Flinders Archaeology Blog

Check one two, check one two, is this thing working? Sorry, old person’s joke. This is my first blog.

I’ve signed up for something as exciting as it is daunting. A directed studies project which will form a small part of  work by Dr Mick Morrison, of Flinders University, into how the ethical standards of archaeologists have been affected by the development boom and the rise of cultural heritage management (CHM). It is a qualitative research project based on around six interviews with willing victims; practicing consulting archaeologists.

On the daunting side, I’m faced with the prospect of playing a small part in an analytical and critical project about the industry in which I seek future employment. But my career in archaeology has waited two and a half decades to get off the ground since I finished my undergraduate work, so there is no hurry to get a job.

Dr Morrison  has identified a gap in the literature, and general discussion, on the topic and has defined the project thus: “Archaeology and the development boom: an analysis of professional ethics and standards in Australian archaeology’’.

Dr Morrison himself pulls no punches in his criticism of the lack of public debate about the direction of the profession in the wake of the development boom, writing in a 2011 blog; “I sometime wonder whether archaeology as a discipline in Australia has been bought”. He concludes that the boom has been good for employment prospects and university enrolments in archaeology, but there is doubt that it has been good for heritage management and our knowledge of the past.

I have begun by reviewing the literature, such as it is, over a 30 year period. While since the early 1980s there has been sporadic comment about the nature of CHM verses academic research, it is almost entirely focussed on the pressures faced by those in the former rather than the standard of their work. (Practicing archaeology in front of an advancing bulldozer is a frightening image used by more than one critic.)

If anything, by outlining the seriously compromised conditions some in CHM must work under, the literature has so far only set out the need for the sort of analysis proposed by Dr Morrison, to determine what the outcomes have been on professional and ethical standards.

In my next blog I will try to summarise what critics have identified are the problems faced by many CHM practitioners.

Miles Kemp

It’s time for another fantastic post about my Directed Study on George Fife Angas. Today we are going to delve into one of the interesting events from his life that not only shaped how people viewed him but also how he shaped South Australia. As you might have gathered from the title, Angas had a little bit to do with the German heritage that we see throughout the state. Some of you reading this may have been to Hahndorf, a little town south east of Adelaide and one of Australia’s oldest surviving German settlements.

The German Arms Hotel, Hahndorf (source: australia.com)

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because without George Fife Angas none of our German heritage would be present in the state. He paid the way out of his own pocket for the Germans to travel and settle within the state, approximately 20,000 pounds, which wasn’t just chump change back in 1838. I guess now is the time to lay out the history of how this act came about and how prolonged the process was.

It all started when Angas was approached by a German religious group who were persecuted in their country. Because Angas and his family had been in a similar situation in the past he agreed to help them move to South Australia and settle on land that he owned himself. After failing to get the South Australian Company to pay for their way over, he finally agreed to pay out of his own pocket. Of course, this agreement had the German population paying him back after they had settled, which they did with interest, but nevertheless to pay that amount of money for a group you don’t know is admirable. However, this was not the end of the issue because the German government were reluctant to give the people their travel papers so that they could leave the country. After all of this was finally settled George Fife Angas was still willing to pay for their journey to South Australia, and, even though it sent him almost broke, they finally got to their new home.

I found this to be interesting and it really hit at the core of the way that a lot of history books have portrayed him: A man who would go out of his way to help people in need no matter the cost. 

This is an update to my last posting for the analysis of artefacts from Gledswood shelter 1.

After receiving a large box of artefacts from excavation Square B0 in mid-April, I  set myself to the task of sorting through the material. This has involved working through each excavation unit (Spit) identifying the artefact types, including cores (complete or broken), hammer stones, grinding stones, and flakes (complete or broken).  For a broken flake I am identifying whether it is longitudinally or transversely broken and whether it is a distal, proximal, medial, and left or right fragment.

The artefact types are then categorised by raw material type. For example, quartz flakes are grouped together, transversely broken distal chert flakes are grouped together, and so on. The groupings from each spit are bagged and labelled in preparation for the next stage, which will include measuring, weighing and recording.

I am now about 45% of the way through this initial sorting phase before progressing to the measuring and recording stage. With each box of artefacts I open there is often something interesting and possibly unique to the spit. For example, Spit 16 contains a fragment of pestle which has been used for grinding materials which could have included ochre, clay, charcoal, seeds or other plant materials.

The spits towards the bottom of the excavation square (early Holocene in age) contain mostly quartzite artefacts. By around halfway up the sequence there is a sudden change and quartzite disappears from the assemblage and clear crystalline quartz becomes the dominant raw material. Further up the excavation this then changes to a mix of white, white grey and clear quartz. Why these changes have occurred will be considered as part of my final report.

A pebble used both as a hammerstone and also as a core for the removal of flakes

Throughout the Square B0 assemblage there is only a small percentage of chert and mudstone and thus far only two examples of chalcedony (both from the one spit).

A broken chalcedony flake with retouch

A small percentage of the flaked artefacts exhibit retouching along their margins. Towards the bottom of the sequence they are very rare and only seen on quartzite flakes. Towards the middle of the sequence retouching is also seen on chert, chalcedony and quartz flakes.

A broken chert flake with retouch

As more data become available through the detailed recording it will  become easier to determine when, and to what extent, these changes in material type have occurred through time. However, there are hundreds of artefacts and each one has to be analysed to determine how it was made. There is a high volume of quartz, which is the most difficult raw material for which determine the process of reduction. My only hope is that I can manage to stay sane through all of the analysis and recording.