CONSTANT RESURRECTION:
The Trihybrid Model and the Politicisation of Australian
Archaeology
Shoshanna Grounds 1 and Anne Ross 1,2
Abstract
Most Australian archaeologists would say that Birdsell’s
trihybrid model is defunct and no longer worth considering.
Unfortunately, this is not the view of many in the Australian
public. In his revisionist history of Australia, the conservative
commentator Keith Windschuttle still refers to this model, and,
potentially more seriously, writers with a particular political
agenda to deny Aboriginal people legitimate Native Title
rights have also adopted Birdsell’s model as ‘fact’. In this paper
we analyse one such political text in detail: Pauline Hanson:
The Truth. We demonstrate that in this, and other similar
works, archaeological ‘data’ are used selectively to sustain
sensational claims about Australia’s Aboriginal past. Although
perhaps easily dismissed by professional archaeologists,
such claims are still widely embraced by a surprisingly large
number of people in the wider Australian public, and a debate
needs to be held about how the archaeological community
should challenge such ‘knowledge’.
Introduction
Now, anyone who even casually dips into the literature on
Aboriginal prehistory will find it a field where the evidence is
thin on the ground but the air is thick with speculation. The
trihybrid theory, however, was a comparative exception to this
rule. Its authors found they could deploy a wide body of evidence
in its support (Windschuttle and Gillin 2002:9).
In the twenty-first century there are few professional
archaeologists who would concur with Windschuttle and
Gillin’s assessment regarding the rigour and relevance of the
trihybrid model. The trihybrid model, originally presented
by Tindale and Birdsell in 1941 (see also Birdsell 1949, 1967,
1977, 1993), proposed that there were three waves of Aboriginal
migration into Australia over the last 40,000 years, with each
migration destroying the previous population and occupying
the consequently vacated land. This model has not been part
of any academic archaeology discourse for over 40 years
(McNiven and Russell 2005:88-92; Westaway and Hiscock 2005),
yet Windschuttle and Gillin (2002), and others (see below),
continue to resurrect this model because it suits their own
political agenda and many members of the wider Australian
public continue to embrace this outdated theory (McNiven and
Russell 2005:92). In this paper we review the political contexts
within which archaeological data and theory sometimes find
themselves. We use the renaissance of the trihybrid model in
a political tract published by the One Nation political party
School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane,
QLD 4072, Australia [email protected]
School of Integrative Systems, The University of Queensland,
Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia [email protected]
1
2
in 1997 as a case study to review the place of archaeology in
building support for particular political positions with respect
to Aboriginal issues.
In 1996 a little-known backbencher named Pauline Hanson
rose to public attention after a controversial maiden speech to
the Australian Parliament on 10 September 1996 (Deutchman
and Ellison 1999:34). In April 1997, Hanson launched her
own political party, then called ‘Pauline Hanson’s One Nation’
but renamed ‘One Nation’ (ONP) in January 2002. With this
party, Hanson became ‘a critical player in Australian politics’, in
no small part owing to the media attention that she attracted
(Deutchman and Ellison 1999:34).
Our focus here is not on the debate surrounding the
controversial attitudes of Hanson and the ONP. Rather, our
interest lies in the archaeological evidence used to support
representations of the Aboriginal past found in the book Pauline
Hanson: The Truth, compiled by members of Pauline Hanson’s
Support Movement (PHSM) in 1996 and published by them in
1997. The public attention engendered by the media focus on
Hanson in the late 1990s, and which continues to the present
day (Leach et al. 2000; in 2005 Hanson made it to the finals of
the popular television show ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and in 2006
was named by The Bulletin as one of the 100 most influential
Australians of all time), makes this book a piece of Australian
literature which has been accessed by many interested Australians,
despite its limited print-run of just 1000 copies (Ben-Moshe
2001:29-30; Deutchman and Ellison 1999:36-37).
The Truth was published as a ONP fundraiser (Ben-Moshe
2001:29). The book comprises two sections: the first includes
a collection of written transcripts of Hanson’s main political
speeches made before the publication of the book, including
her famous maiden speech. The second section incorporates
discourses on various political topics which were marketed as the
basic ideological stances of the ONP at the time. It is important
to note the disclaimer in the preface of the book which denies
the responsibility of Hanson herself for the writings in this
second section:
Disclaimer: The responsibility for Part II of this book is not
Pauline Hanson’s, but rests on the shoulders of the Pauline
Hanson Support Movement members who collectively prepared
this book (PHSM 1997).
The authorship of the second section of the book therefore
remains anonymous, although much of it contains similar
arguments to those developed by Rodney Liddell (1991) in Cape
York: The Savage Frontier.
In this paper we evaluate the archaeological information
used by PHSM (1997) to support the ONP’s then ideology of
the hegemony of Western culture over Aboriginal culture. We
particularly focus on the arguments that challenge Aboriginal
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Constant Resurrection: The Trihybrid Model and the Politicisation of Australian Archaeology
claims for land ownership based on the antiquity of their
occupation of the Australian continent. We focus on this book,
rather than on that by Liddell, for two reasons. Firstly, although
Liddell’s ideas appear to have informed much of the second
section of The Truth, Liddell’s work is not publically marketed
(it can only be ordered online) while anything relating to Pauline
Hanson still has popular appeal amongst certain sections of the
Australian community. Secondly, although Hanson herself, and
the ONP, are no longer strong political forces, as Leach (2000:5254) argues, the underlying discourses that supported the rise
of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation still exist. Stokes (2000:37)
concurs, stating that ‘[e]ven if the ONP no longer remains an
electoral force, the ideas that sustained it will remain, and will
be expressed in other forums’. These other forums include
the more recent works of Windschuttle, which have taken up
some of the ideas that underpinned the second section of The
Truth (particularly in Windschuttle and Gillin 2002). Now that
some of these debates have been incorporated into mainstream
academia via the work of Windschuttle, it is vitally important
that, as archaeologists, we address the misconceptions that
continue to support such ideals. As Leach (2000:54) implores,
‘Hansonite views need to be comprehensively challenged, not
just glibly dismissed’.
Political Constructions of Data and History
The use of archaeology to support the superiority of one group
over another is not new. A pertinent, if not slightly extreme,
example of this prioritisation came in the form of Nazi National
Socialist politics in the 1930s and 1940s. Archaeologists working
during the National Socialist regime gained greater acclaim
and better funding for their works when their interpretations
were able to justify Nazi claims to the territorial acquisition of
areas external to the contemporary borders of Germany (Arnold
1996:552; see also Arnold and Hassman 1995). Ethnocentrism
and the idea that the prehistoric Germans were superior to
other groups in the area reached a climax with the extreme and
unjustifiable claims of the propaganda and ideology machines
of the regime:
Hitler contributed his own views on this subject in a dinnertable monologue, referring to the Greeks as Germans who had
survived a northern natural catastrophe and evolved a highly
developed culture in southern contexts (Arnold 1996:553).
The (ab)use of archaeology in ways such as this has proven to be
a popular nationalistic tool in many situations around the world,
even relatively recently (e.g. Kaiser 1995:99; Kohl 1998:230-232;
Trigger 1995:274-279), as the past and the present continue to
be entwined in a very political sense. Archaeological data have
been used to further both positive and negative nationalistic
agenda. On the one hand, archaeological evidence fuelled the
creation of ethnic identities and nationalistic pride through
its ability to demonstrate the longevity and past achievements
of certain cultures, thereby leading to the understanding of
the ‘dignity of all human beings’ (Trigger 1995:277). On the
other hand, others have used archaeological data to uphold
arguments for intolerance, aggression and the subjugation of
minority groups (Kohl 1998:239; Kohl and Fawcett 1995:5;
Trigger 1995:277).
56
In Australia, examples tend to come from the colonial
period. By 1850, most of the southern regions of Australia
had been occupied by Europeans, driving Aboriginal people
from their traditional lands. The effect this occupation had on
Australia’s Indigenous peoples was devastating, and death ‘as a
result of disease, neglect, and outright murder’ was common
within the Aboriginal population (Trigger 1989:141; see also
Hiscock 2008:12-17; Reynolds 2001:28). In accordance with
contemporary scientific understandings of unilinear evolution
and progress, ‘ethnologists in Europe and America encouraged
studies of Aborigines as examples of the “most primitive tribes”
known to anthropological science’ (Trigger 1989:141; see also
Hollinsworth 2006:32-36; McNiven and Russell 2005:58-62).
It became conventional to envisage Aboriginal culture and
technology as an example of the primitive Palaeolithic stage
of human evolution and Aboriginal people as humans who
had not progressed past this stage. The basic premise was that
Aboriginal culture was static and unchanging (Trigger 1989:143).
The Aboriginal Australian was relegated to the past and therefore
did not pertain to the contemporary view of human progress;
thus the civilising nature of colonial Britain was expounded and
glorified, in effect legitimising the colonising act to the wider
public for political gain (Gosden 2001:248; Kohl 1998:235-236;
Murray 1992:5; Trigger 1989:145).
Subsequent archaeological investigations were influenced
by the theories of Lubbock. Lubbock posited that peoples with
perceived less-developed technologies were incapable of the
superior advances that had come to categorise European culture
(McBryde 1996:69-70; Trigger 1989:116). Culture change and
technological advancement as evidenced in the archaeological
record of these ‘otherwise primitive’ peoples were explained
as the result of external stimuli and cultural diffusion (Hiscock
2008:146-151; McNiven and Russell 2005:63, 133-180). Colonialist
interpretations of Indigenous culture portrayed it as an unchanging
example from ‘the dawn of time’, with no development ‘prior to
the arrival of Europeans and no obvious cultural continuity since’
(Lilley 2005:89). With the scientific belief in a linear progression
of culture change, Aboriginal identity was constructed and
objectified (McNiven and Russell 2005:229) and Aboriginal people
were consequently seen as the ‘other’ (Cowlishaw 1992:20). Due
to the belief at this time that Aboriginal people had only been in
Australia for a relatively short period, different waves of migration
into the country were thought to have imported the technological
variations that characterised the cultural evolution seen in the
archaeological record (Trigger 1989:143).
In the 1940s, Birdsell and Tindale’s Three Wave Migration
theory (the trihybrid model) was proposed to explain cultural
and physical variation in the genetic and archaeological
evidence associated with Aboriginal Australian populations
(Birdsell 1967:136). It was not until the dramatic paradigm
shift of the 1960s and 1970s that archaeological conclusions
included the possibility of internal dynamism and the voices
of Aboriginal people themselves began to be heard with regard
to Aboriginal archaeology (Bancroft 2005; Johnston 2005;
McBryde 1996:76; Trigger 1989:143-144; see also Hiscock
2008). Additionally, the discovery that Aboriginal Australians
had been on the continent for over 40,000 years challenged
the ubiquitous view, based on the popularity of the trihybrid
model, that they were recent immigrants to the continent who
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Shoshanna Grounds and Anne Ross
had experienced no real technological or cultural change in
that time (Trigger 1989:141).
The Trihybrid Model
All data are situated within the context in which they are collected:
culturally, politically, socially and economically (Bender 2006;
McNiven and Russell 2005). Each of these features has an impact
upon the interpretation of the data and the constructions of
the past they are used to evidence. Archaeologists have been
aware for a number of years that archaeological evidence has
sometimes been captured to support alternative interpretations
of the past that are somewhat less than scientific (Hiscock 1996)
and may even include support for specific political positions
(Kohl and Fawcett 1995). A common thread amongst all New
Age theories, for example, is their insistence that conventional
scientists would have us believe falsehoods; that there is some
kind of conspiracy by archaeologists/academics to ensure that
certain ‘hidden histories’ do not come to public knowledge
(Hiscock 1996:154). Balme and Wilson (2004:24) postulate that
the excitement generated by conspiracy theories may enhance
the current popularity of alternative interpretations of the
past. Surveys have shown that (mis)understandings about the
past are adopted and believed by a relatively high percentage of
members of the public in America and Australia (Balme and
Wilson 2004:22-23; Feder 1984:528-531). It is within this climate
that popular works challenging conventional archaeological
interpretations of Australia’s Aboriginal past, and resurrecting
previous positions that better suit popular notions of prehistory,
have been increasingly accepted (Hiscock 1996).
If publicly available discourses are constructed in an overtly
political paradigm, their widespread adoption by a poorly-informed
public can sometimes lead to potentially serious misunderstandings
of modern contentious issues. This, we argue, is the framework within
which the resurrection of the trihybrid model by Windschuttle and
Gillin (2002), and in Pauline Hanson: The Truth (PHSM 1997) and
Rodney Liddell’s (1991) Cape York: The Savage Frontier must be seen.
Windschuttle and Gillin (2002), Hanson’s supporters
(PHSM 1997) and Liddell (1991) all proffer the idea that data
collected by the Harvard-Adelaide research expedition in the
1930s (and published in the 1940s in Tindale and Birdsell 1941;
Birdsell 1949) is sufficient to explain the origin of Australian
human settlement and migration. All these authors imply that
the trihybrid theory was, in relative terms, well-evidenced and
supported by scientific data. Windschuttle and Gillin (2002)
specifically allude to academic conspiracy in their review of
the trihybrid model. Their paper is not designed to evaluate
the evidence used by Tindale and Birdsell. Neither is their
article designed to speculate upon one of the most debated and
interesting questions of Australian archaeology – the origins
of the human occupation of the Australian continent. On the
contrary, Windschuttle and Gillin’s work politicises the data used
to generate the trihybrid model, and the interpretation of the
model, and situates the debate about the origins of Aboriginal
arrival on the Australian continent within a political framework.
They criticise current archaeological interpretations of the
origins of modern Aboriginal populations (the ‘last immigrant
wave’) and the timing of Aboriginal arrival on the continent.
Windschuttle and Gillin (2002) specifically argue that
the trihybrid model has been systematically hidden from the
Australian public in order to promulgate an alternative construct
of a single, ancient Aboriginal population, thereby denying the
existence of preceding waves of Indigenous peoples who were
either decimated or exiled to remote pockets of the Australian
continent by subsequent Indigenous settlers. They argue that
this view has been perpetrated by archaeologists for political
purposes and ‘as a result, these [earlier] indigenous Australians
have been subject to an airbrushing from history that makes even
that of the old Bolshevik leadership of the USSR in the 1930s
look mild by comparison’ (Windschuttle and Gillin 2002:7).
In his book The Savage Frontier, Liddell (1991) provides an
even stronger criticism of what he perceives is the archaeological
suppression of the truth about Aboriginal settlement of Australia.
Liddell (1991:3) writes about two waves of Australians that
entered the continent, with the original ‘Papuans’ having been
replaced by ‘Pre-Dravidians’. He entreats readers to be sceptical
about archaeological theories:
In 1961 it was claimed that they [Aboriginal Australians] had
been in Australia for eight thousand years … Then it climbed
rapidly during the 1980’s to thirty thousand years … By 1990
the academics were claiming forty thousand years and by 1996
it had peaked at fifty thousand years. So what is the truth?
One of the earliest reports written in English describing the
Australian aborigines was from the English navigator William
Dampier, who had visited Northern Australia in 1688 and
returned in 1699-1700. He described the aborigines as having
‘Curly hair like the Negroes’ (Papuans) … Obviously these must
have been the original Australians and not the Pre-Dravidians
(aborigines). (This was 70 years before Captain Cook arrived).
By the time European man had arrived most had already been
exterminated by the Australoid invader [i.e. the present day ‘preDravidian’ Aborigines].
Citing works by Haddon, Elkin and Gribble, Liddell argues that
the original Australians (the Papuans) were ‘exterminated’ by a
‘despised race’ that came from South India via Egypt (the PreDravidians) (Liddell 1991:2). The Papuans, Liddell claims, were
seen by early European explorers like Dampier and Cook, and
consequently the modern Aboriginal Australian populations,
the Pre-Dravidians, arrived on the Australian continent less
than 400 years ago. Claims by Aboriginal people today that
they have been in Australia for 40,000 to 50,000 years, with
such claims being part of their arguments for ‘land rights’, are
(according to Liddell) ludicrous because the ‘original Australians’
(those who were here in the distant past) were murdered by the
recent ‘Australoid invaders’. Archaeologists, Liddell (1991:iv, 3)
claims, have deliberately conspired to ‘cover-up’ the evidence
of the ‘murderous behaviour’ of the recently-arrived ancestors
of modern Aboriginal peoples. Similar arguments have been
presented by other writers (for a summary see McNiven and
Russell 2005:88-92).
Archaeologists have responded that no such ‘cover-up’ has
taken place. The theories of Birdsell and Tindale, and other early
writers like Haddon, Elkin and Gribble, were rejected according
to scientific rigour (see Brown 1987; Habgood 1986a:130;
Hiscock 2008:55-56; Howells 1976:141; Pardoe 2006:4-5; Thorne
1976:110-111; Westaway and Hiscock 2005); the revival of long
discounted theories has a more political purpose than their
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Constant Resurrection: The Trihybrid Model and the Politicisation of Australian Archaeology
rejection ever did (McNiven and Russell 2005; Westaway and
Hiscock 2005:142).
The arguments developed by Liddell (1991), taken up
in The Truth (PHSM 1997) and expanded by Windschuttle
and Gillin (2002) are that most Aboriginal people today are
the descendants of the last migration wave, variously labelled
‘Carpentarians’, ‘pre-Dravidians’ and ‘Aborigines’. Dates of 40,000
years and more for the arrival of the first Australians, these
writers argue, are irrelevant for modern Aboriginal peoples as
very few are descended from the ‘Negritoes’ or ‘Papuans’, who
were the first arrivals in the country, according to these models.
The date for the arrival of the final wave of immigrants varies
in these three texts. Windschuttle and Gillin allow a maximum
of 15,000 years since the Carpentarian colonisation of northern
and central Australia, but Liddell, as discussed above, insists that
modern Aboriginal people have been in Australia for less than
400 years. In The Truth, a clear statement for the timing of arrival
of modern Aboriginal people is not provided. The discussion of
the antiquity of colonisation of Australia by modern Aboriginal
people is wide-ranging and at times confusing, but the basic
idea is that Kow Swamp skeletal material, dating to 10,000
years ago, was ‘definitely not ‘Aboriginal’, belonging to an earlier
race of mankind’ (PHSM 1997:141). Consequently, presentday Aboriginal people, according to The Truth, have at most a
10,000 year antiquity, but the implication in The Truth is that this
antiquity is far shorter.
The value of the trihybrid model or any other multiwave
migration theory for those wishing to deny a long Aboriginal
ancestry is that it becomes a particularly political and powerful
tool against Aboriginal claims for land that are based on length
of occupation and ownership of country:
The excellent observation by A.L. Joynt [in the Courier Mail on
5 January 1988] … concerning the Negritoes can be extended
to the issue of Aboriginal land rights. Pro-land rights activists
have argued that the Aborigines were the original inhabitants
of Australia … Claims for land rights and reparations are based
upon the false premise that the Aborigines were the original
owners of Australia. The tragic demise of the Negritoes attests to
the Aboriginal presence being evidence of occupation rather than
title (Morris Blair letter to the Courier Mail 13 January 1998, cited
in McNiven and Russell 2005:89).
It is not the political nature of this debate, however, that has
led archaeologists to discard these theories, but ‘because it is
no longer sustained by the abundant archaeological evidence’
(Westaway and Hiscock 2005:142). Both the fossil record and
multivariate analyses have been used to show that there is no
evidence of humans in the archaeological record who are
biologically different from modern Aboriginal Australians
(Habgood 1986a, 1986b; Hiscock 2008:91-101; Pardoe 2006).
Morphological and genetic studies have shown that differences
within Aboriginal populations in Australia are not the result of
waves of different migrant populations but the expected result
of a population that has been present in Australia for over
40,000 years:
Studies in Aboriginal genetics indicate that Australia was
colonized by a single large and diverse population and has
58
remained minimally affected by outside gene pools (Hiscock
2008:97; see also Brown 1987:62; 1997; Habgood 1986a:136;
Pardoe 2006:17-18).
With this evidence in mind, it can be seen that Liddell’s, The
Truth’s and Windschuttle and Gillin’s resurrection of multiwave
theories, including the trihybrid model, is not an exercise in
scientific rigour, but an expansion of an outdated hypothesis
for the continuation of the negation of the place of Aboriginal
people in Australia’s modern society for political purposes
(McNiven and Russell 2005:91; Westaway and Hiscock 2005:146).
Archaeology and Political Expediency
Public perceptions of Indigenous culture and identity rely on
information that is publicly accessible (Colley 2002:190, 2007).
However, if the information in publicly accessible discourses is
inaccurate, leading to misrepresentations of the Aboriginal past,
it may encourage misunderstandings in the public arena based on
historical misconceptions and stereotypical generalisations (Head
1998:1; McNiven and Russell 2005:2-4). If such representations
are adopted and proffered by politicians, the public acceptance
of the information can be considerable. Politicians are seen to be
authoritative because of their positions of power in society (van
Dijk 2001:114) and information imparted by them is regarded
as accurate (at least to their supporters) (Gauthier 1998:57;
Young 1995:14-16). It is therefore important that the data, which
inform politically-charged representations of the past and which
are used to create policies about the present, are analysed (Leach
2000; Stokes 2000).
Because of the powerful influence still exercised by Pauline
Hanson, and the wide acceptance by a substantial number of
Australian people of many of her policies and views, The Truth
remains an important document influencing Australian popular
opinion (Leach et al. 2000). Although the paper by Windschuttle
and Gillin (2002) is a more ‘academic’ text, its public appeal is
less than that of Hanson’s book, and as a consequence, in this
paper we choose to provide a detailed analysis of the way The
Truth (PHSM 1997) presents archaeological data, rather than
another review of Windschuttle and Gillin (see Westaway and
Hiscock 2005). The section of The Truth (PHSM 1997) devoted
to Aboriginal Issues, titled ‘Surrendering Australia: Mabo, Wik
and Native Title’ forms our case study. Our analysis is largely
constrained by the content and arguments presented in The Truth,
where the basic position presented is that length of association
with place dictates land and other ownership rights. Clearly
such sentiments do not accord with our own understanding
of Aboriginal Australians’ connections to country, which are
informed by a wealth of anthropological literature on this topic
(e.g. Bradley 2008; Byrne and Nugent 2004; Rose 1996; Sutton
1995). However, because this link between time and rights is the
basis for the arguments in The Truth, so too does our analysis
follow this line of reasoning.
Method: Critical Discourse Analysis
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a method of text analysis
where the power relations implicit in discourses are made explicit
through the deconstruction of text (Fairclough 2001:28; Meyer
2001:17-18; Waterton et al. 2006; Wodak 2001:2; Young 2004:199).
CDA has no one single set of tenets for the deconstruction of text
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Shoshanna Grounds and Anne Ross
(van Dijk 2001:96). Different disciplines will organise CDA to
focus on different questions. This feature of the method makes it
possible for different disciplines to use its variety of theories and
methodologies, as ‘interpretations are always dynamic and open
to new contexts and new information’ (Tischer et al. 2000:146).
‘Wherever possible, it does so from a perspective that is consistent
with the best interests of dominated groups’ (van Dijk 2001:96).
This element of CDA makes it particularly useful to the social
sciences as it can be modified to answer a range of questions
that are related to social problems (Fairclough 2001:125; Meyer
2001:14; Tischer et al. 2000:146). Waterton et al. (2006:342) argue
that CDA is a particularly useful tool in the analysis of the role
of text in the construction of social interactions. Framing a text,
they contend, is predicated on choices, and what is excluded from
the text can be as important as what is included (Waterton et al.
2006:344). It is these features of CDA which make it particularly
useful to this analysis, enabling the dominating discourse in The
Truth to be identified and deconstructed.
We have designed our critical discourse analysis of the chosen
section of The Truth to focus on the constructs of the Aboriginal
past that are based on supposed archaeological interpretations.
We assess the way in which archaeology is (ab)used to reinforce
particular politically favoured constructions of the Aboriginal
past and the consequent stereotypes of Aboriginal people’s rights
(or lack thereof) in the present.
We provide a CDA of three of the paragraphs that use
archaeology to develop central arguments in The Truth. Each
paragraph is broken into its constituent sentences and these have
been numbered for ease of discussion. These paragraphs present
a range of often rather disconnected and disjointed ideas and
as a consequence we include [in square brackets] clarification
or explanation where needed. The sentences are then analysed
in light of the data presented by PHSM, the interpretations of
the data made by PHSM (both explicitly and implicitly), and
the language used in the construction of the sentences. The
sentence-based analyses are then amalgamated into a discussion
of the central ideas contained in the paragraph as a whole.
Sample Paragraph 1: The Three-Wave Hypothesis
and ‘Romantic Primitivism’ (PHSM 1997:140-141)
1. Others, such as Joseph Birdsell, speculated that three distinct
waves of Aborigines had populated the Australian mainland
and Tasmania because of the remarkable physical differences
between even the mainland groups.
2. However the present day [archaeological] view is that
the Tasmanians and the mainland Aborigines are of the
same race and that they migrated to Australia through the
Indonesian Archipelago.
3. The racial differences between the two groups is [sic]
thought [by the archaeologists] to be a product of isolation,
preventing gene flow and the operation of neo-Darwinian
evolutionary forces.
4. Modern biochemical analysis of the blood groups of the
Aborigines and the Dravidians and other Asiatic peoples
seems to have refuted the hypothesis of a racial link between
the Australian Aborigines and these people. [The meaning of
this sentence is confusing as PHSM use the term ‘Aborigines’
to mean sometimes what they term the ‘founding (Papuan)
population’ and at other times what they call the (modern)
‘invading’ population. However, the context for this sentence
makes it clear that they are reporting on modern genetic studies
that archaeologists claim challenge Birdsell’s hypothesis of a
Dravidian link for the most recent Aboriginal settlers. This
leads to the following sentence about the consequent current
archaeological view that a single Aboriginal population has
occupied Australia since the first arrival of humans – a view
with which PHSM disagree (see below)].
5. Consequently a myth has evolved, underlying Mabo and
the contemporary ‘romantic primitivism’ that the [modern]
Aborigines discovered this continent and held ‘it without
challenge throughout the millennia, forming one proud race
that spanned the continent, and living peacefully with one
another – and with nature – until the British invasion began
in 1788’ [Blainey 1982].
6. It is ironic that this romantic primitivism requires modern
scientific methods – ‘white science’ – for its justification
and legitimacy.
7. Aboriginal culture did have a concept of ‘a long time ago’
but it had no concept of ‘40,000 or 60,000 years’ or the
mathematical capacity to even express this.
8. They did not know themselves, whether or not they were the
original inhabitants of Australia – how could a series of tribal
groups living a subsistence lifestyle even investigate such
a question?
In Sample Paragraph 1, PHSM give archaeologists’ refutation of
Birdsell’s trihybrid model as the reason for a supposed political
ideology underlying support for Mabo and Native Title claims.
In Sentences 3 and 4, the use of the words ‘is thought’ and ‘seems’
implies that PHSM are not thoroughly convinced that modern
science has refuted Birdsell’s hypothesis. The ‘remarkable physical
differences’ and ‘racial differences’ alluded to in Sentences 1 and 3
are purported to be of sufficient measure to have fuelled Birdsell’s
initial hypothesis, and to provide the evidence required by
PHSM to continue to support Birdsell’s model (see also Sample
Paragraph 3 below). No additional discussion of opposing
views is presented, thus showing PHSM’s implicit scepticism of
archaeologists’ refutations of Birdsell’s theory.
According to Birdsell, posited differences amongst Aboriginal
populations (particularly between Tasmanians and northern
Australians) can only be explained by the genetic links between
northern Aboriginal peoples and populations living in northern
India during the terminal Pleistocene (the Dravidians), from
whence these northern populations derived (Birdsell 1967:135;
cf. Liddle 1991:1-3). These are the differences taken up by PHSM,
and by Liddell and Windschuttle, and used to support claims of
racial distinction between modern Aboriginal populations and
‘founding’ Australians such as the Tasmanians (Sentence 4).
Birdsell based his hypothesis on a range of visible physical
characteristics (such as skin pigmentation and stature). Modern
archaeologists have responded to such claims using a range of
counter-arguments. For example, regarding the short stature
of northern Queensland and Tasmanian Aborigines, Birdsell
hypothesised that these people were in fact ‘Oceanic Negrito’
pygmies and different from other Aboriginal populations.
Westaway and Hiscock (2005:143), however, point out that
statistically, the short stature of these peoples falls well within
the wide range of statures of modern Aboriginal populations.
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Constant Resurrection: The Trihybrid Model and the Politicisation of Australian Archaeology
According to archaeologists, the inherent flaw in Birdsell’s
argument is that he theorises separate migrations into Australia
on the basis of physical characteristics of living populations,
with little reference to archaeological evidence and with a
dependence on a ‘splitting’ model whereby differences in
physical characteristics are focused upon, instead of similarities
in those characteristics (Habgood 1986a:130, 1986b:3; Pardoe
2006:5). Pardoe argues that the similarities between mainland
and Tasmanian skeletal biology ‘far outweigh the differences’
(Pardoe 1991:20; Westaway and Hiscock 2005:143; see also
Sample Paragraph 3 below). Modern genetic studies further
support this position (Hiscock 2008).
PHSM clearly doubt the validity of modern genetic studies. In
Sentence 4 PHSM are arguing that modern ‘biochemical analysis
of blood group genes’ have informed the recent refutation of
Birdsell’s claims of a Dravidian origin for modern Aboriginal
Australians. However, the language used demonstrates their
disagreement with the genetic data: it ‘seems’ to have refuted the
hypothesis of a Dravidian link and created a ‘myth’ (Sentence 5)
of a single population.
Despite a raft of other examples – far too many to be listed
here (but see Brown 1997; Hiscock 2008; Pardoe 2006; Westaway
and Hiscock 2005 for summaries) – that demonstrate the lack
of archaeological evidence to support the trihybrid model,
Sample Paragraph 1 surmises that the refutation of Birdsell’s
hypothesis is linked to an underlying political position held by
archaeologists. PHSM imply that there is some kind of political
conspiracy, a ‘romantic primitivism’, to hide the truth, and that
it is this conspiracy that lies at the heart of Native Title claims.
In Sentence 5 of Sample Paragraph 1, PHSM quote Geoffrey
Blainey (1982, cited in PHSM 1997) to define this ‘romantic
primitivism’. Through these statements PHSM have positioned
themselves as ‘interpretive historians’ in order to steer readers
towards an ‘appropriate’ interpretation of the available evidence,
positioning their (political) movement in a hegemonic position
of power. Despite this, PHSM seem to have misunderstood the
theory of ‘romantic primitivism’ and equate it with the debated
archaeological theory of the unitary origins of Australians.
Romantic primitivism is, in fact, a theoretical standpoint that
evolved in the eighteenth century and that incorporates the
practice of comparing cultures to European society (Trigger
1989:66), integrating them into a Social Darwinian linear
evolutionary progression epistemology. It is this theory that
defined Aboriginal Australians as ‘noble savages’. Whilst some
academics in the past may indeed have been guilty of constructing
an interpretation which engenders a romanticised ‘timeless’
view of Aboriginality, this is quite different from questioning
the length of time for Aboriginal Australians’ occupation of
the continent.
The statements in Sentences 5 to 8 reflect a wider political
ideology. As Slater (2005:33) states: ‘[a]rchaeological dating of
Aboriginal occupation plays a significant role in the land rights
and Native Title claims to ownership of country in Australian
courts as it is one source which provides temporal evidence of
Aboriginal people’s attachment to land’. It is not the intent of this
analysis to show the inherent downfalls in a political ideology
that negates Aboriginal claims to land, however it is our focus
to show the ways in which archaeological interpretations are
manipulated to support particular political ideologies. Thus
60
Sentence 7 gives an outline of Aboriginal concepts of time
and ties to the Australian continent. No referencing for this
sentence is provided, again showing that this is an opinion about
Aboriginal Australians (in the absence of Aboriginal voice) and
indicating the hegemonic orientation of the author(s).
Aboriginal Australians are placed in polar opposition to
White Australians through the statement that Aboriginal people
do not have the ‘mathematical capacity’ to express how long
they have been in Australia, suggesting that they lack White
Australian ‘rationality’ and ‘progression’. This polar opposition is
furthered in Sentence 8 through the suggestion that Aboriginal
Australians did not know if ‘they were the original inhabitants
of Australia’, as they did not have access to ‘White Science’ to
investigate this question. No discussion of Aboriginal ways
of knowing is undertaken, thereby silencing the Aboriginal
viewpoint as to their continued links to country. The refutation
of Birdsell’s hypothesis and the use of ‘White Science’ is seen to
be a political move by academics to further Native Title, however
‘White Science’ in the form of archaeological data is (ab)used
in this, and Sample Paragraphs 2 and 3, to fuel PHSM’s own
political ideology.
Sample Paragraph 2: Multiple Species of Homo
in Australia (PHSM 1997:141-142)
1. There is however growing evidence to threaten the
philosophical anthropology of Mabo.
2. A.G. Thorne has found at Kow Swamp near the River Murray
a skull, radiometrically dated to around 10,000 years.
3. The skull is definitely not ‘Aboriginal’, belonging to an earlier
race of mankind [i.e. PHSM believe that the Kow Swamp
individuals are from the ‘founding (Papuan) populations’ and
not ancestors of the modern Aboriginal populations, which
they claim ‘recently invaded’ Australia and ‘exterminated’ the
founding groups].
4. It has genuinely ‘primitive’ features such as a pronounced
sloping forehead, a large jaw and teeth, and a small ridge of
bone above the eyes.
5. This seems to indicate the existence of two distinct races of
people [i.e. the founding group and the modern group].
6. It has been suggested by some paleontologists [sic] that
Cro-Magnon man not only invaded Europe and Asia, but
also Australia.
7. Fossils have been found on Java, Indonesia, indicating that
Homo erectus, said to be an ancestor of modern humans,
existed 27,000 years ago.
8. Previously, Homo erectus was thought to have died out
200,000 years ago.
9. Consequently, pre-humans and humans existed at the
same time.
10.Neanderthals, a sub-species of Homo erectus, are thought to
have been exterminated 30,000 years ago, so it is possible that
all three species existed at the same time.
11.The stench of genocide seems to linger over this
human prehistory.
Sample Paragraph 2 continues the arguments that academics
have manipulated evidence to support their ‘conspiracy’
regarding the antiquity of Aboriginal occupation of Australia.
In this paragraph, PHSM use their own interpretations of
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Shoshanna Grounds and Anne Ross
archaeological data to build a counter-argument to that put
forward by archaeologists. Thorne’s theories of Australian origins
are superficially presented and used to support an argument
that ‘fossil’ evidence disrupts the ‘philosophical anthropology
of Mabo’ (Sentence 1). Following from our analysis of Sample
Paragraph 1, PHSM’s confusion about ‘romantic primitivism’
and unitary models of the origins of Aboriginal Australians is
clear in Sentences 1 and 2 of Sample Paragraph 2 where Thorne’s
theory of Australian human origins is explained as ‘evidence to
threaten’ academic standpoints. PHSM argue that the conspiracy
is thus exposed; PHSM claim to have ‘the truth’, as is the case in
much alternative history in Australia (Hiscock 1996).
PHSM’s summary of the dihybrid/unitary origins debate is
brief and superficial and ignores the complex discourse generated
by Aboriginal origin debates over the past three decades. The
archaeological debate surrounding the occupation of Australia
is dependent upon evidence that has been uncovered to date.
It also depends on a ‘lumping versus splitting’ approach to the
categorisation of certain human remains according to their
similarities and differences with other finds. Thorne (1976:105111) bases his dihybrid hypothesis on metrical analyses of the
cranial features of remains from the sites at Lake Mungo and
Kow Swamp. He interprets the data from these analyses to show
that the cranial differences between the two sets of human
remains are great enough to propose that they are not examples
of population variation, but evidence of separate origins for the
two sets of skeletal remains. He links the ‘robust’ Kow Swamp
remains to a possible migration from Indonesia and the more
‘gracile’ remains from Lake Mungo to a possible migration
from China (Thorne 1976:109; see also Habgood 1986a:130,
1986b). The dihybrid model is still widely debated within the
archaeological discipline. This debate has extended to the present,
although it is not a new debate.
Opposing both the dihybrid and trihybrid models is the
unitary model of Australian origins. Adherents to the unitary
model argue that ‘biological variation is the result of change
within Australia, with all Aboriginal people deriving from early
founding populations along the north coast of Australia’ (Pardoe
2006:5; see also Brown 1987; Habgood 1986a). This model also
uses comparisons of ancient cranial and skeletal morphologies to
inform conclusions about the origins of the modern Australians.
Brown (1987:162) concluded that:
Analysis of the available terminal Pleistocene human skeletal
material from Australia provides little support for the presence
of two biologically distinct populations during that same period.
However, until there is more assessment of skeletal evidence, it
is not likely that this debate will provide categorical evidence for
any model of origin, thus no hypothesis can be called more than
a theory at this stage.
Sample Paragraph 2 promotes Thorne’s theory as factual
evidence for the existence of ‘two distinct races of people’
(Sentences 3, 4 and 5; see Liddell 1991:2-3), and the careful
use of the words ‘distinct races’ serves to highlight the issue of
difference. Again, no referencing is provided for these statements.
Sentences 3 and 4 state that ‘the skull is definitely not ‘Aboriginal’’,
yet no evidence for this is provided by PHSM. On the contrary,
adherents to both the dihybrid and unitarian models of
Aboriginal origins argue that modern Aboriginal peoples are
the descendants of a wide range of morphologically variant
earlier populations, including those from Kow Swamp; the
difference is that the dihybrid model claims two separate waves
of immigration, followed by amalgamation, while the unitarian
model claims that the range of variation seen in both ancient and
modern Aboriginal peoples is typical of any single population
that has been isolated for such a long period of time (Brown
1987:41; Thorne 1976:109). This information was certainly
available at the time PHSM wrote this paragraph. Additionally,
despite the late Pleistocene/early Holocene dates provided in the
text for the Kow Swamp remains, PHSM posit that these remains
were more ‘primitive’ (Sentence 4) and therefore must have been
‘earlier’ representations of populations of humans in Australia.
These are not, of course, the earliest remains which have been
studied in Australia, and archaeological evidence demonstrates
that the earlier, ‘gracile’ remains from Lake Mungo problematise
this simplistic interpretation of the record in Australia
(Habgood 1986a, 1986b; Hiscock 2008). Despite this, PHSM
have incorporated the viewpoint about the ‘Aboriginality’ of the
skeletal material into the scientific authority of archaeological
information and have used archaeological inferences in the form
of Thorne’s data to show that Aboriginal people were not the first
to occupy Australia.
Between Sentences 5 and 6 of Sample Paragraph 2,
a supporting quote from Blainey was inserted, stating:
Whether they kept to their own regions, whether they intermarried
or whether they frequently fought each other must remain
tantalizing and open to questions. It is possible that the race
bearing the more prehistoric features was slowly extinguished by
direct and indirect competition from the existing aboriginal race.
Conceivably the people buried on the shores of a lake – the present
Kow Swamp – sometime between 9,820 years ago and 10,320 years
ago were descendents of the real aboriginals [now extinct as a result
of the actions of present-day Aboriginal people] who discovered
and first occupied the continent and held it for most of Australia’s
history (Blainey 1982:47, cited by PHSM 1997, added emphasis).
Here PHSM use the conjecture of an Australian historian to lend
credence to the supposition that the Kow Swamp remains show
no modern Aboriginal features. Additionally, this quote interprets
the Kow Swamp population as being the original inhabitants
of Australia, supposedly overrun (‘exterminated’ according
to Liddell) by the current Aboriginal population. However,
Blainey’s interpretation is clearly in error. Archaeologically, Kow
Swamp is far younger than the ‘gracile’ Lake Mungo population,
which means that the Mungo population could not possibly have
‘extinguished’ the people living at Kow Swamp (Habgood 1986a,
1986b; Thorne 1976). Furthermore, debate still exists amongst
archaeologists as to whether there is sufficient evidence to ‘split’
Kow Swamp and Lake Mungo remains into distinct ‘populations’
according to their differences, or to ‘lump’ them according to
their similarities (Brown 1987:41; Thorne 1976:109).
The archaeological evidence in this paragraph is used to
support the overall political ideology of section II of The Truth:
that modern Aboriginal people were not the first occupants
of Australia, but later arrivals who ‘exterminated’ the original
Australians (cf. Liddell 1991). This is the ideology used by PHSM
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Constant Resurrection: The Trihybrid Model and the Politicisation of Australian Archaeology
to oppose land claims and Native Title, based on the conjecture
that the dihybrid model ‘threatens’ the ethnogenesis argument
used by black armband academics to lend legitimacy to land
claims. Thus through the (ab)use of archaeological material,
PHSM hope to make it known that present-day Aboriginal
Australians have no legitimate claim to territory.
Sample Paragraph 3: Homo erectus in Australia
(PHSM 1997:144-145
1. On September 24, 1996 a scientific team at Monash University
announced that Australia was inhabited around 200,000
years ago.
2. The claim is based on the analysis of an ancient sediment
containing Australian pollen and charcoal, taken from beneath
the ocean floor in the Lombok region in Indonesian waters.
3. The core sample was examined by Dr Sander van der Kaars,
the world’s leading pollen analyst.
4. He said: ‘Taking into account the presence of Homo erectus,
the precursor to Homo sapiens, for at least 1 million years, to
me it seemed unlikely that they did not make the move (to
Australia) until 50,000 years ago as is normally stated’.
5. It is most unlikely that the first Australians were the
Aborigines as we know them today.
6. To suppose that this group could remain genetically unaltered
over such a long period which includes major climatic
changes such as ice ages, is absurd.
7. It also contradicts, as we have said, the hypothesis that
evolutionary changes were occurring in this group sufficient
enough to produce the racial differences between the
mainland and the Tasmanian Aborigines.
8. How could this group have changed so little over 200,000
years, when on the standard ‘African-Eve’ theory all of the
racial differences of modern man emerged in much less than
100,000 years?
9. More plausible hypotheses are that either modern humans
evolved from pre-humans in Australia and in other sites in
the world (the multiple origin hypothesis) or else there exists
an even older ‘African-Eve’ and a migration of humans to
Australia occurred at least 200,000 years ago.
10.Alternatively we may be simply wrong to suppose that Homo
erectus was technologically unsophisticated and Homo erectus
may have been the first Australian race.
In this Sample Paragraph, PHSM have moved to shore up an
alternative position in case the arguments about the modernity
of the current Aboriginal ‘race’, outlined in earlier paragraphs,
are found to be in error. In Sentences 4, 9 and 10 of Sample
Paragraph 3, PHSM argue that the original Indigenous settlers
to Australia arrived some 200,000 years ago and may have been
Homo erectus rather than Homo sapiens. Support for this view
comes from ‘Dr Sander van der Kaars, the world’s leading pollen
analyst’ (Sentence 3). The footnote to this part of the book cites
a newspaper article from The [Adelaide] Advertiser (Owen 1996)
as the source of this information.
Owen’s article originally appeared in the Melbourne Herald
Sun, and did indeed cite Dr van der Kaars’ research regarding the
presence of ‘Australian pollen and charcoal’ (Owen 1996:3) in a
pollen core from the Lombok Ridge. Dr van der Kaars is quoted
in Owen’s article as saying:
62
Taking into account the presence of Homo erectus, the precursor
to Homo sapiens, for at least 1 million years, to me it seemed
unlikely that they did not make the move (to Australia) until
50,000 years ago as is normally stated (van der Kaars, cited in
Owen 1996:3).
The research cited by the newspaper article was submitted to
Anthropologie during 1996 and was published in 1997 (Kershaw
et al. 1997). Newspaper stories often highlight aspects of scientific
research taken out of context. Most researchers are aware of this
and are consequently cautious about using newspaper articles
as primary sources of information. This, it would seem, is very
much the situation here. When van der Kaars’ statement is taken
in the context of the whole paper, as published in Anthropologie,
a different understanding of the interpretation of the Lombok
Ridge pollen core emerges.
Kershaw et al.’s paper provides an overview of palynological
research in Australia and eastern Indonesia. The researchers
document a range of vegetation changes ranging over 1.4 million
years, but particularly during the last 200,000 years. Many of the
vegetation changes are accompanied by evidence for changes in
burning patterns: ‘It is clear from the records that the dominant
influence on vegetation variation is glacial/interglacial cycling’
with shifts to more sclerophyllous vegetation supporting the
potential for increases in natural fires (Kershaw et al. 1997:158,
added emphasis). Nevertheless, the nature of changes in the last
60,000 years, and particularly in the last 40,000 years, suggest
a human influence in the changes to burning patterns at
these times.
Kershaw et al. (1997) argue that a role for humans in earlier
(pre-60,000 years) changes to fire regimes and vegetation is
‘equivocal’. Despite the equivocal nature of the evidence for
burning in the pre-60,000 BP record, the palynologists propose
‘a very tentative picture of possible patterns of human arrival in
Australia’ (Kershaw et al. 1997:160, added emphasis):
The earliest proposed date of about 200,000 years for entry [of
humans into Australia] would bring Australia into the early period
for geographical spread of Homo sapiens while older evidence for
landscape changes in Australia could be accommodated by the
arrival of Homo erectus (Kershaw et al. 1997:160).
In the context of the research presented, the idea of a very early
human entry into Australia is offered only as a speculative, and
rather unlikely model and discussion point. In later papers
these same authors demonstrate that glacial/interglacial cycling
and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycles are the key
determinants of vegetation change, with human burning only
becoming important in the last 35,000 years (Kershaw et al.
2003a, 2003b; Lynch et al. 2007).
Unfortunately it is the ‘very tentative picture’ involving
unsupported early human migration into Australia that was first
picked up by the Herald Sun and subsequently accepted as ‘the
truth’ by PHSM. PHSM would not have had access to the paper
subsequently published in 1997 at the time of writing The Truth,
and PHSM therefore cannot be criticised for not evaluating
van der Kaars’ statements in the Herald Sun in the light of the
detailed evidence presented in the published paper. However,
this selective use of ‘academic’ information is a common tool
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Shoshanna Grounds and Anne Ross
in The Truth, as well as in Liddle’s book and in Windschuttle’s
writings. The presentation of tentative interpretations as fact,
without rigorous assessment or checking of context, is also
typical of conspiracy theorists more widely (Hiscock 1996) and
makes it very difficult to engage in a meaningful dialogue with
the authors of works such as those under examination here.
PHSM jump from an argument about the date of the origins
of Aboriginal Australians to a statement in Sentence 5 that ‘[i]t
is most unlikely that the first Australians were the Aborigines as
we know them today’. In other words, returning to the arguments
of earlier paragraphs, PHSM are once again making the point
that modern-day Aboriginal Australians cannot possibly be the
descendants of the original Australian settlers; on the contrary
they must be a different and more recent invader population.
This is further evidenced in Sentence 6: ‘[t]o suppose that this
group [that is, the current Aboriginal population] could remain
genetically unaltered [from the first settler populations] over
such a long period which includes major climatic changes such
as ice ages, is absurd’. This reinforces the earlier arguments by
PHSM about the lack of connection between the Aboriginal
people of the archaeological record and those living today.
Sentences 7 and 8, although somewhat confused, also seem to
be reinforcing this argument. Here PHSM’s view is that the vast
genetic differences between the ‘original’ Aboriginal peoples and
the modern populations – perhaps even amounting to species
differences with the original settlers being Homo erectus and the
current Aboriginal population being Homo sapiens – cannot be
explained by in-country evolutionary changes and therefore
must imply a late invasion by the current Aboriginal populations.
The use of words like ‘unlikely’, ‘suppose’ and ‘absurd’ again place
PHSM in the position of interpretive expert, positioning as
‘absurd’ the archaeologists’ ‘supposition’ that populations in areas
over long periods would not change in genetic characteristics.
The use of a named scientific theory in Sentence 8, the AfricanEve hypothesis, implies that PHSM are well read on the topic of
evolutionary theory.
Discussion
A common thread throughout the paragraphs analysed here is
that Birdsell’s trihybrid model, or a similar multiwave theory
for the settlement of Australia in pre-European times, forms
the truth about Aboriginal occupation of Australia and denies
modern Aboriginal peoples a long ancestry or, indeed, any
meaningful, long-term connection to the Australian landmass.
This is particularly clear in Sample Paragraphs 2 and 3. In both
these paragraphs there is a suggestion that Australia may have
been colonised by waves of different human species, commencing
with Homo erectus (Paragraphs 2 and 3), with subsequent waves
of ‘Cro-Magnon man’ (Paragraph 2) and modern Homo sapiens.
In Paragraph 2 it is even suggested that ‘it is possible that all
three species existed at the same time’ (Sentence 10), with PHSM
suggesting that even Homo erectus had survived in Java to as
recently as 27,000 years ago.
The underlying arguments from Paragraphs 2 and 3 seem
to suggest that at least one of the waves of Aboriginal migrant
groups to Australia was a pre-modern human ‘race’ and there is
even the implication that it is only the most recent Aboriginal
settlers who are modern humans, having performed genocide
on the earlier ‘races’ of Australian populations: ‘[t]he stench of
genocide seems to linger over this human prehistory’ (Paragraph
2, Sentence 11).
The overall results of the Critical Discourse Analysis
demonstrate that The Truth perpetuates discourses in which
negative stereotypes of modern Aboriginal people and their
claims to rights in land are constructed using archaeological
and other scientific conjecture, much of which is stated as fact.
Additionally, the manipulation of archaeological information to
support these claims provides credibility and ‘scientific authority’
to PHSM, despite their misunderstanding and manipulation of
much of this material.
The substantial reinforcement of negative stereotypes
of Aboriginal identity through politically-charged popular
literature may have far-reaching effects for Aboriginal people
and the way they are perceived by the Australian public (whether
they support the overall political ideology advocated or not), in
particular the White Australian identity whose constructions
are also dependent on positioning Aboriginal people as ‘the
other’ (Attwood 1992:i; Cowlishaw 1992:20, 2004:59-61). These
constructions serve to bolster the power of PHSM’s political
ideology whilst subjugating the knowledge and voice of
Aboriginal Australians, concurrently involving archaeology and
archaeologists in these subjugative processes.
The implications of these constructions of Aboriginality
become important to consider when the media coverage of
Pauline Hanson’s 1997 political campaign is taken into account,
along with the wide-reaching readership of the book. The public
attention paid to (and the media coverage of) the 1997 political
campaign of Hanson thrust the ideological views inherent in The
Truth into the public sphere. The potential persuasiveness of the
ideology propounded in The Truth is evident through the use
of ‘scientific’ information and the ‘interpretive’ and ‘authoritative’
position that PHSM assume, in a similar way to the positions
assumed by authors of ‘alternative’ archaeologies (Hiscock 1996).
This is of concern to archaeologists as archaeological information
is misused (distorted) in a number of ways in the book.
In Sample Paragraph 1, academics are positioned as
politically influenced and influential actors because of their
discarding of an outdated hypothesis and in Sample Paragraphs
2 and 3 still-debated archaeological hypotheses are put forward
as facts in support of the political ideology of PHSM. In these
paragraphs, PHSM guide the reader towards the ‘factual’ view
that modern Aboriginal Australians are not the first inhabitants
of Australia, with little discussion of the debate surrounding the
archaeological theories that are incorporated. Just as responses
to Windschuttle’s writings highlight inconsistencies and
misinterpretations of historical materials used in his writings
(Attwood 2005:81; see also Manne 2003; Ryan 2003), so our
analysis enables the political manipulations of archaeological
materials resulting in the continued subjugation of Aboriginal
peoples to become apparent and problematised.
We finish with an analysis of whether the archaeological
information presented in The Truth has been used for
nationalistic purposes. We take Kaiser’s (1995) three tenets of
nationalistic manipulation as the framework for this analysis
(Table 1).
It can be seen through the application of the questions
adapted from Kaiser that archaeological information in The Truth
is indeed manipulated for nationalistic aims. The constructions
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Constant Resurrection: The Trihybrid Model and the Politicisation of Australian Archaeology
of Aboriginality which are posited in the book are used to fuel
the nationalistic aim of undermining the minority identity and
discrediting constructions which would serve to empower them.
Furthermore, archaeological information, which is still debated
within the discipline, is put forward as fact, thus leaving no room
for readers to reflect on other possible conclusions.
As a potential political power in Australia in 1997, the
ideologies supported by archaeology in The Truth had the capacity
to significantly impact upon the lives and identities of Aboriginal
and White Australians. As evidenced by the information
summarised in Table 1, the nationalistic endeavours of The Truth
use the images of the past to establish power relationships of
domination and lend legitimacy to the order that they proposed
for Australia (Kaiser 1995:113). According to Nichols (2004:38)
‘notions of archaeology are inextricably bound up in the contexts
through which audiences interpret archaeological messages’, so
the political nature of the use of archaeological messages in The
Truth may impact negatively upon the image of archaeology in
the Australian public.
Our analysis has highlighted a particular case of the nationalistic
uses of archaeology in Australia. Although not pertaining to the
current powers in Australian government, the political aspirations
of the book’s namesake, Pauline Hanson, place the discourses
within The Truth in a position to influence public understanding,
using the authority of a politician’s name (Leach 2000; Stokes 2000;
Ward 2000; Young 1995:18). Politicians are seen to be authoritative
because of their positions of power in society (van Dijk 2001:114)
and information imparted by them is regarded as accurate (at
least to their supporters) (Gauthier 1998:57; Young 1995:14-16).
Politicians represent ideological messages that are imbued with
social power, and the representations of the identities they present
may have social impacts on those upon whom these identities are
applied (Hollinsworth 2006:61). It is therefore important that we
examine the data upon which politically-based representations of
cultural identity are based.
But could professional archaeologists also be criticised
for using archaeological data to support a particular political
position, as Liddle, Windschuttle and PHSM, have accused us?
In fact, one of our referees argued just this, pointing out that
in using archaeology to support our own political position,
we were doing exactly what we have criticised PHSM of doing.
However, we would disagree. We have taken rigorously tested and
critically evaluated archaeological and palynological data and
theories to bring an informed advocacy to our position. This is
in marked contrast to the methodology used by PHSM, where
selectively chosen snippets of archaeological and palynological
data have been applied uncritically to the support of a politically
engendered trope.
In our response to this criticism we are supported by McNiven
and Russell (2005) who argue that colonial tropes of Indigenous
people, created by archaeological research in the past, still have
currency today. These tropes reinforce negative stereotypes
about Indigenous peoples, while post-colonial critiques of the
tropes bring criticism that archaeology is little more than a
politically correct hand-maiden to Indigenous political activism.
McNiven and Russell (2005:2) respond that colonial tropes need
to be ‘recognized, disentangled, and expunged’. In our paper we
are not simply presenting an archaeology in support of radical
Indigenous views. We have provided a critical engagement with
a text that has used archaeological data selectively, and without
rigour, to inform a particular political position. Like McNiven
and Russell (2005:229) we argue that this is not political
correctness, but a response to the ‘rejection of scholarship
infused by colonial tenets’.
This situation makes it clear that archaeological responses to
the (mis)use of archaeological information must be developed in
the public arena. But what can we as archaeologists do to address
the mis-information that still exists in works like that of The Truth,
The Savage Frontier and Windschuttle’s various publications?
Although alternative archaeologies may be ‘a matter of belief ’
(Balme and Wilson 2004:24) and it would, in many cases, be of
little use to respond to alternative understandings of the past
(Shanks and Hodder 1995:107), the political and dominating use
of the past in the texts we have evaluated here makes it essential
Table 1 Questions applied to The Truth, adapted from Kaiser’s (1995) three tenets of nationalistic manipulation of the past.
Question
Response
1.Is a link established between
present governors and sources
of power and legitimacy which
reside in the past?
The ties to the land in which Aboriginal people take pride are ‘proven’ false through
the use of the archaeological dihybrid theory of Australian origins. By positing that
Aboriginal people do not have legitimate claims to Australian land, the White Australian
hegemony is further legitimised and the colonial power structures of European control
are effectively legitimised. Academics who take a different view from this are constructed
as partakers in a political conspiracy that justifies the alternative views put forward in The
Truth.
2.Are claims advanced to
the effect that a nation’s
[mainstream] population is
in some way superior to all
others, on the basis of past
achievements?
The Truth positions Aboriginal Australians in negative binary opposition to White
Australians through the use of the language of binary opposition. The past is used to
support negative constructions of Aboriginality. Aboriginal people are constructed as
‘inferior’ and ‘primitive’, with the mathematical and scientific understandings used by
White Australian society positioned as being of greater value than Aboriginal ways
of knowing and thus privileging Western knowledge constructs as superior to that of
Aboriginal people. Modern Aboriginal people are also constructed as usurpers of the
original populations of Australians that were here beforehand.
3.Is the present glorified
by casting the [distant,
pre-European] past in an
unfavourable light?
Modern Aboriginal people are seen as illegitimate claimants of the Australian
continent. The Truth constructs the deep past as a place of violence and ‘savagery’.
The interpretations of archaeologists regarding the homogeneity of the Aboriginal
populations are discredited, lending credence to interpretations which PHSM deem
more favourable, such as that the ancestors of the current Aboriginal Australians were
responsible for wiping out previous populations, thus denying constructions of the past
in which Aboriginal people take pride.
64
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Shoshanna Grounds and Anne Ross
for archaeologists to respond to such constructions of the past
so that subjugation of minority groups is not the result of the
dissemination of these inaccurate alternative understandings.
Nichols et al. (2005) have demonstrated the value of a public
outreach programme for Australian archaeology. Although many
members of the public continue to assume that archaeology is
something done overseas (Nichols 2006), there is a gradually
increasing recognition that archaeologists are working in
Australia (Ulm et al. 2005). Despite Colley’s (2007:35) call for
caution against teaching the public ‘the correct way to interpret
the past through professional archaeology’, it is clearly not
appropriate to provide archaeological training only through
tertiary institutions (Nichols et al. 2005). The negative impact
engendered by particular interpretations of archaeological data,
and the consequent support for inaccurate and inappropriate
stereotypes of the Aboriginal past – with consequences for
Aboriginal people in the present – make it imperative that
archaeology is removed from this ivory tower.
National Archaeology Week is one avenue for promoting
archaeological research to the wider Australian public (Colley
2007; Nichols et al. 2005). Further, archaeology is now a part
of school curricula in several Australian states, at both the
primary and secondary levels (Colley 2007; Nichols et al. 2005).
There are also roles for museums, heritage agencies, and other
programmes (see Colley 2007). We argue that a formal and
integrated approach to a public outreach programme is long
overdue. Without such an approach, ill-informed ideas such as
those perpetrated by PHSM, Liddle and others, will continue to
be adopted by an archaeologically unwitting and naïve public.
Conclusion
Public perceptions of Indigenous culture and identity rely on
the information that is publicly accessible (Colley 2002:190,
2007). Incorrect information in these accessible discourses,
leading to misrepresentations of Aboriginal history and
consequent denial of rights in the modern world, must be
corrected. There is always the danger that ideologies become
‘naturalised’ as they are incorporated into a public forum
through the discourses of publicly accepted authorities such
as scientific experts, historians and politicians (Fairclough
2001:136; Gauthier 1998:19). These authorities become the
arbitrators of universalist information which is generally
accepted as fact, because of the accepted authority of the
producers of the information (Gauthier 1998:30). Scientifically
deduced information, then, becomes an authoritatively
constructed set of ‘facts’ that can be (mis)used to rationalise
ideological arguments propounded by other authority figures.
The acceptance of selective scientific data depends upon a
privileging of political discourses, which is no more apparent
than when the use of outdated and disproven Western scientific
‘fact’ is privileged over other forms of knowledge.
Additionally, the accusations in The Truth that academics and
archaeologists have adopted particular political positions have
negative implications for the way archaeologists are viewed by
readers of The Truth. Pauline Hanson still has a strong following.
The information in The Truth is still used by Native Title
antagonists to legitimise negative constructions of Aboriginal
people, and arguments similar to those in The Truth continue to
appear in other literature, such as that by Liddle and Windschuttle.
It thus becomes the responsibility of Australian archaeologists
to respond effectively to the manipulations of archaeological
material for these purposes, as ‘the construction of a national
past should not be made at the expense of abandoning the
universal anthropological perspective of our common humanity
and shared past and future’ (Kohl 1998:243).
Ongoing research by Nichols (2006; Nichols et al. 2005;
Ulm et al. 2005) may reveal effective ways that Australian
archaeologists can engage with the Australian public in order
to dispel misconceptions. Further research into this process is
essential to develop ways in which archaeologists can counter
the misuse of archaeological data and the presentation of invalid
arguments, thereby addressing ‘the truth’ to the Australian public.
Acknowledgements
The initial ideas for this paper were developed as part of
Shoshanna Grounds’ BA (Hons) thesis, completed in the
School of Social Science at The University of Queensland
in 2007. These ideas have been substantially expanded here
and we acknowledge the contribution from the examiners of
Grounds’ thesis – Nancy Williams, David Trigger and Helen
Johnson – for inspiring the current more rigorous and detailed
evaluation presented here. Sean Ulm, Rodney Harrison and
two anonymous referees provided further discussion points
for our consideration.
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