that indigenous cultural heritage is the result of a previousrace of people. These prior races are always culturally closer to the col-onizers than to the indigenous inhabitants.

Silverberg (1968), in a book devoted to exploring the mythology andrepresentational history of the Mississippi and Ohio mounds, hasdemonstrated the intricate relationship that existed between viewing themound makers as of exotic origin and the growth of the idea of theAmerican Nation. At the outset it is important to note that the moundsof Mississippi and Ohio were constructed by native American peoplesduring the thousand years prior to the 17th century AD. At the adventof the invasion of Europeans the mounds’ function and history had eitherslipped from memory or was not shared with the newcomers. However,for the colonialists, a deep and pervasive need was fulfilled by the mythof non-Indian mound builders.

The dream of a lost prehistoric race in the American heartland was°&dquo;

profoundly satisfying; and if the vanished ones had been giants, or whitemen, or Israelites, or Danes, or Toltecs, or giant white Jewish Toltec Vikings,so much the better. The people of the United States were then engaged inan undeclared war against the Indians who blocked their path to expansion,transporting, imprisoning or simply massacring them; and as this century-long campaign of genocide proceeded, it may have been expedient to con-jure up a previous race whom the Indians had displaced in the same way.(Silverberg, 1968: 57)

As archaeology developed and the mounds were revealed to be theproduct of indigenous culture the popular view was open to question.Those who challenged the myth of a previous race were rejected andoften ridiculed. Even into modern times those responsible for the

management of cultural heritage in the mound region have had tocontend with popular views that the mounds were not built by nativeAmericans (Silverberg, 1968).

In Africa, similar processes of colonial dispossession were associatedwith the site of Great Zimbabwe (known previously as Great Rhodesia).Kuklick ( 1991 has shown that the complexity of the site’s structure, formand composition was such that European colonial observers assumedthat the indigenous population was incapable of its construction. GreatZimbabwe is an impressive stone ruin which covers some 60 acres(Kuklick, 1991: 135). In 1889 Cecil Rhodes obtained a large statue of abird which was to become an identifying emblem for the British inRhodesia. Over the next hundred years debate raged over whether the

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

287

ruins were built by indigenous peoples or by a ’former civilised race’that was ’light skinned’ (Kuklick, 1991: 138, 159).

Unlike the mounds of Mississippi and Ohio, the Zimbabwe ’natives’had an oral tradition relating to the ruins. The Shona people who occupythe area used the word ’zimbabwe’ to relay that these ruins were courtsor graves of chiefs. These were African constructions built for African

purposes. Kuklick has documented how shifting views on the buildersof the ’zimbabwe’ fluctuated with prevailing political climates. Thosearchaeologists who attempted to demonstrate an indigenous origin forthe site were castigated. In 1969, in post-independence Zimbabwe, therewas an attempt by Col. George Hartley to have parliament censor a guidebook because it did not imply that the buildings were constructed bylight skinned people. State employees were told that they would losetheir jobs if they were to credit the natives with the construction of thisimportant national icon.

What is clear from Silverberg (1986) and Kuklick (1991) is that incertain settler colonies the European newcomers were committed to aview that they were legitimately and morally entitled to possess indigen-ous land because it was seen as a lost domain of European heritage. Inthe following section we reveal how this colonial process was expressedand elaborated in Australia.

STONE CIRCLES AND EARLY COLONIAL AUSTRALIA

Early European observers frequently interpreted Aboriginal stone circlesas the remains of burial sites reminiscent of the barrows of British pre-history. In 1847, Angas noted:

Burials under tumuli are very common in every part of the northern world.So here at the Clarence river the blacks mark the burial-place by placingstones in a circle, and a large upright slab in the centre, even to the presentday. They give no other reason for this than that it ’belong to black fellow;’’black fellow make it so.’ ...Weapons are buried here with the dead, as inTartary; also among the American Indians, and the early British. Caesarspeaks of this custom. (Angas, 1847, II: 280)

In other contexts, stone circles were described as religious sites withtenuous Aboriginal associations. In a description of ’mystic stone circle’sites from New South Wales, Miles (1854: 25) noted:

The circles are not above twenty feet in diameter: the stones are seldommore than a foot above the ground, and in the centre is an upright stoneabout three feet high. The natives are very tenacious of any of these stonesbeing moved, especially the centre one. The only reply the blacks make toany inquiry on this subject, and on which they are loathe to speak, is, ’Don’tknow: black fellow make it so long time ago’.

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

288

The accounts of Angas and Miles are interesting for several reasons.First, site descriptions are reasonably accurate given they match recentdescriptions of Aboriginal stone arrangements from the region(McBryde, 1974). Second, although ascribing an Aboriginal origin to thesites, both Angas and Miles suggested that Aboriginal stone circles werepart of a broader tradition which included ancient Europe: Angas notedsimply that similar sites are found across the ’northern world’; Milesstated explicitly that Aboriginal stone circles were part of a complex ofcultural traits which had diffused to Australia in the past. To support hisargument, Miles (1854: 12) cited apparent similarities between the

’myths and languages’ of ’ancient’ peoples and ’present’ Australian

Aborigines. He noted ’it might appear that the races of Australia havebeen in communication with the most early races indeed, mentioned byHomer as legendary, active, powerful, and enterprising people, whocarried conquest, commerce, and civilization over the world’ (1854:11-12). Miles suggested the ancient Egyptians as a probable source forthese advanced traits.

Textual images of stone circles offered by Angas and Miles can beused to detect the cultural and intellectual context within which theseauthors were operating. As we noted earlier, the colonial project restedon the assumption that the conquering of Australia was rightful andlegitimate. Australia had been after all, terra nullius, a land belonging tono-one (Reynolds, 1992). The stone circle descriptions were supportedby the colonial framework which justified the appropriation of Aborigi-nal land. Dissociating the indigenes from their landscape, and in this casetheir sites, was achieved by arguing that Aboriginal stone circles werepart of a broader tradition which included ancient Europe. The Aborig-ines were effectively removed from their own unique historical trajec-tory and incorporated into a world prehistory which was dominated bythe West (after During, 1992: 339). An extreme example of this dissoci-ating process comes from the false depiction of Aboriginal stone circlesnear Mt Elephant in Victoria.

MT ELEPHANT AND ’WORKS OF IMAGINATION’

In 1867, Professor Sir James Simpson, Vice-President of the (British)Society of Antiquaries, published his major work on the ancient rockengravings of Britain and selected parts of the world. In a telling foot-note to his text, he stated:

Stone circles have been found in almost every country in the old world, fromGreenland southward. Nor are ancient circles of this kind wanting even inAustralia. My friend, Mr Ormond, informs me, that he has seen many,especially in the district near the Mount Elephant plains, in Victoria. The

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

289

circles (Mr Ormond writes me) are from ten to a hundred feet in diameter,and sometimes there is an inner circle. The stones composing these circles,or circular areas, vary in size and shape. Human bones have (he adds) beendug out of mounds near these circles. The aborigines have no traditionregarding them. When asked about them, they invariably deny knowledgeof their origin. (Simpson, 1867: 81-2)

The apparent unwillingness of the Aborigines to disclose knowledge ofthe sites ensured a two way loss. If the indigenes were not responsiblefor the construction of the circles then they, like the European coloniz-ers, were newcomers and the legitimacy of their claim to the land wasquestionable. If, on the other hand, they had chosen to remain secretabout the construction, use and meaning of the stone circles, then theywere evasive. In this context the use of the term ’deny’ is important asit suggests the informants were choosing reticence and silence regardingthe meaning of the sites. Five years later, Chambers and Chambers(1872: 19) chose to write out Aboriginal people altogether: ’Even in Aus-tralia - in the colony of Victoria - they are to be seen in numbers, some-times circle within circle, as at Avebury, and without any traditionamong the natives’.

For some authors these megalith sites heralded a primitive culturalstate which had parallels with Ancient Britain. According to Westropp(1872: 171), megalithic structures signalled the first tentative steps outof barbarism towards civilization:

In Australia, the Penrhyn Islands, and other islands of the Pacific Ocean,and also among the Hovas of Madagascar, where stone circles and

megalithic structures occur, people are in the lowest state of barbarism.We may, therefore, come to this conclusion in regard to these megalithicstructures, that they are not peculiar to the Celtic, Scythian, or any otherpeople, but are the result of an endeavour to secure a lasting place ofsepulture among a people in a rude and primitive phase of civilization;and that they were raised by men who were led by a natural instinctto build them in the simplest, and consequently the almost identical formin all countries.

In 1877, the Mt Elephant megaliths were immortalized by an engravingin The Illustrated Sydney News and New South Wales Agriculturalist andGrazier (31 March) (Figure 1). The image was syndicated to other localand overseas newspapers such as the Melbourne-based The AustralianIllustrated News ( 16 April 1877) and The New Zealand Standard ( 1 May1877). The engraving details two stone circles - an imposing stonehengearrangement and another of similar form in the distance. The foregroundprovides the setting for an ephemeral Aboriginal camp of two men, asimple shelter, two spears and a fireplace.

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

290

FIGURE 1 ’Stone Circles near Mount Elephant’ as depicted in the IllustratedSydney News and New South Wales Agrzculturalzst and Grazier of 1877

The captions in both The Illustrated Australian News and The NewZealand Standard were identical, and commence as follows:

In various regions are found rude stone monuments which are a puzzle toantiquarians. When they were erected, and for what purpose, nobody cantell exactly, history and legend being silent on the subject. All that can befairly said is that they have been erected by the primitive inhabitants of thelocalities where they are found, and that they constitute the sole memorialthey have left to future ages. Probably they were originally consecrated toreligious uses; or, what is more probable still, they were tombs before theywere temples, primitive religion having apparently grown out of, or havingbeen at all events closely associated with a certain form of worshipaddressed to the spirits of deceased ancestors. In that case it may be easilyconjectured that the stones referred to are relics of larger structures,presenting in their complete form a mound-like appearance, and that thestones are merely what remain of the structures when the clay, timber andother materials have disappeared. The stones are often of immense size,and they are generally raised to form a circle. Stonehenge presents afamiliar example of such structures, and similar stone circles are met withas far north as the Hebrides and as far south as Australia and the islands

of the Pacific.

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

291

For the Mt Elephant sites, Aboriginal dissociation was made possible bythe use of textual references and iconographic representations. In termsof the former, dissociation was made explicit by statements claimingAboriginal people possessed neither ’knowledge’ nor ’respect’ for thesites. In terms of the latter, the romantic iconographic image of the sitesrepresents a more implicit, albeit more contrived, attempt at ethnic dis-sociation. First, the image was a fabrication. The structure of this fictionrelied on three key iconographic techniques - juxtaposition, the use oflight and shade, and spatial arrangement of the composition. The jux-taposition of the gigantic and permanent proportions of the stonehengeand the crude and temporary form of the small Aboriginal shelter isunmistakable. It is clearly meant to represent a contrast betweenadvanced and primitive technology, complex and simple social organiz-ation, sacred and secular activities, and ancient and modern timeperiods, respectively. The difference between advanced and primitivetechnology is achieved by comparing the large stone columns whoseerection clearly required sophisticated technology and engineeringskills with the small and simple Aboriginal shelter furnished with twobarbed spears. The image’s codification of complex and simple socialorganization is related to both the technological dissimilarity and theobvious disparity in the demography of the societies in question. A largegroup of people possessing complex organizational arrangements wouldbe required to erect the stone columns. In contrast, Aboriginal society,represented by two men, possesses a simple social organization whichdoes not extend beyond the requirement to hunt prey for a meal. Therecipient audience would perceive the illustrator’s intention, that theAboriginal people were, in all likelihood, incapable of constructing thehenge.

The use of dark and light shading is an effective technique for sub-jugating the Aborigines and their camp. Both the foreground and back-ground megalithic structures are illuminated vividly with low-angledlight emanating from the sun on the horizon. The difference betweensacred and secular activities is articulated by contrasting the illuminatedstone columns, with the small and dark Aboriginal camp site positionedup against one of the stones. The camp is depicted in near darkness andboth men appear as shadowy figures silhouetted against the landscape.One of the figures sits disrespectfully upon one of the stones. He is pos-itioned with his back to the light. The association of shaded areas withindigenous people and illuminated areas with non-indigenous culturewas a technique employed commonly in 19th-century colonial rep-resentations (Torgovnick, 1990: 27). Typically, the illuminated com-

ponents of the image were visual metaphors for Westerners and anenlightened society. In the case of the Mt Elephant image, the messageis clear, the stone arrangements were constructed by a more advanced

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

292

society. Through the mechanism of shading and the use of proportionaljuxtaposition the image’s overall effect is to show the dichotomybetween the ancient and modern. This effectively establishes a temporalspacing and hence cultural spacing between the builders of the stonemonuments and the local Aboriginal population.

In the 19th century iconographic representations of European mega-liths frequently appeared in conjunction with images of scholarly gentle-men and leisurely ladies (Chippendale, 1994; Daniels, 1972; Mitchell,1982; Piggott, 1978). These figures appear to offer erudite appraisals ofthe sites. Evans (1994: 203) notes, these ’are &dquo;stock&dquo; figures common tomuch antiquarian imagery.... Acting as a landscape stand-in for theartist-cum-antiquarian, apart from scale, their inclusion also attributesthe picture scholastic qualities’. By demonstrating a studious interest inthe site, the observing gentleman scholar visually represents the questfor understanding and enlightenment. In seeking understanding andknowledge the learned and sophisticated Briton (and his culture) areimplicitly depicted as the fitting inheritors of the site, its meaning andits context (the land it occupies). By contrast, the Aborigines depicted inthe Mt Elephant image are peripheral to the image. Therefore, the atyp-ical orientation of the marginal figures capitalized on existing megalithrepresentational forms, and reinforced the dissociation of Aboriginalpeople from the site.

If the authors and artists responsible for the Mt Elephant image didnot perceive the site to be of Aboriginal origin, the immediate questionthat follows is - who did build the megaliths of Australia? In contrast todescriptions of monuments from other colonial situations the descriptionof the Mt Elephant sites revolved around a fallacious rendering. Theimage bears no resemblance to any Aboriginal stone arrangements knownfor the Mt Elephant region (Coutts, 1982) or any other part of Victoria(Lane and Fullagar, 1980; l~Zassola, 1969). Indeed, they have nothing incommon with Australian Aboriginal stone circles, most of which consistof rocks easily moved into place by a single person (Flood, 1990). Mega-lithic structures were not, and have never been, a feature of Australia.Such views, however, were voiced soon after release of the 1877 engrav-ing. Chauncy (1878: 235) asserted that ’I can safely affirm that these state-ments are quite incorrect - there are no such circles, and never were. Iam convinced that no structures of a monumental character were evererected by any of the Aborigines of Australia’. Similarly, MacPherson(1884: 54-5, emphasis added) noted that these ’were works of imagination,except in so far as they seemed to have been modelled on the plan of theDruidical circles which are found in various places in Britain’.

Why then was the Mt Elephant stone circle image created within thegenre of European megalith representation? While intentionality is diffi-cult to elucidate, the likelihood that those responsible for the image and

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

293

story made an honest mistake is unlikely as such sites simply neverexisted. Whatever the case, the important point is that an AustralianAboriginal site was represented as ancient, non-Aboriginal, and a dimen-sion of Western prehistory.

We contend that the creation of the Mt Elephant megalith siteshelped European colonists to legitimize their rights to inherit the Aus-tralian continent. European colonization literally became a process of the(re)possession of a lost domain of their heritage. This image reconfirmedthe sense that ’the memory of European prehistory lay within Australia’(Fox, 1992: 313).

’CHILDREN OF THE SUN’

By the turn of the century, few believed that Aboriginal Australians hadbeen preceded by an advanced race (megalith builders or otherwise)with European cultural associations (Howitt, 1904: 30; Spencer, 1901:12). However, the 1910s and 1920s saw a resurgence of megalithicculture migration theories with the hyper-diffusionist school headed byGrafton Elliot Smith and W.J. Perry. This new paradigm held thatadvanced cultural traits such as agriculture, polished stone axes, mum-mification and megaliths became grafted onto the primitive cultural baseof the peoples of Oceania (including Aboriginal Australians) through dif-fusion/migration of the heliolithic culture (Smith, 1915) or the ArchaicCivilization (and its carriers - The Children of the Sun) (Perry, 1923) fromEgypt. Perry (1923: 33, 125) noted that the presence of ’stone circles’ inAustralia, and in particular the Mt Elephant sites, was ’significant andimportant’ evidence for the influence of the Archaic Civilization.

However, the empirical reality of Perry’s views were soon denounced byleading Australian researchers (Kenyon et al. 1926; cf. Thorpe, 1926). Insomething of an epitaph, Kenyon (1930: 71) noted that ’Despite muchresearch and some rather circumstantial statements, no evidence has yetbeen discovered of megalithic remains on the Australian continent.’

Although the turn of the century saw a change in the representationof the Mt Elephant sites from belonging to a pre-Aboriginal culture tothat of an advanced cultural graft, the central tenet of associating themegalithic structures with Europe remained. In this sense, debates overthe existence of megaliths in Australia were in fact debates over the exist-ence of European influences in Australia prior to formal British posses-sion in 1770 by Capt. James Cook. At no time was the underlyingcolonial tenets of the diffusionist research agenda explored or chal-lenged. Somewhat ironically, British archaeology was similarly beset bydiffusionist arguments earlier this century and what Clark (1966: 172)refered to as a ’form of invasion neurosis’. In this case, however, colonial-ism cannot be used to explain this so-called ’neurosis’ as Great Britain

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

294

was not a colonial outpost. Although sharing some parallels with theBritish situation we suggest that the underpinnings of the Australian dif-fusionist research agenda arose from a long-held view that Europeanscould legitimately appropriate Australia given that Aboriginal peoplewere seen to represent the ancestors, and hence rightful heritage, ofEuropeans (Spurr, 1993).

’OUR LIVING STONE AGE’

The underlying current throughout the various stages of dissociatingAboriginal people from their pasts was that Australian Aborigines rep-resented the living counterparts of European ancestors. The Aborigines-as-ancestors view was evident when the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bayin 1788. Collins (1798: 452), for example, described the Aborigines as’living in that state of nature which must have been common to all menprevious to their uniting in society, and acknowledging but one auth-ority’. Half a century later, the view was manifested explicitly by Huxley,where, in the inaugural description of a Neanderthal skull, he madedirect anatomical comparisons with modern Australian Aborigines whohe considered to be the nearest living representative (Lyell, 1863: 80-9).Two years later, Lubbock (1865: 336) made his often-quoted statementthat ’the Van Diemaner [Tasmanian] and South American are to the anti-quary, what the opossum and the sloth are to the geologist’. Similarly,Tylor (1899: ix) noted that it is with the Tasmanians that ’Man of theLower Stone Age ceases to be a creature of philosophic inference, butbecomes a known reality’. The academic tradition continued into the20th century with Sollas (1911: 161-2) describing Aborigines as ’theMousterians of the Antipodes’. Furthermore, Basedow (1929: 59) main-tained that Aborigines were a ’palaeontological overlap’; they were atype of ’living fossil man’ that could be used to reflect the ’image of our-selves, as we appeared many ages before we learned to record the historyof our progress, and of the world in general’.

The tenacity of the view that Aboriginal Australians represented akind of primitive European is best exemplified by Australian adventurewriter, Ion Idriess, in his 1963 book Our Living Stone Age. In the fore-word he wrote:

I hope there is enough here to give you some inkling of that life, that

amazing, forgotten life whence you and I also came, the life lived by ourown Stone Age mothers and fathers in the vanished past. (Idriess, 1963: xii)

Although other researchers have discussed the historical phenomenaof the Aborigines as savage Palaeolithic survivals from deep antiquity(e.g. Mulvaney, 1981; Murray, 1992) there has yet to be an attempt tounderstand this phenomenon in terms of Australia’s settler-colonial

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

295

history. How does the Aborigines-as-ancestor view relate to the processesof colonial dissociation and possession? Why were the comparisonsalways made between Australia and England or Europe rather than withAfrica, Asia, or America? In terms of the analysis we have undertaken,it is clear that the answers to these questions lie within the role of col-onial formation. Colonists came to Australia with little intention or

opportunity to return to their homeland. Aboriginal Australians wererepresented as ancestor-like because this representation supported theideological framework of the settler-colonial formation and systematic-ally legitimated the processes of dispossession and land appropriation.

In his study of the discourses of colonialism, Spurr (1993) considersthe rhetoric and lexicon of the colonial process and demonstrates thatthe phraseology of the colonial period survives today in the descriptionsof former colonial peoples. Appropriation and the notion of legitimatelyinheriting the earth are, according to Spurr, important underwriters ofcolonialism. He (1993: 28-9) notes that colonial discourse:

... effaces its own mark of appropriation by transforming it into the

response to a putative appeal on the part of the people. This appeal may takethe form of chaos that calls for restoration of order, of absence that calls foraffirming presence, of natural abundance that awaits the creative hand oftechnology. Colonial discourse thus transfers the locus of desire onto thecolonized object itself. It appropriates territory, while it also appropriatesthe means by which such acts of appropriation are to be understood.

The ancestor/Palaeolithic survivals paradigm reduced the indigenesto ahistorical players and affirmed the assumption that indigenousculture had changed little over the millennia of occupation. The Abo-rigines were depicted as an ’unchanging people, living in an unchangingenvironment’ (Pulleine, 1929: 310/. The relationship between notions ofcultural stasis and the authenticity of various forms of aboriginality hasbeen examined in detail elsewhere (e.g. Russell, 1995; Wolfe, 1994).These analyses have implicated the disciplines of archaeology andanthropology in the continual dissociation of Aboriginal people fromtheir past. Removing Aboriginal people from their past such as is evi-denced by calls that some archaeological materials are important forworld prehistory and control of these should not be left in the hands ofcontemporary indigenous groups (e.g. Mulvaney, 1991) extends theancestor paradigm and reiterates colonial appropriation.

CONCLUSION

The Australian experience provides insight into the role of indigenoussites in the colonial process. Colonizers needed to maintain a sense ofcultural identity in a new land, particularly when the new lands were

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

296

inhabited by peoples from very different cultural backgrounds. Inaddition to the search for economically viable resources, newcomerssought to make the land socially and culturally viable - a home. Criticalto this settlement process was the construction of a new cultural land-

scape filled with familiar historical and spiritual meaning. In this paper,we have shown that a less obvious but no less potent force in the settle-ment process was appropriating Aboriginal sites as European heritageand appropriating Aboriginal people as European ancestors. The identityof the colonizing Self was constituted in tandem with the AboriginalOther. These two constructions were intimately and ultimately inter-twined with one another. Dispossessing the indigenes and (re)possessingtheir land was legitimated by constructing an identity of the colonial Selfas antithetical yet derivative of the colonized Other.

References

Angas, G.F. (1847) Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand: Being anArtist’s Impressions of Countries and People at the Antipodes. 2 vols. London:Smith, Elder and Co.

Basedow, H. (1929) The Australian Aboriginal. 2nd impression. Adelaide: F.W.Preece and Sons.

Carter, P. (1987) The Road to Botany Bay. London: Faber & Faber.Chambers, W and R. Chambers (1872) ’Monuments of Unrecorded Ages’, in

Chamber’s Miscellany of Instructive and Entertaining Tracts. New and revisededition. London and Edinburgh: W. and R. Chambers.

Chauncy, P. (1878) ’Appendix A. Notes and Anecdotes of the Aborigines ofAustralia’, in R. Brough Smyth The Aborigines of Victoria: With Notes Relatingto the Habits of the Natives of Other Parts of Australia and Tasmania. Vol. II,pp. 221-84. Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer.

Chippendale, C. (1994) Stonehenge Complete. Revised edition. London: Thamesand Hudson.

Clark, G. (1966) ’The Invasion Hypothesis in British Archaeology’, Antiquity 40:172-89.

Clifford, J. (1988) The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography,Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Clifford, J. and G. Marcus (1986) Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnog-raphy. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Collins, D. (1798-1802) An Account of the English Colony of New South Wales.London: A.W Reed.

Coutts, P.J.F. (1982) ’Victoria Archaeological Survey Activities Report 1980-81’,Records of the Victoria Archaeological Survey 13: 29-54.

Daniels, G. (1972) Megaliths in History. London: Thames and Hudson.During, S. (1992) ’Postcolonialism and Globalization’, Meanjin 51(2): 339-92.Evans, C. (1994) ’Natural Wonders and National Monuments: A Meditation Upon

the Fate of the Tolmen’, Antiquity 66(259): 200-8.Flood, J. (1990) The Riches of Ancient Australia: A Journey into Prehistory. St Lucia:

University of Queensland Press.Fox, P. (1992) ’Memory, the Museum and the Post-Colonial World’, Meanjin 51(2):

308-18.

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

297

Hamilton, A. (1982) ’Anthropology in Australia: Some Notes and a FewComments’, in G. McCall (ed.) Anthropology in Australia. Essays to Honour50 Years of Mankind, pp. 91-106. Sydney.

Howitt, A.W (1904) The Native Tribes of South-East Australia. London: Macmillan.Idriess, I.L. (1963) Our Living Stone Age. Sydney: Angas and Robertson.Kenyon, A.S. (1930) ’Stone Structures of the Australian Aborigines’, Victorian

Naturalist 47: 71-5.

Kenyon, A.S., D.J. Mahoney and S.F. Mann (1926) ’Megalithic Culture in

Australia’, in L.K. Ward (ed.) Report of the Seventeenth Meeting of theAustralasian Association for the Advancement of Science, Adelaide Meeting,August 1924, pp. 469-70. Adelaide: Government Printer.

Kuklick, H. (1991) ’Contested Monuments: The Politics of Archaeology inSouthern Africa’, in G.W Stocking (ed.) Colonial Situations: Essays on theContextualization of Ethnographic Knowledge, pp. 135-69. Madison: The

University of Wisconsin Press.Lane, L. and R.L.K. Fullagar (1980) ’Previously Unrecorded Aboriginal Stone

Alignments in Victoria’, Records of the Victorian Archaeological Survey 10:134-51.

Lubbock, J. (1865) Pre-Historic Times. London: Williams and Norgate.Lyell, C. (1863) The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man with Remarks on

Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation. London: John Murray.McBryde, I. (1974) Aboriginal Prehistory in New England: An Archaeological Survey

of Northeastern New South Wales. Sydney: Sydney University Press.McNiven, I. and L. Russell (1997) ’"Strange Paintings" and "Mystery Races":

Kimberley Rock Art, Diffusionism and Colonialist Constructions of Aus-tralia’s Aboriginal Past’, Antiquity 71: 801-9.

MacPherson, P. (1884) ’The Oven-Mounds of the Aborigines in Victoria’, Journaland Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 18: 49-59.

Marcus, G.E. and M.M. Fischer (1986) Anthropology as Cultural Critique: AnExperimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago, IL: University ofChicago Press.

Massola, A. (1969) Journey into Aboriginal Victoria. Melbourne: Rigby.Miles, W.A. (1854) ’How did the Natives of Australia Become Acquainted with

the Demigods and Daemonia, and with the Superstitions of the AncientRaces?’, Journal of the Ethnological Society of London 3: 4-50.

Mitchell, J. (1982) Megalithomania: Artists, Antiquarians and Archaeologists at theOld Stone Monuments. London: Thames and Hudson.

Mulvaney, D.J. (1981) ’Gum Leaves on the Golden Bough: Australia’s PalaeolithicSurvivals Discovered’, in J.D. Evans, B. Cunliffe and C. Renfrew (eds)Antiquity and Man, pp. 52-64. London: Thames and Hudson.

Mulvaney, D.J. (1991) ’Past Regained, Future Lost: The Kow Swamp PleistoceneBurials’, Antiquity 65(254): 12-21.

Murray, T. (1992) ’Tasmania and the Constitution of "The Dawn of Humanity"’,Antiquity 66(253): 730-43.

Perry, W.J. (1923) The Children of the Sun: A Study in the Early History of Civilisa-tion. London: Methuen.

Piggott, S. (1978) Antiquity Depicted. London: Thames and Hudson.Pulleine, R.H. (1929) ’The Tasmanians and their Stone-Culture’, in C.E. Lord

(ed.), Report of the Nineteenth Meeting of the Australasian Association for theAdvancement of Science (Australia and New Zealand), pp. 294-314. Hobart:Government Printer.

Reynolds, H. (1992) The Law of the Land. Sydney: Penguin.

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

298

Rose, D.B. (1991) Hidden Histories: Black Stories from Victoria River Downs,Humbert River and Wave Hill Stations. Canberra: Australian Institute of Abor-iginal Studies Press.

Russell, L.W. (1995) (Re)Presented Pasts: Historical and Contemporary Construc-tions of Australian Aboriginalities. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University ofMelbourne, Melbourne.

Said, E. (1978) Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.Said, E. (1993) Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto and Windus.Silverberg, R. (1968) Mound Builders of Ancient America. Athens: University of

Ohio Press.

Simpson, J.Y. (1867) ’On Ancient Sculpturings of Cups and Concentric Rings,etc.’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 85th Session1864-1865, Appendix, Vol. 6.

Smith, B. (1984) European Visions and The South Pacific 1768-1850, 2nd edition,Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Smith, G. Elliot (1915) The Migrations of Early Culture: A Study of the Significanceof the Geographical Distribution of the Practice of Mummification as Evidenceof the Migrations of Peoples and the Spread of Certain Customs and Beliefs.Manchester: Mancester University Press.

Sollas, W.J. (1911) Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives. London:Macmillan and Co.

Spencer, B. (1901) Guide to the Australian Ethnographical Collection in the NationalMuseum of Victoria. Melbourne: Government Printer.

Spurr, D. (1993) The Rhetoric of Empire. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Stocking, G.W. (ed.) (1985) Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material

Culture. History of Anthropology 3. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Thomas, N. (1994) Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Management.

Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.Thorpe, W.W. (1926) ’Heliolithic Evidence in Australia, Tasmania, and New

Guinea, and Traces of Other Superior Cultures’, in L.K. Ward (ed.) Report ofthe Seventeenth Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement ofScience, Adelaide Meeting, August 1924, pp. 484-90. Adelaide: GovernmentPrinter.

Torgovnick, M. (1990) Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives. Chicago, ILand London: The University of Chicago Press.

Trigger, B. (1985) Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s ’Heroic Age’ Reconsidered.Montreal: McGill University Press.

Tylor, E.B. (1899) Preface to H. Ling Roth, The Aborigines of Tasmania. 2ndEdition. Halifax: F. King and Sons.

Westropp, H.M. (1872) Pre-Historic Phases; or, Introductory Essays on Pre-HistoricArchaeology. London: Bell and Daldy.

Wolfe, P. (1994) ’Nation and Miscegenation: Discursive Continuity in the Post-Mabo Era’, Social Analysis 36: 93-152.

+ LYNETTE RUSSELL received her PhD from the Department of History atThe University of Melbourne on research into European representations of Abor-iginal Australia. She currently is Lecturer in the Museum Studies Unit at DeakinUniversity, Victoria. Research interests are post-colonial archaeology, represen-tational theory and the repatriation of cultural materials. Address: MuseumStudies, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria 3217, Australia. [email: lynetter@deakin.edu.au]

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from

299

* IAN J. McNIVEN is an Academic Associate, Department of Classics andArchaeology at The University of Melbourne and Director of a cultural heritageconsulting business. He has a PhD from The University of Queensland and hisresearch interests include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander coastal

economies, stone artefact technology, cultural heritage, and the archaeology ofthe colonial frontier. Address: 10 Fanny Street, Moonee Ponds, Victoria 3039, Aus-tralia. [email: imcniven@ocean.com.au]

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on January 23, 2014mcu.sagepub.comDownloaded from