Rodney Harrison

Surface assemblages. Towards an archaeology in and of the present

This paper explores a central paradox in the aims of the archaeology of the contemporary past as they have been articulated by its practitioners. On the one hand, its aim has been expressed as one of making the familiar ‘unfamiliar’, of distancing the observer from their own material world; a work of alienation . On the other hand, it has also aimed to make the past more accessible and egalitarian; to recover lost, subaltern voices and in this way to close the distance between past and present. I suggest that this paradox has stymied its development and promoted a culture of self-justification for a subfield which has already become well established within archaeology over the course of three decades. I argue that this paradox arises from archaeologys relationship with modernity and the past itself, as a result of its investment in the modernist trope of archaeology-as-excavation and the idea of a past which is buried and hidden. One way of overcoming this paradox would be to emphasize an alternative trope of archaeology-as-surface-survey and a process of assembling/reassembling, and indeed to shift away from the idea of an ‘archaeology of the contemporary past’ to speak instead of an archaeology ‘in and of the present’. This would reorient archaeology so that it is seen primarily as a creative engagement with the present and only subsequently as a consideration of the intervention of traces of the past within it. It is only by doing this that archaeology will develop into a discipline which can successfully address itself to the present and future concerns of contemporary societies. Such a move not only has implications for archaeologies of the present and recent past, but concerns the very nature and practice of archaeology as a discipline in its broadest sense in the 21st century.

Forgetting to remember, remembering to forget: late modern heritage practices, sustainability and the 'crisis' of accumulation of the past.

This paper considers the implications for cultural heritage of observations regarding individual and collective memory which suggest that the process of forgetting is in fact integral to remembering – that one cannot properly form new memories and attach value to them without also selecting some things to forget. Remembering is an active process of cultivating and pruning, and not one of complete archiving and total recall, which would overwhelm and cause us to be unable to make confident decisions about which memories are valuable and which are not. I argue that the same is true of heritage; that as a result of its increasingly broad definition, and the exponential growth of listed objects, places and practices of heritage in the contemporary world, we hazard becoming overwhelmed by memory and in the process rendering heritage ineffective and worthless. I refer to the consequence of this heterogeneous piling up of disparate and conflicting pasts in the present as a ‘crisis’ of accumulation of the past. To deal with this crisis adequately, we must pay increased attention to the management of heritage. This should not only refer to processes of preservation and conservation, but also to active decisions to delist or cease to conserve particular forms of heritage once their significance to contemporary and future societies can no longer be demonstrated. Deaccessioning and disposal must become a key area of attention for critical heritage studies in the coming decades if heritage is to remain sustainable and uphold its claims to relevance in contemporary global societies.

Archaeology and the colonial encounter: Kimberley spearpoints, cultural identity and masculinity in the north of Australia

This article examines the ways in which material objects are invoked and constantly recontextualized as part of the process of cross-cultural colonial encounter with reference to a case study from the northwest of Australia. The study examines the various contexts within which bifacially flaked ‘Kimberley points’ were manufactured, traded and consumed in post-invasion Australia, and implications for understanding the role of material objects in colonial encounters. Many studies of cross-cultural material exchange note the ways in which objects are given different meanings in different cultural contexts. In contrast, this article considers parallels between the role that points played in developing notions of social identity among antiquarian collectors and Aboriginal people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly their role in evoking and expressing hybrid masculinities. The manufacture of glass Kimberley points by men who had been dislocated from their traditional country implies connections between the practice of point manufacture and the creation of new, hybrid social identities. The article attempts an ‘archaeology of encounter’ using these particular objects as a text to be read for both the discourses and forced silences that this colonial encounter created.

An Artefact of Colonial Desire? Kimberley Points and the Technologies of Enchantment

This paper considers several areas of anthropological research which have yet to be drawn into conversation: Alfred Gells anthropological theory of art, the literature on collecting and museum studies and the colonial art histories of Nicholas Thomas and others, and the archaeology of colonialism in Australia. The implications of the nexus of these various areas of research are considered with reference to the archaeological study of Kimberley points in Australia. While these points have been understood by both archaeologists and antiquarians as the pinnacle of Australian Aboriginal stone working practices, this paper considers them as an artefact of colonial desire. Their captivating agency for latenineteenthcentury collectors largely resided in their mysterious method of manufacture, but even after this was understood they continued to enthral antiquarians and archaeologists, who have come to represent their manufacture as typical of Australian Aboriginal stone tool working despite its limited chronological and geographic distribution and its relationship to colonial trade. The acceptance of these objects, which essentially functioned as virtuoso tourist art, by colonial collectors and archaeologists as authentic ethnographic objects within a discourse which would normally be prejudiced against such items suggests that Aboriginal people engaged actively in this process of captivationindeed, that the agency of such virtuoso objects continued long after the lifetimes of their makers, as Gell suggested. This has wider implications for an understanding of both archaeology and colonial collecting and the relationship between objects and identity in settler societies and provides an opportunity to reflect on the usefulness of Gells work in colonial contexts.This paper considers several areas of anthropological research which have yet to be drawn into conversation: Alfred Gells anthropological theory of art, the literature on collecting and museum studies and the colonial art histories of Nicholas Thomas and others, and the archaeology of colonialism in Australia. The implications of the nexus of these various areas of research are considered with reference to the archaeological study of Kimberley points in Australia. While these points have been understood by both archaeologists and antiquarians as the pinnacle of Australian Aboriginal stone working practices, this paper considers them as an artefact of colonial desire. Their captivating agency for latenineteenthcentury collectors largely resided in their mysterious method of manufacture, but even after this was understood they continued to enthral antiquarians and archaeologists, who have come to represent their manufacture as typical of Australian Aboriginal stone tool working despite its limited chronolog...

‘The Magical Virtue of These Sharp Things’: Colonialism, Mimesis and Knapped Bottle Glass Artefacts in Australia

Items of transformed material culture, in particular knapped bottle glass artefacts, have formed a focus for the archaeology of Aboriginal-settler contact in Australia. This article considers the idea of glass artefacts as skeuomorphsthrough the lens of Gell’s and Taussig’s writings regarding mimesis and the construction of ‘Other’-ness in colonial relations. As in the case of Benjamin’s discussion of the photographic reproduction of artworks as a phase in the struggle between photography and painting associated with modernity, so in colonial contexts did the oscillations of mimesis and alterity begin to merge, so that the ‘West’ began to alter itself as viewed through the eyes of its ‘Others’, and Aboriginal people to mimic themselves as alters of the ‘West’. It is in this strange oscillation of mimesis and alterity, within Taussig’s ‘nervous system’ itself, that the meaning of knapped bottle glass artefacts can be found to lie. The continued manufacture of formal ‘traditional’ stone artefact types and the re-emergence of ‘archaic’ forms in glass represents on one level a humorous gesturewhich provides insights into the ways in which Aboriginal people understood colonialism in radically different terms to the colonial ‘West’. On another level, it can be seen as a political and practical decision with implications for how we understand the agency of Aboriginal people in Australian colonial encounters.

Unpacking the Collection

This work will be of great interest to archaeologists and anthropologists studying material culture, as well as researchers in museum studies and cultural ...

Monuments to colonialism? Stone arrangements, tourist cairns and turtle magic at Evans Bay, Cape York

Abstract This paper reports on an archaeological survey at Evans Bay, Cape York, which recorded a large number of stone arrangements on the rocky headland at Evans Point. We interpret two phases of stone cairn construction; the first associated with the building of stone cairns as part of joint Aboriginal and Islander turtle increase ceremonies, and the second with the partial demolition and rebuilding of these stone cairns by tourists and tour operators. Rather than dismiss the disturbance of such sites by non-Indigenous people, as many archaeologists have done in the study of Aboriginal stone arrangements, we seek to document this as archaeological evidence in its own right. We argue this evidence records a specifically colonial response to an Indigenous landscape which has its roots in earlier acts of defacement and erasure of Aboriginal monuments by ‘invaders’ in Cape York. We suggest that such sites of defacement/erasure are best understood as documenting broader colonial processes, representing a palimpsest of contesting responses to a landscape by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Our analysis cites work by Michael Taussig on the mimetic impulse in colonial relations to account for the meaning of the erasure, through mimicry, of such stone arrangements by tourists and tour operators in Cape York.

Heritage and Globalization

This chapter considers the relationship between heritage and globalization and provides a critical summary of existing work within heritage studies on this theme. Rather than seeing the global spread of specific ideas about heritage and the appropriate procedures for its management simply as a consequence of the adoption of international treaties and conventions, the chapter argues that heritage in general, and ‘World Heritage’ in particular, is itself a globalizing process — a series of material and discursive interventions which actively remake the world in particular ways. Eschewing a focus on discourse alone, the chapter argues the need for a ‘material-semiotic’ approach to understand these phenomena, drawing on concepts from actor-network, assemblage and governmentality theory. Finally, it makes some concluding comments regarding future research directions which are implicit in such an approach, drawing on new ways of understanding heritage and its ‘dialogical’ or relational qualities to make more effective connections with other broad issues of contemporary concern.

Networks, Agents and Objects: Frameworks for Unpacking Museum Collections

Although on face value, museum collections are largely perceived as static entities hidden away in storerooms or trapped behind glass cases, new research shows that over time and across space interactions between objects and a wide range of people have generated a complex assemblage of material and social networks. Based on a broad collection of source materials, studies examining the people who made, sold, traded, studied, catalogued, exhibited and connected with objects reveal a dynamic set of material and social agencies that have been instrumental in creating, shaping and reworking museum collections. By integrating and reworking theories about agency and materiality and by drawing on insights from Actor-Network Theory, contributors to this volume have uncovered new ways to think about relationships formed between objects and individuals and among diverse groups spread across the globe. The research also demonstrates that ethnographic collections continue to play important roles in supporting and reworking national identities as well as to challenge these through ongoing negotiations and sharing of ideas among both the guardians of these objects and their creator communities. These insights have important implications for designing curatorial practices in the future.

Consuming Colonialism: Curio Dealers’ Catalogues, Souvenir Objects and Indigenous Agency in Oceania

This chapter explores the potential for a study of colonial curio dealers’ catalogues in producing particular forms of colonial desire that contributed to the production of a market in ethnographic souvenirs in Britain and its colonies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Curio dealers occupied an integral space in a network which connected museums, tourists and indigenous artisans, but have been largely ignored in studies of colonial relations and material culture. Previous work on Kimberley Points has suggested Indigenous Australians produced markets for the sale of certain curios to colonial collectors which fulfilled complex roles within the groups who manufactured them, as well as those who received them through purchase, trade or exchange. Focussing on the 1929 catalogue of a Sydney-based curio dealer, Tyrells Museum (formerly Tost and Rohu Taxidermists, Tanners, Furriers and Island Curio Dealers), this chapter demonstrates that such catalogues not only have the potential to reveal changes in market demand, price and desirability of ethnographic objects, but also how artefacts were transformed from functional objects into ornaments, changes in their method and context of manufacture, as well as changing colonial relations between indigenous and non-indigenous people.