The Protectors of Aboriginal Relics: The Institutionalisation of Queensland’s Vernacular Anthropology and Archaeology
Daniel Leo, University of Queensland
Starting with British colonisation in 1826, Queensland developed a vernacular tradition of anthropological and archaeological practice that has continued, since the 1960s, alongside an alternate, professionalised practice. This 181 year history of lay, learned and professionalised non-Indigenous people researching, analysing and communicating their understandings of Queensland’s Indigenous societies, cultures and histories was dominated for so long and to such an extent by non-professional practitioners that through several entities such antiquarianism became institutionalised. At times three learned societies, two museums, a university, and even the State Government, all legitimised and advanced antiquarian practice, practitioners, and discourses – and this was especially the case with the Anthropological Society of Queensland. An appreciation of this milieu not only provides a more thorough historical account per se; it also foregrounds an understanding of objects and landscapes as being palimpsest-like, as successive peoples inscribe, erase, and re-inscribe the ‘stuff’ of culture with their constructed meanings and uses. Simultaneously, objects and landscapes are also a focus for contemporaneous peoples to compete and co-operate in defining the ‘stuff’ of culture. This paper seeks to provide an historical framework to aid in teasing out these often densely layered meanings and uses, and to elucidate how an object or place can be variously described as sacred, ancestral, as a relic, a specimen, an artefact, or as an item of family or National heritage.
