A special lecture presented by Professor Ian McNiven (Monash University) in conjunction with the Archaeological and Anthropological Society of Victoria.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, a vibrant antiquarian culture developed in colonial Victoria in southeast Australia to understand the antiquity of Aboriginal occupation. This culture centred on Melbourne which became a major metropolitan centre of intellectualism in the wake of the 1850s gold rush. Set within the context of colonial invasion of Indigenous lands and peoples, Victoria’s antiquarians developed a form of archaeological inquiry heavily influenced by ethnography and the pernicious British anthropological paradigm of social evolutionism. The outcome was interest in a broad range of site types and stone artefacts with results that sometimes contradicted primitivist expectations of anthropological theory. An ethnographically informed archaeology provided scope to reveal artefacts (e.g., stone axes) that differed to the present, and certain site types (e.g., “oven mounds”) that excavation revealed to have formed recently through cultural “innovation”. Victorian antiquarians developed a diversity of approaches to Aboriginal antiquity with variable legacies in shaping Australian archaeology in the twentieth century. 

When: 6.30-7.30pm (Melbourne time / AEST), Thursday 20 May 2021

Where: Online via Zoom, and in person at the Kathleen Syme Library and Community Centre, 251 Faraday Street, Carlton, Victoria (limited numbers)

To attend in person, bookings are essential (limited numbers): https://aasv21-03.eventbrite.com.au

To attend via Zoom, register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUpc-2orTgrE9GfJvpuBLtvhJAMHE-b0I_b

For more information: http://aasv.org.au/