Anne Ross

The politics of reintegrating Australian Aboriginal and American Indian indigenous knowledge into resource management: The dynamics of resource appropriation and cultural revival

As the United States and Australia struggle with contemporary crises over competing uses of rapidly depleting natural resources, there are striking parallels between American Indian and Australian Aboriginal communities demanding a place at the management table and offering culturally based understandings of and solutions for the ecosystems at risk. These efforts to integrate indigenous knowledge into mainstream natural resource management are part of larger legal and political debates over land tenure, the locus of control, indigenous self-governance, and holistic ecosystems management.

Power relations and community involvement in landscape-based cultural heritage management practice: an Australian case study.

Collaborative conservation between Aboriginal people and archaeologists in Australia presents new and innovative opportunities for community control in cultural heritage management practice. Community approaches to heritage emphasise cultural landscapes and Indigenous relationships to land and sea. In this paper we illustrate the value of a community‐led cultural heritage management project in a case study from North Stradbroke Island, southeast Queensland, Australia. We document the process whereby Aboriginal traditional owners worked collaboratively with archaeologists to design and implement a method for a cultural heritage assessment that met not only legislative requirements relating to archaeological sites but also Indigenous needs regarding culturally significant landscapes. Our results demonstrate that places of Aboriginal community heritage value exist even where no sites of archaeological significance occur. In our case study we demonstrate that effective heritage management can be undertaken in accordance with appropriate Aboriginal law and community control.

Fine mesh screening of midden material and the recovery of fish bone: The development of flotation and deflocculation techniques for an efficient and effective procedure

The absence of fish remains in archaeological sites in Moreton Bay, southeast Queensland, Australia, may be a function of recovery techniques, rather than a reflection of resource paucity and late onset of occupation, as has been posited in archaeological literature. An excavation on Peel Island in Moreton Bay was devised, in part, to test this proposition, and a 1-mm mesh screen was used to enhance recovery. But sorting this fine fraction took 20 h. In this article we outline experiments to find a more efficient and effective technique for sieving and sorting fine fraction archaeological deposits, using methods borrowed from soil science. We show how sorting time can be reduced to 2 h 30 min per 100 g sample and argue that the vast increase in knowledge about the site occurring as a result of using the very fine mesh sieve warrants the continued application of these laboratory methods.

Gunumbah: archaeological and Aboriginal meanings at a Quarry site on Moreton Island, southeast Queensland

Abstract Cape Moreton - Gunumbah - on Moreton Island, Queensland, is an area of high cultural value to the Ngugi traditional owners, and has considerable archaeological significance. The extensive area of stone outcrops is the largest raw material source for stone artefact manufacture in Moreton Bay, yet there is no evidence for extraction activities or stone working associated directly with the outcrops. Stone working is only visible at two nearby workshop sites. Furthermore, the area is made up of multiple outcrops of different raw material types. Each quarry is owned by a particular family, and the quarries were a major focus for trade on Moreton Island. Significant places close to the quarries imposed restrictions on access to the stone and obliged visitors to behave in accordance with Ngugi Law. Although several archaeologists have analysed the Cape Moreton stone outcrops, the full meaning of Gunumbah can only be determined by including Aboriginal knowledge of the entire place.

WebCT Role-Playing: Immediacy versus e-mediacy in learning environments

University teachers are increasingly encouraged to use e-Learning techniques to expand on- and off-campus learning environments available to students. Many e-Learning tools are attractive because of their ease of use and considerable research has demonstrated their popularity with both students and educators. Our research deviates from discourses promoting the attractiveness of the technology and instead examines the quality of learning outcomes offered by e-Mediated techniques, especially for distance learners. We outline an experiment in which e-Mediated delivery was compared to the immediacy of face-to-face teaching exercises. We demonstrate that, despite the ease of design, students in the e-Mediated environment did not retain or apply their knowledge as well as those from the face-to-face medium. We provide suggestions as to why this is the case and make recommendations for overcoming the hurdles in e-Mediated delivery identified by our research.

Mapping an archaeology of the present: Counter-mapping at the Gummingurru stone arrangement site, southeast Queensland, Australia

In 2010 a large project to map the 5ha Gummingurru stone arrangement site on the Darling Downs, southeast Queensland, Australia, was completed; 9368 rocks were plotted and recorded and many of these rocks make up the over 20 motifs on the site. But Gummingurru is a site that is more than rocks. It is part of a large cultural landscape which includes neighboring sites, resource tree plantings, scarred trees, story places and memoryscapes (Lavers, 2010). Current mapping of the site and the associated landscape features has been inhibited by the constraints of two-dimensional mapping. In this article we outline an alternative map for the site and its cultural landscape – the Prezi web-based tool. The Prezi ‘map’ allows the documentation of a fluid and contextual approach to place and is easily updated or modified as data or attachment to place change.

Making Distance Learning E.R.O.T.I.C.: Applying Interpretation Principles to Distance Learning

Distance learners are self-directed learners traditionally taught via study books, collections of readings, and exercises to test understanding of learning packages. Despite advances in e-Learning environments and computer-based teaching interfaces, distance learners still lack opportunities to participate in exercises and debates available to classroom learners, particularly through non-text based learning techniques. Effective distance teaching requires flexible learning opportunities. Using arguments developed in interpretation literature, we argue that effective distance learning must also be Entertaining, Relevant, Organised, Thematic, Involving and Creative—E.R.O.T.I.C. (after Ham, 1992). We discuss an experiment undertaken with distance learners at The University of Queensland Gatton Campus, where we initiated an E.R.O.T.I.C. external teaching package aimed at engaging distance learners but using multimedia, including but not limited to text-based learning tools. Student responses to non-text media were positive.

Constant resurrection: The trihybrid model and the politicisation of Australian archaeology

Abstract Most Australian archaeologists would say that Birdsell’s trihybrid model is defunct and no longer worth considering. Unfortunately, this is not the view of many in the Australian public. In his revisionist history of Australia, the conservative commentator Keith Windschuttle still refers to this model, and, potentially more seriously, writers with a particular political agenda to deny Aboriginal people legitimate Native Title rights have also adopted Birdsell’s model as ‘fact’. In this paper we analyse one such political text in detail: Pauline Hanson: The Truth. We demonstrate that in this, and other similar works, archaeological ‘data’ are used selectively to sustain sensational claims about Australia’s Aboriginal past. Although perhaps easily dismissed by professional archaeologists, such claims are still widely embraced by a surprisingly large number of people in the wider Australian public, and a debate needs to be held about how the archaeological community should challenge such ‘knowledge’.

Gummingurru: a community archaeology knowledge journey

Abstract The Gummingurru stone arrangement site complex on the Darling Downs of Queensland (Qld), Australia, was originally an initiation site attended by Aboriginal people from many parts of southeast Qld and northeast New South Wales en route to the triennial intergroup gatherings in the nearby Bunya Mountains. The activities at Gummingurru and the Bunya Mountains included knowledge sharing, alliance-making, trade and exchange. In recent times the journeys to and from Gummingurru have changed. Although knowledge sharing and alliance-making continue, there are new aspects to the journeys. In this paper we outline the contemporary social framework within which Gummingurru is situated, emphasising the community/researcher/student networks and educational outputs that have evolved over the life of this community-based collaborative research project and review the positive lessons learned by all participants in the knowledge journeys associated with the site and its cultural landscape.

Constraints on the development of enduring inequalities in Late Holocene Australia: Comments

Conditions in Late Holocene Australia, including variable and unpredictable environments, reliance on a wide array of food resources, relatively low population densities, some degree of mobility, and shared access to land and waters, contrast sharply with those posited as conditions for the emergence of complexity among huntergatherer societies such as those of the Northwest Coast of North America. Nevertheless, Aboriginal societies varied considerably in a number of ways, including resources of male power. In particular, the article contrasts features of reproductive power in the high and veryhighpolygyny societies of the north coast of Australia with those of other regions of the continent. High to very high polygyny developed in areas with relatively high population density and certain forms of kin classification and engendered considerable inequality among patrigroups, but various social and environmental conditions imposed constraints on the development of enduring hierarchy.Conditions in Late Holocene Australia, including variable and unpredictable environments, reliance on a wide array of food resources, relatively low population densities, some degree of mobility, and shared access to land and waters, contrast sharply with those posited as conditions for the emergence of complexity among huntergatherer societies such as those of the Northwest Coast of North America. Nevertheless, Aboriginal societies varied considerably in a number of ways, including resources of male power. In particular, the article contrasts features of reproductive power in the high and veryhighpolygyny societies of the north coast of Australia with those of other regions of the continent. High to very high polygyny developed in areas with relatively high population density and certain forms of kin classification and engendered considerable inequality among patrigroups, but various social and environmental conditions imposed constraints on the development of enduring hierarchy.