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Monumental Colonialism: Megaliths and the Appropriation of Australia's Aboriginal Past

Lynette Russell and Ian J. McNiven Journal of Material Culture 1998 3: 283 DOI: 10.1177/135918359800300302 The online version of this article can be found at: http://mcu.sagepub.com/content/3/3/283

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MONUMENTAL COLONIALISM
Megaliths
Past

and the

Appropriation

of Australias

Aboriginal

⧫

LYNETTE RUSSELL

Museum

Studies, Deakin University

⧫

IAN

J. McNIVEN University of Melbourne

Classics and Archaeology Department,

Abstract Colonizers often subjugate the colonized Other as an inferior form of humanity. In the Euro-Australian settler-colonial context such ethnocentric views legitimated the acquisition of indigenous lands. An important element of this process of dispossession was the appropriation of indigenous heritage and the (re)presentation of indigenous archaeological sites as dimensions of European prehistory. In America and Africa last century, interpretations of indigenous sites frequently invoked the prior occupation of an advanced race who had close affinity with the European colonizers. Nineteenthcentury representations of stone circles in Australia reveal similar attempts to dissociate Aboriginal people from their past. The stone circles near Mt Elephant in Victoria provide an extreme example of this process wherein a fallacious depiction of indigenous sites as European megalithic structures ensured Aboriginal dispossession and subsequent European (re)possession. The Mt Elephant representations subsequently gave rise to hyper-diffusionist claims early this century that Aboriginal stone circles reflected cultural influences from Egypt. Within the Australian context the processes of dispossession and (re)possession were part of a more encompassing paradigm which held Aborigines to be the living Stone Age ancestors of modern Europeans. ⧫ Australian Aborigines ⧫ colonialism ⧫ megaliths ⧫ Key Words
Mt

Elephant
Journal of Material Culture Copyright © 1998 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, Vol. 3(3): 283-299 [1359-1835(199811)3:3; 283-299;005799]

CA and New

Delhi)
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What is new C.S. Lewis.

usually wins

its way

by disguising

itself

as

old.

INTRODUCTION

Over the past two decades a diffuse range of academic discourse, under the label of post-colonialism, has been devoted to disentangling and elucidating European colonial processes. Archaeologists have been slow to enter this discourse, a fact which may, in part, be due to the role played by archaeology and related disciplines such as anthropology in the colonial process (see Trigger, 1985: 4-5). It is our contention, however, that such heavy critique of archaeology provides fertile ground for understanding colonialism and associated processes of cultural interaction in a broad range of cultural contexts, both recent and past. In this paper we address the appropriation of colonized peoples past and heritage by colonialists and the representation of indigenous people as ancestral to the newcomers. In this connection, previous research has revealed how the ruins of Great Rhodesia (in Zimbabwe) were assumed to have been built by an earlier wave of European migrants (Kuklick, 1991) while the Mississippi mound sites (in America) were seen as too complex to have been constructed by the indigenes of the area (Silverberg, 1968). However, colonial misrepresentations of indigenous archaeological sites have only recently been explored for the other focus of 19th-century European settler colonialism - Australia (see McNiven and Russell, 1997). We investigate the Australian situation further through an examination of an almost forgotten but remarkably extreme and fallacious representation of Aboriginal ceremonial stone circles in western Victoria as European megalithic structures. These supposed stonehenges had no oral tradition amongst the Aborigines. By comparing both the American and African examples which were dependent on actual 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 cultural heritage sites in processes of cultural interaction and within colonial 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 was founded upon a logic of elimination. European colonizers sought to replace indigenous peoples and claim the land as their own (Rose, 1991:

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was underwritten by a subtext in which the colonizer and the actions of colonialism were perceived as legitimate, rightful and often even beseeched by the colonized. Within Australia the structures of colonialism continue to instruct, inform and delimit Aboriginal-European discourse in both public and academic domains. In terms of anthropology, Hamilton (1982: 91)has remarked that it is commonplace, [and] probably repeated too frequently, that anthropology is a child of colonialism. It is generally agreed that anthropology has been the study of those perceived 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 the culturally or racially despised. The exploration of the Other as a construct of European-colonial discourse was explored extensively by Said (1978, 1993) in his now classic critique of Orientalism. Saids principal thesis is that Western society, and scholarship in particular, has assembled and contrived a homogeneous, inferior and oppositional view of Other cultures. Thus central to any study of other cultures is the relationship between the Self (or the West) and the Other. The West is the centre of the discourse of civilization, colonialism, and ultimately modernity. In contrast, the Other, the dark side, are those peoples who are forgotten and time-locked in the past, repressed and undevel-

46; Wolfe, 1994: 93). This dispossession

oped.
When Europeans began colonial expansion they frequently found indigenous customs curious in the extreme. Not surprisingly, the colonizers sought to understand these customs through the mechanism of comparison. The salient ideological feature of comparison was that it reassured the reader that everything new was merely a variation of that
which
was

known and familiar. This also allowed the reader/observer to

comprehend the poetics and imagery of the indigenous landscape through a veil of British romanticism. Further, in seeking to make indigenous customs comprehendible the colonial observers frequently overemphasized the similarities between their own culture and the culture of Others. Revealing insights into this process are provided by
the cases of the Mounds of Australian megalith sites.

America, the ruins of Great Zimbabwe and

CREATING A PAST FOR A COLONIAL TERRITORY

a non-indigenous past for colonial lands is an important if not central tenet underwriting and legitimating dispossession. This could be achieved by literally importing and implanting the homelands cultural landscape (Carter, 1987; Spurr, 1993), a process which is perhaps best

Creating

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known through colonial paintings which reveal a Europeanized Australian landscape (Smith, 1984). Colonizers often justify their actions by dissociating the natives from their cultural heritage. Arguments are usually couched in terms which suggest that the indigenes are relatively recent arrivals and therefore are themselves colonizers. Alternative arguments purport that indigenous cultural heritage is the result of a previous race of people. These prior races are always culturally closer to the colonizers than to the indigenous inhabitants. Silverberg (1968), in a book devoted to exploring the mythology and representational history of the Mississippi and Ohio mounds, has demonstrated the intricate relationship that existed between viewing the mound makers as of exotic origin and the growth of the idea of the American Nation. At the outset it is important to note that the mounds of Mississippi and Ohio were constructed by native American peoples during the thousand years prior to the 17th century AD. At the advent of the invasion of Europeans the mounds function and history had either slipped from memory or was not shared with the newcomers. However, for the colonialists, a deep and pervasive need was fulfilled by the myth of non-Indian mound builders.
&dquo;

prehistoric race in the American heartland was and if the vanished ones had been giants, or white men, 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 in an undeclared war against the Indians who blocked their path to expansion, transporting, imprisoning or simply massacring them; and as this centurylong campaign of genocide proceeded, it may have been expedient to conjure up a previous race whom the Indians had displaced in the same way. (Silverberg, 1968: 57)
The dream of
a

lost

profoundly satisfying;

archaeology developed and the mounds were revealed to be the product of indigenous culture the popular view was open to question. Those who challenged the myth of a previous race were rejected and often ridiculed. Even into modern times those responsible for the management of cultural heritage in the mound region have had to contend with popular views that the mounds were not built by native Americans (Silverberg, 1968). In Africa, similar processes of colonial dispossession were associated with the site of Great Zimbabwe (known previously as Great Rhodesia). Kuklick ( 1991has shown that the complexity of the sites structure, form and composition was such that European colonial observers assumed that the indigenous population was incapable of its construction. Great Zimbabwe is an impressive stone ruin which covers some 60 acres (Kuklick, 1991: 135). In 1889 Cecil Rhodes obtained a large statue of a bird which was to become an identifying emblem for the British in Rhodesia. Over the next hundred years debate raged over whether the
As

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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 occupy the area used the word zimbabwe to relay that these ruins were courts or graves of chiefs. These were African constructions built for African purposes. Kuklick has documented how shifting views on the builders of the zimbabwe fluctuated with prevailing political climates. Those archaeologists who attempted to demonstrate an indigenous origin for the site were castigated. In 1969, in post-independence Zimbabwe, there was an attempt by Col. George Hartley to have parliament censor a guide book because it did not imply that the buildings were constructed by light skinned people. State employees were told that they would lose their jobs if they were to credit the natives with the construction of this important national icon. What is clear from Silverberg (1986) and Kuklick (1991) is that in certain settler colonies the European newcomers were committed to a view that they were legitimately and morally entitled to possess indigenous land because it was seen as a lost domain of European heritage. In the following section we reveal how this colonial process was expressed and elaborated in Australia.
STONE CIRCLES AND EARLY COLONIAL AUSTRALIA

Early European observers frequently interpreted Aboriginal stone circles

the remains of burial sites reminiscent of the barrows of British prehistory. In 1847, Angas noted:
as

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 placing stones in a circle, and a large upright slab in the centre, even to the present day. 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 in Tartary; also among the American Indians, and the early British. Caesar speaks of this custom. (Angas, 1847, II: 280) In other contexts, stone circles were described as tenuous Aboriginal associations. In a description of

religious sites with mystic stone circle

sites from New South

Wales, Miles (1854: 25)

noted:

The circles are not above twenty feet in diameter: the stones are seldom more than a foot above the ground, and in the centre is an upright stone about three feet high. The natives are very tenacious of any of these stones being moved, especially the centre one. The only reply the blacks make to any inquiry on this subject, and on which they are loathe to speak, is, Dont know: black fellow make it so long time ago.

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The accounts of Angas and Miles are interesting for several reasons. First, site descriptions are reasonably accurate given they match recent descriptions of Aboriginal stone arrangements from the region (McBryde, 1974). Second, although ascribing an Aboriginal origin to the sites, both Angas and Miles suggested that Aboriginal stone circles were part of a broader tradition which included ancient Europe: Angas noted simply that similar sites are found across the northern world; Miles stated explicitly that Aboriginal stone circles were part of a complex of cultural traits which had diffused to Australia in the past. To support his argument, 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 have been in communication with the most early races indeed, mentioned by Homer as legendary, active, powerful, and enterprising people, who carried conquest, commerce, and civilization over the world (1854: 11-12). Miles suggested the ancient Egyptians as a probable source for these advanced traits. Textual images of stone circles offered by Angas and Miles can be used to detect the cultural and intellectual context within which these authors were operating. As we noted earlier, the colonial project rested on the assumption that the conquering of Australia was rightful and legitimate. Australia had been after all, terra nullius, a land belonging to no-one (Reynolds, 1992). The stone circle descriptions were supported by the colonial framework which justified the appropriation of Aboriginal land. Dissociating the indigenes from their landscape, and in this case their sites, was achieved by arguing that Aboriginal stone circles were part of a broader tradition which included ancient Europe. The Aborigines were effectively removed from their own unique historical trajectory and incorporated into a world prehistory which was dominated by the West (after During, 1992: 339). An extreme example of this dissociating process comes from the false depiction of Aboriginal stone circles near 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 rock engravings of Britain and selected parts of the world. In a telling footnote to his text, he stated:
Stone circles have been found in almost every country in the old world, from Greenland southward. Nor are ancient circles of this kind wanting even in Australia. My friend, Mr Ormond, informs me, that he has seen many, especially in the district near the Mount Elephant plains, in Victoria. The

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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) been dug out of mounds near these circles. The aborigines have no tradition regarding them. When asked about them, they invariably deny knowledge of their origin. (Simpson, 1867: 81-2)

The apparent unwillingness of the Aborigines to disclose knowledge of the sites ensured a two way loss. If the indigenes were not responsible for the construction of the circles then they, like the European colonizers, were newcomers and the legitimacy of their claim to the land was questionable. If, on the other hand, they had chosen to remain secret about the construction, use and meaning of the stone circles, then they were evasive. In this context the use of the term deny is important as it suggests the informants were choosing reticence and silence regarding the meaning of the sites. Five years later, Chambers and Chambers (1872: 19) chose to write out Aboriginal people altogether: Even in Australia - in the colony of Victoria - they are to be seen in numbers, sometimes circle within circle, as at Avebury, and without any tradition among the natives. For some authors these megalith sites heralded a primitive cultural state which had parallels with Ancient Britain. According to Westropp (1872: 171), megalithic structures signalled the first tentative steps out of 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 megalithic structures, that they are not peculiar to the Celtic, Scythian, or any other people, but are the result of an endeavour to secure a lasting place of sepulture among a people in a rude and primitive phase of civilization; and that they were raised by men who were led by a natural instinct to build them in the simplest, and consequently the almost identical form in all countries.

In 1877, the Mt Elephant megaliths were immortalized by an engraving in The Illustrated Sydney News and New South Wales Agriculturalist and Grazier (31 March) (Figure 1). The image was syndicated to other local and overseas newspapers such as the Melbourne-based The Australian Illustrated News ( 16 April 1877) and The New Zealand Standard (1 May

1877). The engraving details two stone circles -

an

imposing stonehenge

arrangement and another of similar form in the distance. The foreground provides the setting for an ephemeral Aboriginal camp of two men, a simple shelter, two spears and a fireplace.

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FIGURE 1

Stone Circles

near

Mount

Sydney News and New South

Wales

Elephant as depicted in the Illustrated Agrzculturalzst and Grazier of 1877

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

regions are found rude stone monuments which are a puzzle to antiquarians. When they were erected, and for what purpose, nobody can tell exactly, history and legend being silent on the subject. All that can be fairly said is that they have been erected by the primitive inhabitants of the localities where they are found, and that they constitute the sole memorial they have left to future ages. Probably they were originally consecrated to religious uses; or, what is more probable still, they were tombs before they were temples, primitive religion having apparently grown out of, or having been at all events closely associated with a certain form of worship addressed to the spirits of deceased ancestors. In that case it may be easily conjectured that the stones referred to are relics of larger structures, presenting in their complete form a mound-like appearance, and that the stones are merely what remain of the structures when the clay, timber and other materials have disappeared. The stones are often of immense size, and they are generally raised to form a circle. Stonehenge presents a familiar example of such structures, and similar stone circles are met with
In various
as far north as the Hebrides and of the Pacific.
as

far south

as

Australia and the islands

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For the Mt Elephant sites, Aboriginal dissociation was made possible by the use of textual references and iconographic representations. In terms of the former, dissociation was made explicit by statements claiming Aboriginal people possessed neither knowledge nor respect for the sites. In terms of the latter, the romantic iconographic image of the sites represents a more implicit, albeit more contrived, attempt at ethnic dissociation. First, the image was a fabrication. The structure of this fiction relied on three key iconographic techniques - juxtaposition, the use of light and shade, and spatial arrangement of the composition. The juxtaposition of the gigantic and permanent proportions of the stonehenge and the crude and temporary form of the small Aboriginal shelter is unmistakable. It is clearly meant to represent a contrast between advanced and primitive technology, complex and simple social organization, sacred and secular activities, and ancient and modern time periods, respectively. The difference between advanced and primitive technology is achieved by comparing the large stone columns whose erection clearly required sophisticated technology and engineering skills with the small and simple Aboriginal shelter furnished with two barbed spears. The images codification of complex and simple social organization is related to both the technological dissimilarity and the obvious disparity in the demography of the societies in question. A large group of people possessing complex organizational arrangements would be required to erect the stone columns. In contrast, Aboriginal society, represented by two men, possesses a simple social organization which does not extend beyond the requirement to hunt prey for a meal. The recipient audience would perceive the illustrators intention, that the Aboriginal people were, in all likelihood, incapable of constructing the

henge.
of dark and light shading is an effective technique for subjugating Aborigines and their camp. Both the foreground and background megalithic structures are illuminated vividly with low-angled light emanating from the sun on the horizon. The difference between sacred and secular activities is articulated by contrasting the illuminated stone columns, with the small and dark Aboriginal camp site positioned up against one of the stones. The camp is depicted in near darkness and both men appear as shadowy figures silhouetted against the landscape. One of the figures sits disrespectfully upon one of the stones. He is positioned with his back to the light. The association of shaded areas with indigenous people and illuminated areas with non-indigenous culture was a technique employed commonly in 19th-century colonial representations (Torgovnick, 1990: 27). Typically, the illuminated components of the image were visual metaphors for Westerners and an enlightened society. In the case of the Mt Elephant image, the message is clear, the stone arrangements were constructed by a more advanced
use

The

the

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society. Through the mechanism of shading and the use of proportional juxtaposition the images overall effect is to show the dichotomy between the ancient and modern. This effectively establishes a temporal spacing and hence cultural spacing between the builders of the stone monuments and the local Aboriginal population. In the 19th century iconographic representations of European megaliths frequently appeared in conjunction with images of scholarly gentlemen and leisurely ladies (Chippendale, 1994; Daniels, 1972; Mitchell, 1982; Piggott, 1978). These figures appear to offer erudite appraisals of the sites. Evans (1994: 203) notes, these are &dquo;stock&dquo; figures common to much antiquarian imagery.... Acting as a landscape stand-in for the artist-cum-antiquarian, apart from scale, their inclusion also attributes the picture scholastic qualities. By demonstrating a studious interest in the site, the observing gentleman scholar visually represents the quest for understanding and enlightenment. In seeking understanding and knowledge the learned and sophisticated Briton (and his culture) are implicitly depicted as the fitting inheritors of the site, its meaning and its context (the land it occupies). By contrast, the Aborigines depicted in the Mt Elephant image are peripheral to the image. Therefore, the atypical orientation of the marginal figures capitalized on existing megalith representational forms, and reinforced the dissociation of Aboriginal people from the site. If the authors and artists responsible for the Mt Elephant image did not perceive the site to be of Aboriginal origin, the immediate question that follows is - who did build the megaliths of Australia? In contrast to descriptions of monuments from other colonial situations the description of the Mt Elephant sites revolved around a fallacious rendering. The image bears no resemblance to any Aboriginal stone arrangements known for the Mt Elephant region (Coutts, 1982) or any other part of Victoria (Lane and Fullagar, 1980; l~Zassola, 1969). Indeed, they have nothing in common with Australian Aboriginal stone circles, most of which consist of rocks easily moved into place by a single person (Flood, 1990). Megalithic structures were not, and have never been, a feature of Australia. Such views, however, were voiced soon after release of the 1877 engraving. Chauncy (1878: 235) asserted that I can safely affirm that these statements are quite incorrect - there are no such circles, and never were. I am convinced that no structures of a monumental character were ever erected 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 the Druidical circles which are found in various places in Britain. Why then was the Mt Elephant stone circle image created within the genre of European megalith representation? While intentionality is difficult to elucidate, the likelihood that those responsible for the image and

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story made

point is that an Australian Aboriginal site was represented as ancient, non-Aboriginal, and a dimension of Western prehistory. We contend that the creation of the Mt Elephant megalith sites helped European colonists to legitimize their rights to inherit the Australian continent. European colonization literally became a process of the (re)possession of a lost domain of their heritage. This image reconfirmed the sense that the memory of European prehistory lay within Australia (Fox, 1992: 313).
CHILDREN OF THE SUN

an honest mistake is unlikely existed. Whatever the case, the important

as

such sites

simply

never

By the
been with

turn of the

century, few believed that Aboriginal Australians had

preceded by an advanced race (megalith builders or otherwise) European cultural associations (Howitt, 1904: 30; Spencer, 1901: 12). However, the 1910s and 1920s saw a resurgence of megalithic culture migration theories with the hyper-diffusionist school headed by Grafton Elliot Smith and W.J. Perry. This new paradigm held that advanced cultural traits such as agriculture, polished stone axes, mummification and megaliths became grafted onto the primitive cultural base of the peoples of Oceania (including Aboriginal Australians) through diffusion/migration of the heliolithic culture (Smith, 1915) or the Archaic Civilization (and its carriers - The Children of the Sun) (Perry, 1923) from Egypt. Perry (1923: 33, 125) noted that the presence of stone circles in Australia, and in particular the Mt Elephant sites, was significant and important evidence for the influence of the Archaic Civilization. However, the empirical reality of Perrys views were soon denounced by leading Australian researchers (Kenyon et al. 1926; cf. Thorpe, 1926). In something of an epitaph, Kenyon (1930: 71)noted that Despite much
research and some rather circumstantial statements, no evidence has yet been discovered of megalithic remains on the Australian continent. Although the turn of the century saw a change in the representation of the Mt Elephant sites from belonging to a pre-Aboriginal culture to that of an advanced cultural graft, the central tenet of associating the megalithic structures with Europe remained. In this sense, debates over the existence of megaliths in Australia were in fact debates over the existence of European influences in Australia prior to formal British possession in 1770 by Capt. James Cook. At no time was the underlying colonial tenets of the diffusionist research agenda explored or challenged. Somewhat ironically, British archaeology was similarly beset by diffusionist arguments earlier this century and what Clark (1966: 172) refered to as a form of invasion neurosis. In this case, however, colonialism cannot be used to explain this so-called neurosis as Great Britain

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not a colonial outpost. Although sharing some parallels with the British situation we suggest that the underpinnings of the Australian diffusionist research agenda arose from a long-held view that Europeans could legitimately appropriate Australia given that Aboriginal people were seen to represent the ancestors, and hence rightful heritage, of
was

Europeans (Spurr, 1993).

OUR LIVING STONE AGE

underlying current throughout the various stages of dissociating Aboriginal people from their pasts was that Australian Aborigines represented the living counterparts of European ancestors. The Aboriginesas-ancestors view was evident when the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay in 1788. Collins (1798: 452), for example, described the Aborigines as living in that state of nature which must have been common to all men previous to their uniting in society, and acknowledging but one authority. Half a century later, the view was manifested explicitly by Huxley, where, in the inaugural description of a Neanderthal skull, he made direct anatomical comparisons with modern Australian Aborigines who he considered to be the nearest living representative (Lyell, 1863: 80-9). Two years later, Lubbock (1865: 336) made his often-quoted statement that the Van Diemaner [Tasmanian] and South American are to the antiquary, what the opossum and the sloth are to the geologist. Similarly, Tylor (1899: ix) noted that it is with the Tasmanians that Man of the Lower Stone Age ceases to be a creature of philosophic inference, but becomes a known reality. The academic tradition continued into the 20th century with Sollas (1911: 161-2) describing Aborigines as the Mousterians of the Antipodes. Furthermore, Basedow (1929: 59) maintained that Aborigines were a palaeontological overlap; they were a type of living fossil man that could be used to reflect the image of ourselves, as we appeared many ages before we learned to record the history of our progress, and of the world in general. The tenacity of the view that Aboriginal Australians represented a kind of primitive European is best exemplified by Australian adventure writer, Ion Idriess, in his 1963 book Our Living Stone Age. In the foreword 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 our own Stone Age mothers and fathers in the vanished past. (Idriess, 1963: xii)

The

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

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history. How does the Aborigines-as-ancestor view relate to the processes of colonial dissociation and possession? Why were the comparisons always made between Australia and England or Europe rather than with Africa, 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 colonial formation. Colonists came to Australia with little intention or opportunity to return to their homeland. Aboriginal Australians were represented as ancestor-like because this representation supported the ideological framework of the settler-colonial formation and systematically legitimated the processes of dispossession and land appropriation. In his study of the discourses of colonialism, Spurr (1993) considers the rhetoric and lexicon of the colonial process and demonstrates that the phraseology of the colonial period survives today in the descriptions of former colonial peoples. Appropriation and the notion of legitimately inheriting the earth are, according to Spurr, important underwriters of colonialism. 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 take the form of chaos that calls for restoration of order, of absence that calls for affirming presence, of natural abundance that awaits the creative hand of technology. Colonial discourse thus transfers the locus of desire onto the colonized object itself. It appropriates territory, while it also appropriates the means by which such acts of appropriation are to be understood.
...

to ahistorical

The ancestor/Palaeolithic survivals paradigm reduced the indigenes players and affirmed the assumption that indigenous culture had changed little over the millennia of occupation. The Abo-

rigines were depicted as an unchanging people, living in an unchanging environment (Pulleine, 1929: 310/. The relationship between notions of
cultural stasis and the authenticity of various forms of aboriginality has been examined in detail elsewhere (e.g. Russell, 1995; Wolfe, 1994). These analyses have implicated the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology in the continual dissociation of Aboriginal people from their past. Removing Aboriginal people from their past such as is evidenced by calls that some archaeological materials are important for world prehistory and control of these should not be left in the hands of contemporary indigenous groups (e.g. Mulvaney, 1991) extends the ancestor paradigm and reiterates colonial appropriation.
CONCLUSION

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

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by peoples from very different cultural backgrounds. In addition to the search for economically viable resources, newcomers sought to make the land socially and culturally viable - a home. Critical to this settlement process was the construction of a new cultural landscape filled with familiar historical and spiritual meaning. In this paper, we have shown that a less obvious but no less potent force in the settlement process was appropriating Aboriginal sites as European heritage and appropriating Aboriginal people as European ancestors. The identity of the colonizing Self was constituted in tandem with the Aboriginal Other. These two constructions were intimately and ultimately intertwined with one another. Dispossessing the indigenes and (re)possessing their land was legitimated by constructing an identity of the colonial Self as antithetical yet derivative of the colonized Other.
References

inhabited

Angas,

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Spencer,

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

deakin.edu.au]

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Academic Associate, Department of Classics and Archaeology University of Melbourne and Director of a cultural heritage consulting business. He has a PhD from The University of Queensland and his research interests include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander coastal economies, stone artefact technology, cultural heritage, and the archaeology of the colonial frontier. Address: 10 Fanny Street, Moonee Ponds, Victoria 3039, Australia. [email: imcniven@ocean.com.au]
*
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