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From Fire and Hearth to Regional Archaeology in Tasmania

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From Fire and Hearth to Regional Archaeology in Tasmania RECORDS OF THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM 79 123–135 (2011) DOI: 10.18195/issn.0313-122x.79.2011.123-135 SUPPLEMENT From Fire and Hearth to regional archaeology in Tasmania Steve Brown1, Sue Kee2 and Anne McConnell3 1 Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water, PO Box 1967, Hurstville BC, New South Wales 1481, Australia. Email: [email protected] 2 GPO Box 5071Y Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia. Email: [email protected] 3 Cultural Heritage and Quaternary Geoscience, GPO Box 234, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia. Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT – In this paper we aim to track the intellectual connections between Dr Sylvia Hallam (Sylvia), in her time as a lecturer with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Western Australia, and ourselves, three ex-students and research assistants. Together, our experiences span a period of almost a decade of Sylvia’s lecturing years (1973–1981), with numerous other professional and social encounters. In particular, we focus on outlining the infl uences from Sylvia’s work and values brought to our archaeological and cultural heritage work in Tasmania (1984 to present). We emphasise two main infl uences that we took to Tasmania from Sylvia’s teachings – the fi rst a landscape or regional approach to archaeology, and the second a holistic or integrated approach to archaeology that incorporated a wide range of data sources. We note that both regions are rich in historical source materials relating to Aboriginal people and this facilitated the fl ow of ethnohistorical methods from Western Australia to Tasmania. KEYWORDS: Sylvia Hallam, regional Aboriginal studies, cultural heritage management Graham Clark’s Cambridge students from research arena: Sylvia as active advocate for the 1930s on were initiated into a tradition spatial approaches to landscape and artefact of archaeology … [with a] concern with studies and a rigorous interrogator of historical ‘ecos’, the home, the nexus of the particular documentary sources. The second arena in which locality, … The Antipodean tradition has its we can most strongly recognise Sylvia’s infl uence roots here, though it took on other grafts. is as educator: as a teacher able to transmit great (Hallam 1977a: 172) enthusiasm for her subject matter, and as mentor. In writing this paper, we see many commonalities in our approaches to archaeology and recognise INTRODUCTION: SYLVIA HALLAM AND HER that a number of these derive from our common INTELLECTUAL SETTING experience of studying archaeology under Sylvia at the University of Western Australia (UWA). In the Australian, and specifi cally Tasmanian, On refl ection, we realise in retrospect the extent world of the 1970s and 1980s, where the ‘cowboy to which we subconsciously absorbed Sylvia’s phase’ of Aboriginal prehistory was giving way 1 to the rise of the Cultural Resource Management teaching, enthusiasm and mentoring. bureaucrat and consultant, where can the infl uence Sylvia’s Australian work of the 1970s and 1980s of Sylvia Hallam be recognised? We suggest reworked the British tradition of topographic that a large part of the answer lies within the archaeology within UWA’s Anthropology 1 Having worked in archaeology as a ‘geo-archaeologist for a number of years, I (AM) acknowledge my debt to Sylvia in this area as well. Through her teaching she inculcated in her students the view that the science disciplines were an integral part of archaeology. This was also a feature of her own research. In particular, she collaborated over a long period with John Glover of the UWA Geology Department in analysing local stone tool distributions, and encouraged me in this area as well. 124 STEVE BROWN, SUE KEE AND ANNE MCCONNELL Department headed by Ronald and Catherine and people-centered approaches that aim at being Berndt. Sylvia very much viewed archaeology inclusive, collegial, supportive, open, honest and as an interdisciplinary science, not the exclusive professional. We have only recently become aware preserve of archaeologists, but one that must draw of the tremendous debt of gratitude that we owe to on a range of disciplines: ‘The archaeologist is Sylvia Hallam. If we have not been able to follow constrained to attempt to be a jack-of-all trades intellectually in Sylvia’s footsteps, we at least hope and examine the data himself’ (Hallam 1977a: 169). to have acknowledged the debt we owe to her in Sylvia’s interrogation of primary source material our professional lives. We offer some refl ections on was, in effect, an anthropological approach to these infl uences before describing our own work in archaeology and history, again refl ecting the strong Tasmania. interdisciplinary paradigm within which she worked. Through inter-disciplinary connections, SYLVIA HALLAM AS RESEARCHER adapting methods, and interrogating data in light of information from ethnohistorical sources, Christopher Chippendale has made the comment Sylvia redefi ned an holistic landscape approach to that Sylvia’s fi eldwork in the 1950s around the Wash regional studies. remains the most extensive single archaeological survey ever undertaken in Britain (UWA 2004: 5). In the 1970s, the new archaeology held sway. For This work, undertaken by Sylvia in 1950–52 (under Sylvia, as we well recall, what was a New Archaeology the supervision of Dr Grahame Clark), comprised a for Americans had been around in Britain and Europe large sample survey of a wide section of the South for a considerable time! In her words: Lincolnshire ‘silts’, examining areas where air photographs suggested pre-medieval occupation Thus the Antipodes greeted and welcomed with (Hallam 1964, 1970). Contextualised within a long no particular surprise those approaches to the tradition of British fi eld archaeology, linking back relationship of habitat and population which in to the work of William Stukely in the area between the still typologically oriented America of the 1710 and 1747, the study also focussed heavily on sixties seemed so fresh and refreshing that the the geomorphology and land-use history of the New World proclaimed the New Archaeology. Wash in investigating and interpreting Romano- (Hallam 1977a: 172) British settlement patterns (Hallam 1970: 24). In working with her husband Herbert, a medieval historian, Sylvia also was able to draw on his Sylvia was a firm advocate of ‘… a spatial historical knowledge, methods and analytical skills. approach or set of approaches to artefact studies’ In late 1970 (as the Fenland work went to press), (Hallam 1977a: 171) where the concept of artefact Sylvia commenced an archaeological survey of included all tangible and intangible evidence, the Perth area in Western Australia and ‘… an context and connections across broad regions and investigation of changing patterns of Aboriginal the relationship between the prehistoric past and settlement and land use’ based on three main ethnographic present. classes of data ‘… from ethnohistorical sources, from field survey, and from excavation. Each However diffi cult it may be to derive cognitive contributed to the analysis, interpretation and patterns from archaeological data, lore from further pursuit of the others’ (Hallam 1972: 11). localities, we must not ignore anything which Australian regional studies of the time of the can elucidate the social mechanics of grouping, Swan River survey (for example, by Isabel McBryde, spacing, territorial attachment and the scheduling Ron Lampert, Rhys Jones and Carmel Schrire) of the ceremonial and economic year. (Hallam placed considerable emphasis on data obtained 1977a: 173) through excavation of stratifi ed sites (usually rock shelters and/or shell middens). However, the nature As past students and employees on Sylvia’s of the Aboriginal archaeological data available for Swan River survey project, we were able to the Perth coastal plain required a greater level of enter Tasmania enthused with a spatial and interrogation of surface Aboriginal archaeological environmental approach to archaeology based on material from open contexts. Sylvia sought to do sound mid-20th century British methods adapted this through the application of an interdisciplinary to an Australian context and modifi ed by local and approach that investigated artefactual evidence in international infl uences. Finally, Sylvia added to its widest sense and the considered application of this mix the integration of ethnohistorical methods relevant data from the ethnographic present. and analysis. Certainly her Fenland work informed the methodology of the Swan River survey, the original Many aspects of Sylvia’s underlying philosophical aims of which were: and personal-professional approaches to archaeology have also infl uenced us. They have engendered a preference for inter-disciplinary … to elucidate the changing occupance patterns REGIONAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN WA AND TASMANIA 125 of prehistoric Aboriginal populations over an area strongly instilled by Sylvia) placed a philosophical which included at least the range of movement of constraint on excavation as a readily accessible one community and part of the terrain of adjacent investigative method of archaeological and regional groups along a transect, centred on the Swan study. estuary, across the coastal plain and the forested Darling Plateau, to the more arid country further IN TASMANIA WITH UWA CULTURAL inland. (Hallam 1977c: 20) BAGGAGE: DEVELOPING REGIONAL ARCHAEOLOGIES The emphasis was on systematic surface survey where surface artefact material (usually in a STEVE’S STORY: 1984–1990 disturbed context and threatened
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