ancient history
Mike Smith
John Mulvaney and Johan Kamminga
Prehistory of Australia
Allen & Unwin $39.95pb, 480pp
1 86448 950 2
AS A RAW UNDERGRADUATE on my first day at university -- I
called in to see John Mulvaney. 'There's no future in
archaeology you know', he warned, then added 'but I suppose
there's no point in telling you that.' Mulvaney was right, on
both accounts. Archaeology is an uncertain vocation and like many
of my colleagues I have had to struggle to stay in the game. Like
others, I found the field too physically and intellectually
fascinating to forsake. As archaeologist, Rhys Jones, puts it,
'It is not every generation of archaeologists who have had the
privilege of engaging in the primary exploration of the
prehistory of an entire continent.' Despite the predicted lack
of a future, I quickly acquired a second hand copy of The
Prehistory of Australia (1969, Thames & Hudson). The following
year, with minimal sense of history, I traded this in for the
newly revised second edition (1975, Pelican). Now twenty-four
years later there is a new edition of the Prehistory, this time by Mulvaney in collaboration with younger colleague Jo Kamminga. It is a special book: a turn of century appraisal of Australian prehistory by the discipline's senior statesman, one of the country's leading public intellectuals.
In 1969 the first edition opened with fighting words: 'The discoverers, explorers and colonists of the three million square miles which are Australia, were its Aborigines.' In the new Prehistory, Mulvaney and Kamminga continue the story with a crisp, well-paced, highly readable overview of the continent's Aboriginal prehistory from first human settlement through to historical contacts with Indonesian seafarers in northern Australia. The book summarises half a century of modern archaeological research in Australia, begun on the premise that the peoples of the region had their own histories which could be recovered using archaeological field techniques. The new edition is reflective, sceptical and synthetic -- and about as close to a narrative prehistory as we are likely to get, given the uncertainties of archaeological data and interpretation.
New areas of research are reflected in chapters on island settlement, the prehistory of Australian deserts, rock art, and dating methods. The Torres Strait receives special mention, recognising the presence of a second indigenous people in Australia. The politics of heritage, repatriation of skeletal remains, re-painting of rock art, and of Aboriginal claims on the past make their debut in this edition (Mulvaney was a prominent figure in conservation battles to protect archaeological sites in Kakadu and the Franklin River area). The growth of evidence on the early prehistory of Australia is reflected in seven new chapters, looking at the origin of the Australians, ancient seafaring, and initial colonisation of the continent. The new Prehistory also signals a maturing of the discipline with a move away from ice-age origins, extinct giant marsupials and a primordial past towards stronger treatment of the later prehistory of the continent and the dynamics of Aboriginal societies over the last few thousand years.
Prehistory retains the strong ethnographic and environmental focus of earlier editions, reminding us that prehistory is as much about environmental history as about the Aboriginal past. Imagine the Great Barrier reef as a limestone cliff on the coast, with canyons and passes allowing access to the land behind. Nine thousand years were to pass before the sea submerged these limestone massifs to reconstitute a barrier reef. Or perhaps the Prince of Wales group of islands in the Torres Strait. Initially part of a land bridge between Australia and New Guinea until 8000 years ago, the rising seas transformed this into a single large island at first, then into a cluster of islands and rocky pinnacles. What happened to the people? Read the latest Prehistory to find out.
I read this book with a sense of discovery and delight. There is the fascination of 'Mulvaney watching'. When Mulvaney wrote the earlier editions he was an active field archaeologist, relying on radiocarbon, the dating method of the day. Twenty years on, Prehistory is written with a marked ambivalence towards the new dating methods now used in archaeology (uranium series, ESR, luminescence dating of sediments, AAR). Even so, I was surprised to see that Mulvaney and Kamminga dismiss evidence for Aboriginal occupation earlier than 40,000 years ago. Some of their disquiet is understandable: Prehistory was written while the Jinmium fiasco unfolded in the media. It also reflects a lack of first hand experience with the new methods, their strengths and limitations. This is a pity because Australian archaeology is in the midst of a dating revolution as profound as that played out using radiocarbon in the 1960s and 1970s. It is premature to write a prehistory using the longer time scale these dating methods suggest, but a peremptory dismissal is inadvisable (they are mainstream methods in the earth sciences).