Public Archaeology
Edited by Nick Merriman, Routledge, £70 Hardback ISBN: 0 415 25889 8
If you were to judge this book by its cover, a drab study in muddy green barely enlivened by an equally muddy and rather boring green-tinted photograph, then you would find it severely wanting. But that would be a mistake.
This multi-author volume has its origins as an academic conference session at the World Archaeological Congress in Cape Town in 1999. That it has taken five years to prepare the papers for publication can be discerned in one or two places in the text.
The editor, Nick Merriman, and his team of international contributors have sought to move on from the earlier, 1970s association of the term 'public archaeology' with 'the practical exigencies of development-led cultural resource management (CRM), in contrast with academic archaeology and its apparent concern with wider research questions' to now allow it to be defined, according to Tim Schadla-Hall, as 'any area of archaeological activity that interacted, or had the potential to interact, with the public'.
The contents are diverse, something that is both a strength and a weakness in most multi authored volumes. There is an introduction by Merriman and then the 16 papers are grouped into two sections entitled Spreading the Word: Communication and Interpretation, and In the Public Interest? The Stakeholders, the latter title being a fuzzy piece of New Labour-speak that already appears anachronistic and slightly embarrassing in this context.
Papers in the first section include two on public archaeology in America (by John Jameson and Karolyn Smardz Frost), two on the public and museums (by Nick Merriman, and Sally MacDonald and Catherine Shaw), and one each on on-site presentation (by Tim Copeland), archaeology and the British media (by Neal Ascherson), and public archaeology on the internet (by Carol McDavid).
The second section is more eclectic and includes papers on management and legislation in England (by Roger Thomas), public archaeology in Brazil (by Pedro Funari), and three papers on the relationship of indigenous communities to archaeology in East Africa (by Bertram Mapunda and Paul Lane), the Western Isles and Madagascar (Mike Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina), and New South Wales (by Denis Byrne).
The final three papers deal with alternative archaeology (by Schadla-Hall), the British Portable Antiquities Scheme (by Roger Bland), and the link between the development of Chinese archaeology and the antiquities trade (by Dashu Qin).
The most interesting paper for me was by Denis Byrne, titled Archaeology in Reverse: The Flow of Aboriginal People and their Remains through the Space of New South Wales.
Byrne uses the well-recorded story of the death and burial of Baloderree, a member of the Aboriginal Eora people whose ancestral territory 'took in the shores and immediate hinterland of Sydney harbour where the British fleet had arrived in January 1788 to establish a penal colony', to illustrate how differing Aboriginal and western conceptions of place and space underwrote resistance to colonisation and today, according to Byrne do 'a lot to make the archaeology of Aboriginal Australia a very public archaeology'.
On one level, Baloderree's burial in the grounds of the governor's garden in Sydney represents either a genuine concession to the indigenous people by the governor or a sop to their outraged sensibilities that cost him little to accommodate.
On another level it could be seen as an act of patronising imperial munificence by Governor Phillip, siting Baloderree's grave 'in the imperial space of his garden' or, in seeking the right for the grave to be located here, as a refusal on the part of the Aboriginal Eora people 'to concede that the fence around the governor's garden denoted that the enclosed space had ceased to be part of his people's own domain'. As Byrne notes, what appears to have been a mutually beneficial 'agreement' may have been nothing of the sort: rather, the burial may have symbolised 'a profound disagreement, which turned on the issue of sovereignty'.
Byrne then uses this story as a jumping-off point for discussing the dispersion and return of Aboriginal human and cultural remains in terms of 'movements away from and back to local space', the expansion and refining of the definition of 'local', and the relationship between local and national space. The indigenous 'archaeology in reverse' of his title is then discussed as being part of 'a desire to heal a rupture - a rupture that archaeology, as practised by whites, had a part in creating'.
This is not an exercise in self-flagellation over colonial guilt, for Byrne then quite candidly expresses his own concerns as a heritage agency professional over 'the practice of heritage by Aboriginal people in New South Wales [being] at variance with - even at odds with - archaeological practice'.
In defence of this statement he lists not only the work of the reburial and repatriation movement, but also the existence of restricted access local site registers, heritage impact assessments being carried out 'by people without formal archaeological qualifications', and 'a preparedness... to sanction the destruction of "archaeological" sites by developers in return for jobs or the funding of community facilities'. No evidence is presented to back up these statements.
While the book would have been greatly improved by the inclusion of more, and better, illustrations and tighter editing in some places, this is nevertheless a very useful reference book for museum and heritage professionals and its contents on the whole constitute an important contribution to debates on the relationship between heritage and the public and, perhaps more tellingly, between heritage professionals and the public.
Iain Ferris is a freelance archaeological consultant
Edited by Nick Merriman, Routledge, £70 Hardback ISBN: 0 415 25889 8
If you were to judge this book by its cover, a drab study in muddy green barely enlivened by an equally muddy and rather boring green-tinted photograph, then you would find it severely wanting. But that would be a mistake.
This multi-author volume has its origins as an academic conference session at the World Archaeological Congress in Cape Town in 1999. That it has taken five years to prepare the papers for publication can be discerned in one or two places in the text.
The editor, Nick Merriman, and his team of international contributors have sought to move on from the earlier, 1970s association of the term 'public archaeology' with 'the practical exigencies of development-led cultural resource management (CRM), in contrast with academic archaeology and its apparent concern with wider research questions' to now allow it to be defined, according to Tim Schadla-Hall, as 'any area of archaeological activity that interacted, or had the potential to interact, with the public'.
The contents are diverse, something that is both a strength and a weakness in most multi authored volumes. There is an introduction by Merriman and then the 16 papers are grouped into two sections entitled Spreading the Word: Communication and Interpretation, and In the Public Interest? The Stakeholders, the latter title being a fuzzy piece of New Labour-speak that already appears anachronistic and slightly embarrassing in this context.
Papers in the first section include two on public archaeology in America (by John Jameson and Karolyn Smardz Frost), two on the public and museums (by Nick Merriman, and Sally MacDonald and Catherine Shaw), and one each on on-site presentation (by Tim Copeland), archaeology and the British media (by Neal Ascherson), and public archaeology on the internet (by Carol McDavid).
The second section is more eclectic and includes papers on management and legislation in England (by Roger Thomas), public archaeology in Brazil (by Pedro Funari), and three papers on the relationship of indigenous communities to archaeology in East Africa (by Bertram Mapunda and Paul Lane), the Western Isles and Madagascar (Mike Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina), and New South Wales (by Denis Byrne).
The final three papers deal with alternative archaeology (by Schadla-Hall), the British Portable Antiquities Scheme (by Roger Bland), and the link between the development of Chinese archaeology and the antiquities trade (by Dashu Qin).
The most interesting paper for me was by Denis Byrne, titled Archaeology in Reverse: The Flow of Aboriginal People and their Remains through the Space of New South Wales.
Byrne uses the well-recorded story of the death and burial of Baloderree, a member of the Aboriginal Eora people whose ancestral territory 'took in the shores and immediate hinterland of Sydney harbour where the British fleet had arrived in January 1788 to establish a penal colony', to illustrate how differing Aboriginal and western conceptions of place and space underwrote resistance to colonisation and today, according to Byrne do 'a lot to make the archaeology of Aboriginal Australia a very public archaeology'.
On one level, Baloderree's burial in the grounds of the governor's garden in Sydney represents either a genuine concession to the indigenous people by the governor or a sop to their outraged sensibilities that cost him little to accommodate.
On another level it could be seen as an act of patronising imperial munificence by Governor Phillip, siting Baloderree's grave 'in the imperial space of his garden' or, in seeking the right for the grave to be located here, as a refusal on the part of the Aboriginal Eora people 'to concede that the fence around the governor's garden denoted that the enclosed space had ceased to be part of his people's own domain'. As Byrne notes, what appears to have been a mutually beneficial 'agreement' may have been nothing of the sort: rather, the burial may have symbolised 'a profound disagreement, which turned on the issue of sovereignty'.
Byrne then uses this story as a jumping-off point for discussing the dispersion and return of Aboriginal human and cultural remains in terms of 'movements away from and back to local space', the expansion and refining of the definition of 'local', and the relationship between local and national space. The indigenous 'archaeology in reverse' of his title is then discussed as being part of 'a desire to heal a rupture - a rupture that archaeology, as practised by whites, had a part in creating'.
This is not an exercise in self-flagellation over colonial guilt, for Byrne then quite candidly expresses his own concerns as a heritage agency professional over 'the practice of heritage by Aboriginal people in New South Wales [being] at variance with - even at odds with - archaeological practice'.
In defence of this statement he lists not only the work of the reburial and repatriation movement, but also the existence of restricted access local site registers, heritage impact assessments being carried out 'by people without formal archaeological qualifications', and 'a preparedness... to sanction the destruction of "archaeological" sites by developers in return for jobs or the funding of community facilities'. No evidence is presented to back up these statements.
While the book would have been greatly improved by the inclusion of more, and better, illustrations and tighter editing in some places, this is nevertheless a very useful reference book for museum and heritage professionals and its contents on the whole constitute an important contribution to debates on the relationship between heritage and the public and, perhaps more tellingly, between heritage professionals and the public.
Iain Ferris is a freelance archaeological consultant
