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Displaying results 161 to 170 of 213.
Lithics in the Land of the Lightning Brothers »
The Archaeology of Wardaman Country, Northern Territory
Authored by: Chris Clarkson
Publication date: September 2007
Lithics in the Land of the Lightning Brothers skilfully integrates a wide range of data-raw-material procurement, tool design, reduction and curation, patterns of distribution and association-to reveal the major outlines of Wardaman prehistory. At the same time, the book firmly situates data and methods in broad theoretical context. In its regional scope and thorough technological approach, this book exemplifies the best of recent lithic analysis and hunter-gatherer archaeology.
Any archaeologist who confronts the challenge of classifying retouched stone tools should consult this volume for a clear demonstration of reduction intensity as a source of size and form variation independent of “type.” Yet the demonstration is not merely methodological; Clarkson shows how the measurement of reduction intensity informs analysis of technological diversity and other cultural practices.
In Clarkson’s hands, Wardaman prehistory emerges as a particular record of the human past. Yet the book is also a case study in prolonged cultural response to environmental conditions and the way in which cultures persist and reproduce themselves over long spans of time. The result is an analytical tour de force that will guide hunter-gatherer archaeology in Australia and elsewhere for years to come.
'The Axe Had Never Sounded' »
Place, people and heritage of Recherche Bay, Tasmania
Authored by: John Mulvaney
Publication date: August 2007
‘This book meets well the triple promise of the title – the inter-connections of place, people and heritage. John Mulvaney brings to this work a deep knowledge of the history, ethnography and archaeology of Tasmania. He presents a comprehensive account of the area’s history over the 200 years since French naval expeditions first charted its coastlines. The important records the French officers and scientists left of encounters with Aboriginal groups are discussed in detail, set in the wider ethnographic context and compared with those of later expeditions.
‘The topical issues of understanding the importance of Recherche Bay as a cultural landscape and its protection and future management inform the book. Readers will be challenged to consider the connections between people and place, and how these may constitute significant national heritage.’
Professor Isabel McBryde, AO, FRAI, FAHA, FSA
The Australian National University
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
Customary Land Tenure & Registration in Australia and Papua New Guinea »
Anthropological Perspectives
Edited by: James Weiner, Katie Glaskin
Publication date: June 2007
The main theme of this volume is a discussion of the ways in which legal mechanisms, such as the Land Groups Incorporation Act (1974) in PNG, and the Native Title Act (1993) in Australia, do not, as they purport, serve merely to identify and register already-existing customary indigenous landowning groups in these countries. Because the legislation is an integral part of the way in which indigenous people are defined and managed in relation to the State, it serves to elicit particular responses in landowner organisation and self-identification on the part of indigenous people. These pieces of legislation actively contour the progressive evolution of landowner social, territorial and political organisation at all levels in these nation states. The contributors to this volume provide in-depth anthropological case studies of social structural and cultural transformations engendered by the confrontation between states, developers and indigenous communities over rights to customarily owned land.
A Passion for Policy »
Essays in Public Sector Reform
Edited by: John Wanna
Publication date: June 2007
This collection of papers is concerned with issues of policy development, practice, implementation and performance. It represents a range of views about diverse subjects by individuals who are, for the most part, in the public eye and who have the capacity to influence the shape and the reality of public policy. Each has a story to tell, with insights that can only be drawn by those working at the ‘sharp end’ of policy.
Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform: Volume 8, Number 3, 2001 »
Publication date: April 2007
Agenda is a refereed, ECONLIT-indexed and RePEc-listed journal of the College of Business and Economics, The Australian National University. Launched in 1994, Agenda provides a forum for debate on public policy, mainly (but not exclusively) in Australia and New Zealand. It deals largely with economic issues but gives space to social and legal policy and also to the moral and philosophical foundations and implications of policy.
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Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform: Volume 14, Number 1, 2007 »
Edited by: Franco Papandrea, Graeme Wells
Publication date: April 2007
Agenda is a refereed, ECONLIT-indexed and RePEc-listed journal of the College of Business and Economics, The Australian National University. Launched in 1994, Agenda provides a forum for debate on public policy, mainly (but not exclusively) in Australia and New Zealand. It deals largely with economic issues but gives space to social and legal policy and also to the moral and philosophical foundations and implications of policy.
Subscribe to the Agenda Alerting service if you wish to be advised on forthcoming or new issues.
Download for free
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Pieces of the Vanuatu Puzzle »
Archaeology of the North, South and Centre
Authored by: Stuart Bedford
Publication date: February 2007
Pieces of the Vanuatu Puzzle presents the results of the most intensive and widespread archaeological investigations in Vanuatu for more than 30 years. For the first time the results of extensive excavations carried out on three islands in the archipelago are published. The sites span from the period of initial Lapita settlement through to later cultural transformations. The research has brought greater clarity to the early history of the Vanuatu archipelago and has wider implications for the region in general particularly in terms of how processes of cultural change are explained.
It is an essential reference work both for those archaeologists working in the western Pacific but also for those who deal with material culture generally and pottery more specifically.
What's Changing: Population Size or Land-Use Patterns? »
The archaeology of Upper Mangrove Creek, Sydney Basin
Authored by: Val Attenbrow
Publication date: February 2007
The Upper Mangrove Creek catchment was an ideal locality in which to undertake field investigation into Aboriginal use of the coastal hinterland. The area, 101 square kilometres in size, is rich in sites that provided significant archaeological evidence of Aboriginal use of the coastal hinterland. The catchment became the focus of major archaeological salvage work in the late 1970s, prior to the construction of the Mangrove Creek Dam. Further research, undertaken by Val Attenbrow, on the total catchment expanded upon the results of earlier work. This monograph describes the later research project and summarises the salvage program results. This evidence is used by the author to explore current research issues relating to the interpretation of the mid- to late-Holocene archaeological record in Australia, particularly quantitative changes relating to population numbers and aspects of human behaviour, such as risk management, subsistence, mobility and land-use patterns.
Aboriginal History Journal: Volume 31 »
Publication date: 2007
Since 1977, the journal Aboriginal History has pioneered interdisciplinary historical studies of Australian Aboriginal people’s and Torres Strait Islander’s interactions with non-Indigenous peoples. It has promoted publication of Indigenous oral traditions, biographies, languages, archival and bibliographic guides, previously unpublished manuscript accounts, critiques of current events, and research and reviews in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, sociology, linguistics, demography, law, geography and cultural, political and economic history.
Aboriginal History Inc. is a publishing organisation based in the Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
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Coastal Themes »
An Archaeology of the Southern Curtis Coast, Queensland
Authored by: Sean Ulm
Publication date: December 2006
Coastal archaeology in Australia differs in many respects from that of other areas, with the potential to examine relatively fine-scale variation. Nevertheless, there has been a general tendency in Australian archaeology to play down the variability and to subsume the evidence into broader homogenising models of Aboriginal cultural change. This case study clearly and self-consciously addresses the need to focus on local and regional patterns before moving on to more general levels of explanation.
Coastal Themes builds a detailed chronology of Aboriginal occupation for the southern Curtis Coast in Queensland. Innovative analyses refine radiocarbon dates and explore discard behaviours and post-depositional processes affecting the integrity of coastal archaeological sites. The resulting insights highlight major changes in Aboriginal use of this region over the last 5,000 years and disjunctions between the course of occupation in this and adjacent regions.