Abstract

The nature of Aboriginal peoples’ relationships to stone artefacts has changed since the 1960s in southeast Australia—now recognisably more social, spiritual, and immediate than temporally distant, historical, or technological. Drawing from published accounts and on personal experience, I suggest that this change, while not universal, is directly linked to compliance or developer-funded archaeology as a dominant mode of archaeological investigation and Indigenous engagement. Archaeological surveys and excavations have enabled Aboriginal individuals and groups to return to parts of Country not visited for one or more generations and thereby they have been able to renegotiate the contemporary meanings of and emotional responses to stone artefacts found there. Such remaking of meanings is being done in ways that contrast with the dominant and disenfranchising Western scientific values typically ascribed to cultural objects by archaeologists and government cultural heritage laws and regulations. In this paper, I explore the opportunities and challenges faced by those concerned with more-than-scientific meanings of stone artefacts. More generally, and based on the evidence presented here, I argue that Indigenous ontologies of care now stand in opposition to state sanctioned ontologies of harm.

摘要

自1960年代以来，澳大利亚东南部的土著人民与人造石的关系的性质发生了变化，如今，人们认识到，与暂时的历史，技术或技术相比，现在的社会，精神和即时性更高。根据已发表的报告和个人经验，我认为，这种变化虽然不是普遍的，但与合规性或开发商资助的考古学直接相关，这是考古学调查和土著参与的主要方式。考古调查和发掘工作使原住民个人和团体得以返回一代或几代人未曾拜访过的乡村地区，因此他们能够重新协商那里发现的石器的当代意义和情感回应。进行这种意义上的重构的方式与通常由考古学家和政府文化遗产法律和法规赋予文化对象的，占支配地位的和剥夺了西方科学价值的方式形成对比。在本文中，我探索了那些与石制品具有非科学意义有关的人们所面临的机遇和挑战。更笼统地说，根据这里提供的证据，我认为，土著护理本体论现在与国家批准的危害本体论相反。