By 1910, archaeologists abandoned search for sites in association with extinct animals.

1. Early study of Australian ethnography focused on definition of Aborigines as among “the most primitive tribes” known. • Baldwin Spencer and F.G. Gillen (1899) The Native Tribes of Central Austraila. • Spencer (1901:12) described Aborigines as “a relic of the early childhood of mankind left stranded…in a low condition of savagery.” • Early archaeological research did not find evidence of humans and prehistoric animals. • Moreover, the artifacts appeared to differ little from those still used by living Aborigines.

2. By 1910, archaeologists abandoned search for sites in association with extinct animals. • It was assumed that they arrived recently and changed little. • 1910-195s, archaeologists were “secure in the knowledge that Aborigines were an unchanging people, with an unchanging technology.” • The “unchanging savage” was congruent with denigration of Aborigines and greatly inhibited the development of prehistoric archaeology in Australia. • The first archaeology department of Australia was established in 1948 and focused on Europe and the Middle East.

3. Norman Tindale (1900-1993) starting in 1929, excavated in South Australia and used changes in tool types from stratified deposits to question the static model. • “Before Devon Downs, Arustralian archaeology did not exist as a discipline…” ANU obituary. • Tindale preserved charcoal samples, the dating method had yet to be developed. • Fred D. McCarthy (1905-1997) made similar finds in 1935. • Both attributed change to shifting groups replacing one another. Tindale linked his sequence to Birdsell’s theory of Australian origins that was based on skeletal material.

4. Tindale’s early career was as an entomologist and naturalist. • 1921, Tindale went to Groote Eylandt, Gulf of Carpentaria. • 12 months of fieldwork. “[L]ongest period to that date spent by a scientist in the company of Aboriginal people.” • One of Tindale’s informants introduced him to the concept of bounded tribal territories “beyond which it was dangerous to move without adequate recognition”. • When Tindale’s maps were prepared for publication, Edgar Waite insisted that Tindale remove the tribal boundaries. • Waite argued that Aborigines could not occupy defined territories. Tindale realized it was time for a new paradigm for describing Aborigines.

5. It was not until John Mulvaney’s appointment to the history department at University of Melbourne, 1953 that Australian archaeology really developed. • Most of the archaeologists were trained under Grahame Clark at Cambridge. • The work of these archaeologists soon revealed 40,000 years of occupation. • Since 1950s, archaeologists have documented many changes in ancient Aboriginal material culture. • Trigger observes that today Aboriginal culture is drawn upon heavily as part of Australian national identity—much more so than in the United States. • This has led to an emphasis on recognizing developments, and in particular the degree to which Aborigines managed and altered aspects of environment. • The “firestick farmers” model is very far removed from seeing them as relict Upper Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherers.

6. New Zealand • Up to 1847, warfare between Maori and settlers. Additional conflict in 1860s. • Resistance earned the Maori some respect. • 1954, first full time appointed university archaeologist.

7. 1843, European settlers observed stone tools associated with extinct Moa bird. • 1870s, Julius von Haast (1822-1887) • Influenced by Lyell and Lubbock regarding antiquity of humans in Europe. • argued that Moa-hunters were vanished Palaeolithic people. • Argued that Moa-hunters were distinct from Neolithic Maori. • Had to admit to similarities in material culture of Moa-hunters and Maori.

8. After von Haast, most emphasis on studying origins of Maori. Work influenced by mythology and folklore. • Stimulated by a desire to record Maori culture before it largely disappeared. • 1898-1915, Percy Smith attempted to articulate Maori myths with a history of their settlement of New Zealand. • Island originally settled by seafarers from India • Maruiwi were later conquered by Maori • 1916, Elsdon Best identified Maruiwi with the South Island Moa-hunters. • Maori, it was argued on the basis of oral tradition arrived around AD 950-1150. • http://rsnz.natlib.govt.nz/volume/rsnz_48/rsnz_48_00_004930.html • This model was widely accepted, even by Maori. • “The Maori were portrayed as being recent colonists in New Zealand, who had seized it from an earlier, culturally less developed people. This suggested that they had little more historical claim to New Zealand than the European settlers had. It also assumed that ethnology and oral traditions revealed all that needed to be known about Maori prehistory” • 1920s, Henry D. Skinner examined Moa-hunter sites on South Island. Employed a holistic approach that included archaeological, ethnographic, physical, and linguistic data long with oral history. Aimed to debunk the Maruiwi myth and establish Maori as “first people of the land” • Primary emphasis was on a consideration of economic impact of the extinction of the moa. • His work helped expand archaeological research. • Up until recently, nearly all work has focused on the Moa-hunters. Now there is more interest in ancient Maori.

9. Sub-Saharan Africa • 1776, Andrew Sparrman first known archaeological excavations in African continent. • Great Fish River, South Africa. • Argued for the presence of an earlier and more powerful race than the modern degraded savages. • 1858, Thomas Bowker collected stone tools at mouth of Great Fish River. • 1905, G.W. Stow published a migrationist prehistory of southern Africa. • 1890s saw the beginnings of systematic archaeology in sub-Saharan Africa. • Scholars regarded the region as a “living museum of the human past.” • Far greater cultural diversity and range of technological developments than North America. • Ranged from hunter-gatherers, to Iron working peoples, to large Kingdoms. • General assertion that, “the African has never made an even fourteenth-rate piece of cloth or pottery”. • The archaeological record was in stark contrast to this assertion.

11. Stone ruins in Zimbabwe produced a controversy similar to the mounds of Ohio. • European investigators claimed that the ruins were proof that whites colonized southern Africa in prehistory. • Early beliefs that Kind Solomon built the structures. • 1869, H. M. Walmsley wrote a novel The Ruined Cities of Zululand. • 1871, geologist Carl Mauch was the first European to visit Great Zimbabwe. Concluded that it was the lost palace of the Queen of Sheba. • Great Zimbabwe became a symbol of justice for European colonization. The white race returning to land it formerly controlled. • Theodore Bent (1852-1897) undertook excavations in 1890s. • Excavations revealed a Bantu occupation with foreign trade goods. • Bent claimed that the ruins were constructed by a “northern race” that migrated into the region from Arabia during biblical times. • Astronomical orientations were employed to date the ruins somewhere between 1000-2000 BC.

12. W.G. Neal and Richard Hall produced The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia, the first general survey of the archaeology of the region. • Hall was appointed Curator of Great Zimbabwe. • He began excavations and removal of “the filth and decadence of the Kaffir occupation” • Defined three architectural styles and claimed these were evidence of degeneration. • The early occupation, he argued, was a Phoenician colony. • David Randall-MacIver (1873-1945) and Gertrude Caton Thompson (1893-1985) both carried out excavations. • Randall MacIver was trained by Flinders Petrie • Randall MacIver and Caton Thompson employed sophisticated excavation techniques. • The demonstrated that the site was of Bantu origin and dated to the Christian era. • “Both Randall-MacIver and Caton Thompson offered, as proof of the relatively recent construction of Great Zimbabwe, that it was shoddily constructed, so poorly that in Caton Thompsons’s opinion it could not have remained standing for several thousand years.”