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Archaeology and the Governanceof Material Culture: A Case Studyfrom South-Eastern AustraliaLaura Jane SmithPublished online: 05 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Laura Jane Smith (2001) Archaeology and the Governance of MaterialCulture: A Case Study from South-Eastern Australia, Norwegian Archaeological Review,34:2, 97-105

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Archaeology and the GovernanceofMaterialCulture:A Case Study fromSouth-EasternAust raliaLAURAJANESMITH

Department of Archaeology, University of York, UK.E-mail: Ls18@york.ac.uk

What are t he consequences of using the discourse of archaeologicalknowledge in cult ural herit age management (CHM)? In this art icle t heinter-relat ionshipof archaeologicaltheoryandpract ice,CHMand thepolit icsof ident ityis analysed,using as a case studythehistoryof archaeologicalandCHM pract ice in south-east ernAust ralia.A crit ical reading of Foucault ’s‘governmentality’thesis illust rateshow archaeologicalknowledge has cometoplaya role in t heregulat ionandarbit rat ionof Aboriginalculturalident it yinsouth-eastern Aust ralia. In effect , archaeological knowledge becomesmobilized by public policy-makers as a ‘technology of government’ andbecomes implicated in the governance of cultural ident it y. Furtherconsequences of thisprocess are thatmaterialculture,as ‘heritage’, becomesa resourceof power in thepolit icsof ident ityandarchaeologicalpract ice,andtheoryit self, becomes regulated,or ‘governed’, by it s inclusion in CHM.

Recent debates within archaeology, notablythose loosely informed by ‘post -processual’theory,have att emptedto ident ify the social,culturaland polit ical context of archaeology.Elsewhere, I have argued thatthisproject haseffectively failed due to the self-referent ialt endencies of these debates and becauseext ra-disciplinary uses of archaeologicalknowledge have been ignored (Smith 1994).Furthermore,at t empt sto engage in mean-ingful dialogue with non-archaeological in-t erest s, such as Indigenous and other localcommunit ies,have been fraught ,as they areoft en framed by processual scient i� c archae-ological discourse about the value and mean-ing of materialculture.

As ‘scienti� c’ values have been inst itut io-nalized within culturalherit age management(CHM) there is a tendency to devalueIndigenousandothercommunityvalues. This

does not mean, however, that archaeologicalvalues and knowledge are not themselvessuccessfully challenged and subsumed incon� ict sover the meaning and disposit ionof materialculture (for examples, see Smith1999, Thomas2000). Whatis crucial, though,is to underst andtwo interrelat edthings.First ,how a part icular disciplinary vocabularyplays a part in de� ning an object of regula-t ion, in this case materialculture. Secondly,how a form of knowledge and its pract i-t ioners, despit e what is oft en the best ofintentions,can play an arbit ralrole in st at einst itut ions that lend their expert ise anauthority not available to discourses con-structedout sideof stat einst it ut ions.

Underst andingwhat it is that archaeologydoes out sideof the academy is importantforunderstandingthe polit ical consequences ofarchaeologicalpracticeandknowledge.CHM

Norwegian Archaeological Review, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2001ARTICLE

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is the point at which archaeological knowl-edge and values must intersect with extra-disciplinaryconcerns and it is CHM thatthusprovidesa useful focus of analysis to ident ifythe polit ical context sof archaeologicalprac-t ice and theory. The aim of this art icle is toexamine and theorize the role of archaeologyin the stat e, to ident ify the inst it ut ionsandresources of power and authorityt hat inter-sect with and underlie archaeologicalknowl-edge, and to theorize the interrelat ionbetween the history of archaeological theoryandstateandbureaucrat icapparatus.Drawingon the use of archaeology in CHM policy,legislat ion and pract ice in south-east ernAustralia, this art icle shows that throughCHM, archaeology plays a signi� cant rolein arbit rat ingor ‘governing’ the meaningsgiven to past materialculture. More speci� -cally, public policy-makers to understand,contain and govern debates over culturalident ityuse archaeologicalknowledge withinthe CHM process. The consequences of thisfor Indigenous people in south-easternAus-t ralia are that the polit ics of culturalident itybecome de� ned and understood by policy-makers through archaeology, amongst ot herdisciplines. Archaeological knowledge andpractice becomes a target for Indigenousprotest and archaeological responses to thisare themselves const rainedor ‘governed’ bytheposit ionand role of archaeologicalknowl-edge and pract icewithin CHM.

CULTURALHERITAGEMANAGEMENT

Con� ict s over material culture are oft enplayed out in the realm of cultural heritagemanagement (or cultural resource manage-ment , archaeological heritage management ,an so on).CHM is theprocess which, in manycount ries,is underpinnedby internat ionalandnat ional charters of conduct , public policyand legislat ion, all of which aim to conserveand preserve signi� cant aspect s of a nat ion’sculturalherit age. Archaeology, as a form ofexpert ise concerned with underst andingthenature and signi� cance of past material

culture,very often plays a cent ralrole in theprocesses of CHM (see Carman1991, Byrne1993). It is often archaeologist s who areemployed by governmentinst itut ionsto over-see the CHM process, writ e and implementpolicy andadminist erherit agelegislat ion (seeCleere 1989). The involvement of archaeol-ogy in CHM ensures that the contestat ionofarchaeologicalpract iceand interpretat ionsbyIndigenouspeoples and other groups are notreducible, or even solved, by debates overethical pract icewithin archaeology.ThroughCHM, these con� ict s,and any solutions tothem, have a consequence in the arena ofpublic policy and, as such, have a veryconcrete impact on any area of public debatecent red on how past material culture isunderstoodand used.

In part icular, these debates impact onpercept ionsof cultural,social and/ orhistori-cal ident it y, as material culture, de� ned as‘herit age’, plays an importantrole in symbol-izing cultural, social and nat ionalident it ies.As heritage, material culture provides con-crete symbols, links and physical ‘evidence’for the const ruct ion of social and culturalident it iesgrounded in underst andingsof thepast . There is a tension between this use ofmaterialculture and the archaeological con-ceptualizat ionof materialcultureas ‘data’, asthevaluesandmeaningsthataregeneratedbythese uses are very different . Internationally,the discipline of archaeology has come intocon� ictwith a range of interest groups, mostnotably Indigenous peoples, who have con-test ed archaeological interpretat ionsand/ orthe access of archaeological researchers tomaterial culture. These are not con� ictswithin which archaeologist smay be viewedas innocent bystanders, and there is oft enmore at st ake thanthe short -termaccess to asect ion of the archaeological database.Ma-terialculture,as heritage,becomes a resourceor symbolof powerwithinthesecon� ict s.Thisis not to say that archaeological values andknowledge are all powerful within any onecon� ict ;ot herforms of expert ise,such as law,anthropology,history also overlap with ar-

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chaeologicalknowledgeclaims, as do culturalandsocial claims thathaveno academicbasis.While at t imes the discipline may lose powerwithin a part icularcon� ict ,it is importanttounderst andthat ,throughCHM,archaeologicalvalues and knowledge have a public policyconsequence,andareaffordeda part icularsortof recognit ion within the inst itut ions thatconductpublicpolicy. It is interest ingtonote,too, that the one thing that dist inguishesarchaeology from these other knowledgebases is thatarchaeology is the only one thatexplicit ly models it self on, and drawsauthor-ity from, thephysicalsciences.

GOVERNMENTALITY

To elucidate how archaeological knowledgemay become entwinedin public policy issuesand wider polit ical debates over culturalident ity, it is useful to turn to a crit icalreading of Foucault ’s later work on govern-mentality. The governmentality thesis, inshort , argues that expert knowledge in thesocial sciences hasbeen mobilized by bureau-cracies to govern the ‘conduct of conduct ’ofpopulat ions(Foucault1991). By making thesurveillanceof populat ions,and the monitor-ing of their internal st ates, a focus of‘t echnical’ and supposedly neutral experts,the polit ical dimensions of the exercise ofpower and knowledge are obscured. Theliterature on governmentalityextends Fou-cault’s insight s, and talks of t echnologies ofgovernment — the suit e of behaviouralandsocial sciences that have as their object theregularizat ionof the internal st ates of indi-viduals exist ing within de� ned populat ions(see Rose 1991, Dean 1994, Dean & Hindess1998, Dean 1999). As Rose st at es, themobilizat ion of expert knowledge and lan-guage as a technologyof governmentrenders:

the world . . . intelligible and pract icable, anddomainsare const ituted.. .which are amenablet oint ervent ionsby administ rators,polit icians,autho-rit ies and experts . . . (1993:289) .

Archaeology would not appear immediately

to fall into this category, as it is a physicalscience the object of which is materialculture. However, material culture has asymbolic dimension, both in the past and thepresent ,to many different interest groups.

A numberof useful insights into the CHMprocess may be drawn from the governmen-talitylit erature:

— The use of expert knowledge by colonialadminist rat ionsto de� ne and make tract -able ‘native’ populat ions.

— The pronounced and increased emphasisby the modern stat e on the ut ility ofexperts and expert knowledge in dealingwith emerging and large-scale socialproblems.

— The polit ical consequences of pursuing‘value free’ t echnicalknowledge.

— The pastoral care of populat ions — orthingsin thecase of archaeologist s— as avocat ion for the pract it ionersof expertknowledge.

An importantcrit icism of the governmen-talitythesis is the degree to which it t endstoover privilege knowledge as a resource ofpower at the expense of other,more concreteforms of polit ical power. Furthermore,gov-ernmentalitydoes not deal adequately withthe consequences of challenges to expertknowledge by non-expert interest s (Curt is1995, O’Malley 1996, Smith & Campbell1998), a point thatwill be returnedto later.

Whatare importantto examine� rst are thehistorical events and the development of thesocial problemsthatled to themobilizat ionofarchaeologicalknowledge, throughit s role inCHM, as a technologyof government .

ARCHAEOLOGYAS A TECHNOLOGYOF GOVERNMENT

In Australia,archaeologist shave establishedfor themselves a posit ion of power andauthorityin CHM, and in part icularAbori-ginal CHM. Archaeologist s, as recognized‘expert s’ over the disposit ion of materialculture, t end to dominatein policy develop-

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ment , in the administrat ion of heritagelegislat ion and as herit ageconsult ants.CHMhas a relat ively short historyin Aust raliaandit was only in the late 1960s and 1970s thatlegislat ion to protectAboriginalherit agewasenacted in most Australianstat es.

The development of herit age legislat ion,and the ident i� cat ionof government autho-rit ies to prot ect and manage Aboriginalcultural heritage occurred largely throughthe lobbying of archaeologists,and many ofthe herit age acts in south-east ernAustraliawere eitherwrit tenby or were draftedin closeconsultat ionwith archaeologist s. Aboriginalcommunit ies were not involved, nor werethey consult ed over the development ofheritage policy and legislat ion at this t ime(Sullivan 1983, Smith 2000).

While archaeologist shad been calling forlegislat ion since the 1930s to protect Abori-ginal sit es and artefact s,these calls were notheeded for the most part unt il the late 1960s.Why had herit agebecome importantenoughat this t ime for legislat ion and heritageauthorit iesto be broughtinto being? The late1960s and early 1970s saw the coincidentalcollision of a number of important events,event s that led to the development of avocat ional role for archaeologist s and theirknowledge in CHM and which gave themthepastoralcare of Aboriginalmaterialculture.

The 1960s was the decade in whichAustralian archaeology became, as manyhistoriansof thediscipline t radit ionallyde� neit (Murray & White 1981, Golson 1986,McBryde1986, Moser 1995), a ‘professional’discipline. That is, the 1960s saw the devel-opment of the � rst universitydepartmentsinarchaeology largely under the in� uenceofCambridge-t rainedarchaeologist s. By thelate1960s the new graduates and their Cam-bridge-trainedteachers were eager to differ-ent iat ewhat theytermedthe‘amateur’past ofAustralianarchaeologyof thepre-1960s fromthe new professional era. As part of theprocess of developing a new identityfor thediscipline as ‘professional’, many of thesearchaeologist s turned to the theoret ical in-

novat ionsoccurring in NorthAmerica at thist ime (see for instance Megaw 1966, J ones1968, Mulvaney 1971a, b). The ‘NewArchaeology’, with it s underlyingadherenceto logical posit ivism, was imported intoAust ralia,and it s discourse of a ‘scienti� c’,‘relevant ’ and ‘object ive’ archaeology be-came the ‘new’ public face of the ‘new’Aust raliandiscipline.

A new wave of lobbying governmentsbyarchaeologist sto prot ect Aboriginalmaterialculture explicit ly incorporatedthe discourseof processual theory. Archaeologists identi-� ed themselves as ‘st ewards’ of the Abori-ginal past ,a past thattomanywas regardedasdead. By the 1960s it was popularlybelievedthat Aboriginal people and their culture haddied out in south-easternAust ralia.As expertscientist s,archaeologist sarguedthattheyhadthe ability to render this ancient past know-able and underst andable,and to make it‘universally relevant ’ as part of the historyof all ‘mankind’(see Megaw 1966, Mulvaney1968, Allen 1970, Coutt s1977). The claimsof archaeologist s were reinforced by thearchaeological discoveries at Lake Mungo,between1968 and1974. WithinthedisciplineLake Mungo is popularly held as put t ingAust ralian archaeology on the ‘world map’(see McBryde1995) andas havingpushedtheoccupation of Aust ralia back to 30,000 andthen � nally 40,000 years.

Meanwhile, the polit ical campaigns forequity and land rights by the supposedlynon-exist entIndigenouspopulat ionof south-eastern Aust ralia were gaining increasingpublic recognit ion during the 1960s. In 1967Aboriginal people had effect ively gainedcit izenshipand the modern land rightsmove-ment had gained a public pro� le and ident ity.The adopt ionof the Aboriginal � agin 1971symbolized the development of a ‘pan-Aboriginality’ which, while acknowledgingthediversityof Aboriginalculturalexpressionand experiences, unit edAboriginalpeople inopposit ion to non-Aboriginaldiscriminat ionand oppression (Keefe 1988, At twood1989) .It s development was important in publicly

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assert ing,amongotherthings,claims for land,compensat ionand the end of discriminatorypractices.As a tact ic,thedevelopmentof pan-Aboriginalityprovideda coherence and forceto Aboriginalpolit icalact ivism thatcould notbe readily dismissed by policy-makers.

The revival of cultural pride and ident itywas integralto thedevelopmentof Aboriginalpolit ics in the 1960s and 1970s, and it helpednot only to give coherence and unity to thepolit icalmovement,butculturalident ityit selfbecame a resourceof polit icalpower. Claimsto cultural ident it y and survival reinforcedarguments for land right s (Maddock 1983,Miller 1986, Reynolds 1988), which werematerially reinforced by associat ion withculturalherit age sit es and places — ‘40,000years is a long long t ime’ began to appearonland right sbanners.

The social problem that emerged, part icu-larly in south-east ernAust raliawhere Abori-ginal ident ity had long been denied, wassimply how to make sense of these newdemands and claims by the Aboriginalpopulat ion.It is at thispoint thatarchaeology,along with a range of other social sciencedisciplines and humanit ies such as anthro-pology, history,law, andso forth,start edtobemobilized as technologies of governmentaimed at addressing this social ‘problem’. Itwas throughthe advent of CHM thatarchae-ologist s and their knowledge became en-twined with the governance of Aboriginalident ity.P rocessualdiscoursethatst ressedthescient i� c expert ise of archaeology becameembedded in herit agepolicy and legislat ion.The posit ion of archaeology as a technologyof government ,and hence it s prominence inCHM, was based on it s apparent ability toprovide neut ral and value-free knowledgeabout the past .In making the Aboriginalpastknowablein scienti� c Westernterms,archae-ological knowledgewas, in Rose andMiller’st erms,‘renderingthe world thinkable,tamingit s int ractablereality by subject ing it to thedisciplined analysis of thought ’(1992:182) .In ot her words, archaeological knowledge,via it s prominentposit ionin CHM, in making

the past knowable was thus making anyclaims made on the basis of that pastamenable to the intervent ionsof administ ra-tors, polit icians,and other policy-makers.

Furthermore,claims made about the pastand thosebased on associat ionswith heritagesit es and places became reducible, throughCHM, to technicalissues of sit e management .Thus, any wider polit ical claims aboutcultural ident ity made on the basis ofassociat ion to herit ageplaces were de-polit i-cized through the sit e management process.By technologizingarchaeologicalknowledge,con� ict sover the interpretat ionof the pastcould be reduced to sit e-based con� ict s.Thewider implicat ions of any con� ict over themeaning of the past could then either be setaside by governmentsas a con� ictsigni� cantonly between archaeologist sand IndigenousAust ralians,or issues could be taken up bygovernments, where useful, to regulate thepolit ical legit imacy of Aboriginalinterest s.

Two instances elucidate this point andillust ratehow archaeologicalknowledge wasexplicit ly used in the governance of Abori-ginal culturalident ity,which in turnregulatedthe legit imacy with which Aboriginal polit i-cal demands were viewed by the generalpublic.

In the late 1970s Tasmanian Aboriginalpeople were popularlybelieved to have diedout with the death in 1876 of Truganini,theso-called ‘Last Tasmanian’. Archaeologicalknowledge and interpretat ionsof the pastwere popularly taken up by the Tasmaniangovernmentpublicly to de-legit imize a seriesof Aboriginalland claims in thatst ate(Smith1996). Archaeological knowledge was de-ployed (albeit without the consent of thearchaeologist sinvolved) publicly to call intoquest ionthelegit imacyof theculturalident ityof Indigenous Tasmaniansand subsequent lythe land right sclaims in that st at e.

In another instance, the Whit lam FederalLabor government in the mid-1970s invokedarchaeologicalresearchat Lake Mungoto fanpublic popularsupportfor the int roduct ionofinnovat ive and cont roversial Federal land

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right slegislat ion(Smith1996). Thediscoveryat Lake Mungoof 40,000 yearsof historywasut ilized by legislators to legit imize Federalgovernment policy of returningland on thebasis thatIndigenousAust raliansdid have anancient culturethathad to be recognized andrespect ed.

IMPLICATIONSAND CONSEQUENCESFOR INDIGENOUSCULTURALP OLITICSAND ARCHAEOLOGICALP RACTICEIN SOUTH-EASTERNAUSTRALIA

The implicat ionsof the ut ilizat ionof archae-ology as a technology of government aresimply that con� ict sover access to sites andartefact s have wider implicat ions thanwhether or not archaeologists will ensuretheircontinuedaccess to data.Theframingofethical debates about ‘who owns the past ’,which have dominated much of the non-technical CHM literature, has tended toreinforce the idea that con� ict is sit e basedand has obscured the issue of cont rol.IndigenousAust raliansarguethattheyshouldcont rol the management of their culturalheritage (for example Langford 1983, Four-mile 1989, TALC 1996). In these debatestheissue of cont rolis not only aboutensuringthatthe appropriat eculturalpract ices are under-t aken at sites, but it is also about cont rollingan important resource of power in negotia-t ions with policy-makers over the legit imacyof Aboriginalland claims.

In recent years Aust ralianarchaeologist shave been act ive in their recognit ion of t helegit imacy of Indigenous people to cont rolthe management of t heir herit age. TheAust ralian Archaeological Associat ion(AAA) has adopted a code of ethics whichin effect gives Indigenous communit ies t heright t o veto any research and recognizes t heimport ance of informed consult at ion overthe management of herit age (AAA 1994).However, Indigenous crit icism of archaeol-ogy remains.This crit icism remains, in part ,for two reasons. F irst , the failure of Aus-

t ralianarchaeology to underst andthe widerpolit ical context in which it s knowledge isut ilized by governments and t heir policy-makers, and thusa failure to underst andthereal polit icalconsequences thatarchaeologi-cal knowledge can have for Indigenouspeople. Secondly, despit e the rhetoric ofinformed consult at ion,archaeologicalknow-ledge and pract ice is st ill framed by pro-cessual theory and discourse. This meansthat knowledge developed out side of alogical posit ivistframeworkhas lit t lechanceof being legit imized within the conceptualboundaries set by processual science. Sowhile Aust ralian archaeologist s acknowl-edge at one level the intellectual right s ofIndigenous people to part icipatein negot ia-t ions over the interpretat ionof the past , onanother level archaeologist s act to denythose right s by set t ing the intellectualboundariesfor any negot iat ion.

Further,archaeology it self is const rainedby itsown role as a technologyof governmentand cannot readily relinquish it s debt toprocessual science. The power base ofarchaeology rest s in it s usefulness as atechnology of government that has becomeembeddedin it s vocat ionalrole withinCHM.One of the consequences of this is thatarchaeological theory and pract ice havethemselves become ‘governed’ or regulatedby the role in which they have been cast . Toabandon the discourse of processual theoryand archaeological science is to jeopardizethepower baseof archaeologywithinCHM,apoint not admit ted within postprocessualtheory. If this is done, then access toarchaeological data also becomes jeopar-dized. It is no coincidence that ,in Aust ralia,any theoret icaldebatethat at t empt sto moveus beyond processualism is swift ly margin-alized (see Burke et al. 1994, Smith 1998 forfurtherdiscussion of this point ).

ARCHAEOLOGYAS A CONTESTEDTECHNOLOGYOF GOVERNMENT

This does not mean to say, however, that

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archaeologyas a technologyof governmentisall powerful and not open to contest .Indeed,archaeologicalknowledge and it s posit ion ofprivilege have been successfully challengedvia the CHM process it self. In 1995 theTasmanianAboriginalLand Council (TALC)successfully pet it ioned the Tasmaniangov-ernment for the return of art efacts held forresearch purposes by academics at La TrobeUniversity. TALC was able to obtain thereturnon a technicalityof law under the veryTasmanianherit age laws that had privilegedarchaeological access to data.The archaeol-ogist s in this case were impotent in arguingfor the right s to retain their data. Althoughtheyinvoked all theold discourseof scient i� cright s to data, the universal applicabilityoftheir research, and that polit ical and culturalagendas should not win over science, and soforth, they were not list ened to by thepolicy-makers. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere(Smith 1999), the argumentsinvoked by thearchaeologist s involved in this case couldonly draw on processual discourse — as toimplementanyotherform of argumentwouldhave placed the archaeologist sout sidepolicyandconceptualboundariesset for such debateby the CHM process.

In t his case TALC had been able tosubvert the technologizing role of archae-ology. They were able to do so not bycontest ingarchaeologicalknowledge, but bysubvert ing the technical power base ofarchaeology.By concent rat ingon a t echnicalissue of law, TALC was able t o regain t heart efact sat the cent re of the row. By doingso, theygained a tangiblepolit icaladvantageover archaeologist s, but , more important ly,they gained an advantagein wider debatesconcerning their legit imacy to cont rol theircultural ident ity. What they gained cont rolover was not simply a load of art efact s,butmaterial object s which had become impor-t ant not only as symbols of their cult uralident ity, but as symbols of power in t hewider polit ics of cultural ident ity. Thecont rol over material culture via CHM isnot simply about cont rollingthe meaning of

the past , but is also about cont rollingresources of power in the present .

CONCLUSION

Material cultureprovides an importantsym-bolic funct ion in providing tangible connec-t ions back to the past , and in reaf� rmingaspects of cultural, social and nat ionalident ity. However, as this art icle suggest s,the control of material culture is also animportantresourceof power. In south-east ernAust ralia,at least , the possession and cont rolof material culture and the ability to de� neand regulate it s meanings have becomesigni� cant resources not only in Aboriginalcultural polit ics, but also in the polit icalnegotiat ionsof archaeologist sin maintainingaccess to data and in de� ning our owndisciplinaryident ityas a ‘science’.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An earlier version of thispaperwas presentedat the 1999 Chacmool Conference, ‘Indigen-ous Archaeologies’, and was reproduced inthe conference proceedings. Gary Campbell,as always, read and commented on draft softhis paper.

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