‘Prehistory’ and the Indigenous Archaeology of Missions and Reserves in Australia and New Guinea

Abstract

Abstract Archaeological traditions in Australia and New Guinea have taken quite different theoretical pathways. Melanesian archaeology emphasizes dynamic historical processes of internally derived change in ‘agricultural’ societies. In contrast, Australian archaeology has historically emphasized ecological models of stable ‘hunter-gatherer’ societies. This chapter revisits this division in comparing the emergence of mission archaeology in the two regions. Mission archaeology in Australia is well developed and multifaceted, maturing out of earlier settler colonial narratives of rupture between the precontact and postcontact past of Aboriginal societies. In the New Guinea region, missions have been largely ignored in archaeology or have been explored with reference to the long-term histories of dynamic cultural change and living social landscapes. This chapter asks whether the major theoretical divide in Australian and New Guinean archaeology is reproduced anew in archaeologies of the recent past. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the future of mission archaeology outside of the fetters of traditional divisions within Australian archaeology and in light of developments of the more theoretically diverse, ontologically inclusive, and politically agile tenets of ‘Indigenous archaeology’.