constructing hunter gatherers

8/12/2019 CONSTRUCTING Hunter Gatherers

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69Number 67, December 2008

CONSTRUCTING HUNTER-GATHERERS, CONSTRUCTINGPREHISTORY:Australia and New GuineaHarry Lourandos

Abstract

This paper considers the ways hunter-gatherers have been

constructed in Australian archaeology, how these have

changed through time, and why a rather different approach

has been taken in New Guinea archaeology. The underlying

traditional approach or paradigm in Australian archaeology is

discussed, along with its critics, and the ways these tensions

have played themselves out over the years, to influence the

creation of prehistory.

Introduction

Many years ago now, in early 1979, Sandra Bowdler and I were

discussing a recent publication of hers (Bowdler 1976). We were

then both teaching at the University of New England in distant

Armidale. In this paper Sandra had taken an innovative approach

to the archaeology of the south coast of New South Wales, by

interpreting the information through an anthropological,

engendered lens. Sandra joked, and I can still remember it well, at

how she had been advised, by a then prominent Canberra-based

archaeologist, not to publish a paper of this kind. Why was this

so, we might wonder now, close to 30 years later? Why was itthought inappropriate to discuss Indigenous Australian history

in socio-political terms?

Debates: Hunter/Farmer

Hunter-gatherer, farmer this contrast defines the early

chapters of world prehistories; this contrast also defines and

separates the prehistories of both Australia and New Guinea,

and their pre-colonial populations. But what lies behind

this classic dichotomy? And why are the two hunter and

farmer almost always so contrasted? Here I look for answers

to these conundrums and the ways the terms, the concepts,

have been constructed by archaeologists. To do so I will focus

especially upon hunter-gatherer and its different uses in

both regions.

In both Australia and New Guinea essentially different

paradigms, or schools of thought, underlie the traditional

constructions in archaeology of hunter-gatherers and their

respective prehistories. These approaches, or paradigms, are

drawn from the central debate in anthropology/archaeology:

nature versus nurture; where biological forces are contrasted

with socio-cultural. Australian hunter-gatherers, it can be

argued, have been constructed traditionally, in archaeology,

largely within a biological paradigm (nature), while those of New

Guinea, and its prehistory, are defined also in socio-cultural

terms (nurture). That is, they have been shaped largely on eitherside of the divide.

This basic division, also, echoes two core debates in world

archaeology human evolution and socio-cultural transformation

(which includes the origins of agriculture). Hunter-gatherers in

Australia (and elsewhere), it is argued here, have been shaped

largely within a biological/ecological framework, while those of

New Guinea have been formed within the agricultural debate.

In the former, hunters emerge from and maintain themselves

within nature, while in the latter, they transformnature. The

underlying approaches, or paradigms, guiding these twin debates,and keeping them apart, however, are rather different. Biological

evolution, of course, has a neo-Darwinian base, while socio-

cultural transformation is informed by a fist full of approaches,

from biological/ecological to socio-political and beyond. Herein

lies the crux of the problem and the source of the tensions

underlying the twin debates. Here also lies the reason for the

split in the types of hunter-gatherer constructed separately

for Australia and New Guinea. As pre-colonial Indigenous

Australians were classified, under colonial regimes and largely

ever since, as notagricultural, they fell outside the agricultural

debate and into the biological box. These general issues were

well illustrated when the two great debates emerged anew withinAustralia as the intensification debate.

Australian Stability Models

The traditional model and paradigm can clearly be traced

back to the work of Birdsell (1953, 1957, 1968, 1971, 1977) an

American physical anthropologist working with Aboriginal

communities and Aboriginal ethnography. Birdsell argued that

Aboriginal population levels were largely controlled by climate

as measured by rainfall. His observations were drawn from

ethnographic information, and he viewed this close relationship

between climate and population as sustained through time. He

saw the Australian continent as filled to saturation point by

founding populations, a rapid process of a few thousand years,

followed by a stabilisation of Aboriginal population, closely tied

to environmental fluctuations. Socio-cultural factors played little

role in altering these conditions.

This influential model, therefore, was essentially

environmentally-deterministic, assigning to socio-cultural factors

a secondary role. The model retained its basic form despite being

conceived prior to knowledge of Australias Pleistocene history,

when the continent was thought to have been occupied only

about 6000 or so years ago (Birdsell 1977).

Birdsells model was essentially a reworking of the traditional

colonisation model of North America to fit Australian conditions;

and it drew upon Australian ethnographic information toadd empirical support for both. His model was set within

the dominant North American paradigm in anthropology/

archaeology (cultural ecology), an outgrowth of biological81 Outlook Crescent, Bardon, QLD 4065, [email protected]


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Constructing Hunter-Gatherers, Constructing Prehistory: Australia and New Guinea

evolutionary theory and closely tied to ecology (Steward 1955).

From these origins, Birdsells model viewed both the natural

environment and society as largely self-regulating systems,

and in these ways, Aboriginal Australian demography as

homeostatically regulated:

It is now realized that these economically simple peoples, and

all of the Pleistocene occupants of Greater Australia, lived in fact

in a skilfully regulated state of homeostasis. Such people were in

equilibrium with their environment and this balanced condition

was maintained, despite some fluctuations, by a complex series of

actions, beliefs and traditions (Birdsell 1977:149).

A hunting and collecting economy of the most generalized sort

was present throughout the entire continent and the material

culture upon which extractive efficiency was based showed only

minor regional variations (Birdsell 1957:53).

This ecologically-informed model and paradigm can be closelylinked to the still-dominant paradigm in North American

archaeology, which is often referred to as the processual school.

The latter is itself a development from cultural ecology. Australian

archaeology, right from its modern beginnings, therefore,

inherited both the dominant North American paradigm and

the stability model (Birdsell), both firmly set within ecological

theory. This paradigm and model continue to strongly influence

Australian archaeology and therefore can be viewed as the

traditional paradigm and model.

These influences also are clearly recognisable in the

pioneering work of Rhys Jones (1977a), who rejected the idea

that Aboriginal technology, for example, could have altered thesteady-state relationship between Aboriginal population levels

and environment throughout Australias lengthy prehistory.

Indeed, he viewed any such alteration as detrimental (Jones

1977a, 1977b), thereby preferring stability to change.

Critique

Similar environmental-ecological models were widely used

and influential in world anthropology/archaeology throughout

the 1970s, and also drew a strong critique. Objections were

directed, for example, at environmental determinism and the

systems model as applied to human society. Equating human

society with those of other animals, by using non-human

ecological and ethological field models and without reference

to social theory (among others) proved a key stumbling block.

Human demographic models tied too closely to environment,

and likewise stripped of their socio-cultural context, were

also questioned (for details see David and Lourandos 1998;

Lourandos 1997:13-17). Thomas (1981), and I also (Lourandos

1980a, 1980b, 1985a, 1985b), applied this body of critique to

Australian archaeology, by demonstrating the limitations of

the contemporary traditional approach and pointing to more

fruitful socio-cultural directions. Thomas quipped that so

environmentally-oriented were current archaeological analyses

that archaeologists could just as efficiently work straight from

palaeoenvironmental sequences, rather than excavating!In all, this critique of the ecological approach began to

demonstrate that hunter-gatherers could not be viewed

separately from other human societies, were not necessarily

under environmental control, and like other societies actively

worked to overcome environmental/biological limitations and

constraints. The suggestion here was that socio-cultural factors

(for hunter-gatherers too) should not be viewed as secondary

features (epiphenomena) and reactions, but as a dynamic in their

own right.

Social Dynamics

Bender (1978, 1981) argued the case for hunter-gatherers

pointing to the inherent dynamic involved in alliance

formations and the expansion of social networks. The

intensification of resource use she viewed as linked to these

events, and was expressed in ritual, feasting and exchange; much

as was acknowledged for farmers and more complex societies.

While these issues applied to the question of agriculture and its

expansion, they also could be related to transformations within

hunter-gatherer society. I too, had pointed to examples within

Australian societies, such as the Toolondo and Mount William

earth works and water controls of southwestern Victoria.And I drew parallels with New Guinea farmers to illustrate

comparable examples of resource intensification (Lourandos

1976, 1977, 1980a, 1980b, 1988).

Examples of complex alliance formations in Australia had

been viewed as shields against environmental fluctuations

(Yengoyan 1968, 1976); and their socio-political importance

in economic relations also was acknowledged (Godelier

1975). And natural drainage basins were not necessarily the

clue to Aboriginal Australian demography as Peterson (1976),

following Birdsell, had proposed; these environs were contested

territorially suggesting more complex socio-political interaction

(Lourandos 1977, 1980a, 1980b, 1983, 1985a). In all, these andsimilar examples, drawn from world hunter-gatherer societies,

challenged more environmentally-deterministic scenarios,

and indicated the rich complexity of socio-cultural dynamics

(Bender 1985; Ingold et al. 1988a, 1988b; Price and Brown 1985;

Lourandos 1997). These new approaches also drew us well away

from earlier, narrower social models of hunters.

The Australian Intensification Debate

In the late 1970s this critique of the traditional paradigm and

model was felt also in Australian archaeology. Sandra Bowdlers

(1977) model of coastal colonisation was a direct challenge to

Birdsells and suggested a more protracted settlement of the

continent. She demonstrated differences in discard rates, for

example, between Pleistocene and more recent sites. And Hallam

(1977) pointed to inconsistencies in Birdsells arguments of

a close relationship between Aboriginal population levels and

rainfall. I, too, indicated that comparisons between southwestern

Victorian and Tasmanian population estimates, for example,

suggested that Aboriginal population had increased through time

and that Aboriginal technological and socio-cultural practices

were involved (Lourandos 1976, 1977, 1980a, 1980b; see also

Butlin 1983, 1993). Interest shifted, therefore, to questions of

change. Many archaeologists began to highlight changes in the

archaeological record, especially of the mid-to-late Holocene

period. These included increases in site numbers and discardrates, as well as changes to artefact assemblages (for details and

commentary see Bowdler 1981; Brian 2006; Lourandos 1997;

Lourandos et al. 2006; Lourandos and Ross 1994).


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While these phenomena were the focus of most interest in

the intensification question, these also were rather peripheral

concerns as compared to the core of the debate (also McNivenet al.

2006:8). This questioned the very basis of the stability/processual

model of the time. By focusing upon change, rather than stability

or equilibrium, the grounds for debate had shifted. By considering

such questions as change to population and demography,

settlement patterns and subsistence practices, manipulation

of environment, art and wider socio-cultural features, there

was a widening of the traditional envelope in which hunter-

gatherers and Australian Aborigines had been constructed. The

very term intensification, with its suggestion of manipulation

of socio-economic and environmental realms (Bender 1978,

1985; Lourandos 1980a, 1980b, 1983, 1985a, 1985b) stretched

the debate beyond its traditional biological, natural scientific,

boundaries and onto ground more traditionally reserved for the

origins of agriculture. The boundaries, therefore, around the

traditional debates had collapsed, and a new debating ground

established. This both alarmed and confused the traditional-minded, some of whom felt Australian hunter-gatherers were

now being represented as farmers (Head 1994, 2000:103-104),

rather than appreciating the redefinition (reconfiguration) of

hunter-gatherers. By shifting the debate beyond the traditional

biological and into that of socio-cultural transformation, there

had been a genuine paradigm shift (also Brian 2006).

Despite the heated debate of the 1980s (Thomas 1981;

Beaton 1983; Lourandos 1983, 1984, 1985a), there has been

surprisingly little discussion of these underlying theoretical

concerns in Australian archaeology. The critique of the dominant

processual paradigm, however, emerged by the mid-1980s in the

United Kingdom as the post-processual movement and school(Hodder 1985). The underlying tension between the traditional

environmentally-oriented processualists and their critics formed

the core of post-processualism, which opened up archaeology

to a much wider range of approaches, including the socio-

cultural (Shanks and Tilley 1987). This post-modern blurring

of traditional boundaries around paradigms, debating grounds

and disciplines, had begun in the 1970s with the questioning of

traditional paradigms and models in Australia and elsewhere,

and culminated in the paradigm shift of the mid-1980s.

Changing Perceptions of Hunter-Gatherers

Rather than the traditional views of hunter-gatherers (on both

sides of the theoretical divide) as awaiting transformation via

the arrival of agriculture, this new approach removed them

from their environmental constraints allowing them a dynamic

history, just like other societies. Hunter-gatherers no longer

needed be viewed as passive, but as active agents within changing

landscapes both natural and cultural. The term intensification,

for example, put them on par with farmers, by giving them

control over their lives. It did not, necessarily, transform them

into farmers. I, for example, demonstrated that in terms of

population density Australian hunter-gatherers overlapped

with hunter-horticulturalists of New Guinea (Lourandos

1977, 1980a), which suggested comparable energy-harnessing

strategies; not, however, that both necessarily shared the sametechniques and practices. I elsewhere pointed out the similarities

in socio-political structure between Australian and New Guinea

societies (Lourandos 1988). This change in perception of hunter-

gatherers allowed for much greater variation within the category,

and therefore much greater variation (change) through time. The

dynamics of hunter-gatherer societies, and throughout hunter-

gatherer histories (both ethnographic and archaeological), began

to be discussed and theorised for societies classified as hunter-

gatherer in many areas of the globe, as well as Australia (Ingold

et al. 1988a, 1988b; Price and Brown 1985; Schrire 1984).

What emerged from these fresh examinations of hunter-

gatherer societies of past and present was a change in perceptions

of hunter-gatherers beyond environmental paradigms and

the appreciation of the much wider range of traditional societies

that could fall under the category hunter-gatherer. If indeed the

only criterion that effectively distinguished hunter-gatherers

from other societies was their predominant use of wild resources,

rather than domesticates, then the societal range was vast. This

stretched from low population density, mobile, egalitarian groups

to socially hierarchical, populous, sedentary societies including

those of the North West Coast of North America (Ames 1985;

Suttles 1968). The Calusa of south Florida, North America, hadall the latter features plus centralised political authority (a king

and a state formation), and a standing army, but also practiced

no farming, relying on wild foods (Marquardt 1985). Such

examples stretched both our imaginations and paradigms. Many

of these societies (for example, those of the North West Coast)

traditionally had been viewed as not true hunter-gatherers,

because they did not fit the traditional definition. But rather

than redefine the category, as we have here, these examples were

either placed to one side or explained away. In the more open-

minded climate of paradigm change and widening of approach,

that characterised the 1980s, these traditionally anomalous

societies could now be accommodated. Hunter-gatherer was,thus, forever changed. But these destabilisations of the category

and concept also began to erode its usefulness (David and

Denham 2006).

Landscapes Wild and Tamed

Once the boundaries around the traditional hunter/farmer

debates were breached, it left room to explore the grey areas in

between. These included distinctions between wild and tamed

resources and landscapes that blurred ecological/biological and

socio-cultural differences. In Australia this had been pioneered by

Rhys Jones (1969) whose examination of Indigenous Australian

and Tasmanian use of fire, which he termed firestick farming,

reopened the debate on the extent of Aboriginal ecological

manipulation (also Horton 1982). The term also played with

concepts of hunters as farmers, potentially opening up debate

in this productive direction. It was left to others, however, to

follow up these leads. Hynes and Chase (1982), for example,

developed ideas of domiculture to explain more complex socio-

ecological relationships between people and plants in Cape York,

northeastern Australia.

In order to conceptualise these grey areas between hunters

and farmers, Yen (1989) wrote of domesticated landscapes. It

was Harris (1977), however, who modelled an ethnographic

subsistence continuum from Cape York, Australia across Torres

Strait to southern New Guinea, that demonstrated no cleardivision between hunting-gathering and farming. Manipulation

of plants, commonly used in all the latter regions, only further

complicated any tidy division (also Golson 1971). On the New


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Guinea side of the divide, ethnographic examples of hunter-

horticulturalists (Lourandos 1980a) and intensive wild sago

producers (Ohtsuka 1977) also blurred traditional boundaries.

Most of these studies, however, still worked from within

ecological/environmental schools, with little exploration of the

socio-cultural realm and its influence. More inclusive ecological/

socio-cultural studies emerged somewhat later and include the

work of Ellen (1982, 1988) and Ingold (1988). Entangled socio-

ecological relations were in these ways revealed, structured deeply

within social constructions of landscape.

Continuation of Traditional Paradigm

Despite these developments, and the continuing critique of more

traditional approaches, aspects of the prior, more environmentally-

deterministic, model persisted within Australian archaeology

in various ways. Long-term archaeological sequences, in some

cases, continued to be interpreted largely in environmental terms.

Bird and Frankel (1991), for example, argued against a socio-

cultural contribution to an 11,000 year sequence in southwesternVictoria, preferring various environmental interpretations. They

offered no critique, however, of prior interpretations (including

my own) which had presented a combination of socio-cultural

and ecological elements. They were also highly circumspect

about the long-term archaeological trends themselves. Using

comparable techniques, however, to the last example, the

rich 25,000 year Pleistocene archaeological evidence from

southwestern Tasmania was modelled by Holdaway and Porch

(1995). The observed fluctuations in site use through time were

interpreted as largely due to adjustments to fluctuations in

climate, over this very long period. Some mention of possible

socio-cultural contribution to these events was appended to anessentially environmental interpretation. The lasting impression

obtained, in this comparison of the two papers, is that long-term

archaeological trends are acceptable as long as they conform

largely to environmental parameters and not to socio-cultural. A

prior overview of similar data from this Tasmanian region also

had been largely environmentally-framed (Cosgrove et al. 1990;

for critique of these examples see David and Lourandos 1997;

Lourandos 1993, 1997:247-254; Lourandos and David 1998,

2002; McNiven et al. 1999).

From arid Australia, long-term archaeological data were

interpreted as reflecting Aboriginal demographic trends, but

again environmental changes were the preferred trigger (Smith

1989). The social role of demography was largely overlooked

in this case (but compare with Veth 1989, 2006). In contrast,

the socio-cultural role in shaping demography, elsewhere, has

been more broadly discussed (Pardoe 1994, 1995; David and

Lourandos 1998).

The persistence of the impression of Australias uniqueness,

as the continent apart, is still evident in Allen and OConnells

Transitions: Pleistocene to Holocene in Australia and Papua New

Guinea (1995). By focusing upon the terminal Pleistocene-

Holocene boundary, not only are environment and environmental

change highlighted, but the more numerous and complex

aspects of archaeological change, evident in the more recent mid-

to-late Holocene period (in both regions), are largely ignored.This serves to reinforce the traditional towards agriculture/

horticulture model, together with its more environmental

explanation its association with environmental change at the

Pleistocene-Holocene boundary. The restructuring of natural

resources during this period of climatic change is generally

viewed by environmental determinists as explanation of the shift

in economic practices. That is, that prior Pleistocene resource

structures had inhibited the potential for change including

intensification and shifts to agriculture/horticulture. Only here,

the archaeological details do not really fit so neatly, as most

evidence occurs much more recently, in the mid-to-late Holocene

period. The Australian archaeological evidence also reinforces

this New Guinea pattern of more recent, more complex change

(Lourandos 1997:330-335). Avoided here also are the implications

of this information, including reference to the intensification

debate and the related issue of changing paradigms in hunter-

gatherer studies. Because of this, other than environmental

change itself, there remains no firm theoretical foundation for

examining the reasons for the cultural changes. In many of these

essays also, the contrast between agricultural New Guinea and

hunter-gatherer Australia continues to be sustained, as it had

in the earlier A Prehistory of Australia, New Guinea and Sahul(White and OConnell 1982). And OConnells research interests

and direction (optimal foraging theory, a biological approach)

are clearly evident in both overviews; thereby reinforcing the

influence of the dominant North American paradigm (also

OConnell and Hawkes 1981; compare with Williams 1987).

New Guinea

In sharp contrast, the construction of hunter-gatherer in New

Guinea archaeology shares few of the tensions experienced in

Australian archaeology. There appears to be no stability model

employed here, as there is in Australia; the Birdsell model

outlined above does not seem to stretch this far north. Here, fromthe start, hunter-gatherers are presented as active participants

in environmental and socio-cultural transformations, with

archaeologists turning to scenarios of environmental (and also

plant) manipulation and management. The guiding towards

horticulture paradigm is clearly evident from the earliest

beginnings of the regions prehistory. For example, distinctive

Pleistocene waisted axes, in contexts 40,000 years old, or even

older, suggested to Groube (1989) that they had been employed

in forest clearance. He speculated that this may have led to

forest management and further to forest horticulture and plant

management (Groube et al. 1986). At highland Kosipe, around

26,000 years ago, an open site was interpreted as possibly linked

to harvesting of pandanus from a nearby swamp (White et al.

1970; White and OConnell 1982:56). Pandanus is a seasonal

staple in recent economies. More recent investigations date the

site to around 36,000 BP (Fairbairn et al. 2006). In the terminal

Pleistocene (after about 15,000 years ago), on the offshore

island of New Ireland, signs of environmental manipulation

are pointed to by the appearance of cuscus (a supposedly

humanly-transported species). There are also indications here

of interisland transportation of raw materials (obsidian). Also,

changes in use of coastal rockshelters, and of rockshelters located

within rainforest further inland, have been viewed as indications

of the development of more complex logistical socio-economic

strategies, and more extensive use of the island (Allen et al. 1988;Allen et al. 1989; Enright and Gosden 1992:173-175; Spriggs

1997). The search for the Pleistocene origins of horticulture

(and related plant species) also has continued on the islands of


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Harry Lourandos

Melanesia, just east of New Guinea and its offshore islands. From

the evidence at Kilu Cave, on the island of Buku, Spriggs (1993)

has speculated on the possibility of horticulture or cultivation in

Pleistocene times and of the species of plants involved.

In the highland swamps at the site of Kuk in the Wahgi valley,

Golson interpreted the first signs of artificial drainage systems

(water controls), around 9000 years ago, as indicating early

swamp management, possibly linked with the manipulation of

plants. That is, as the first stages in shifts to horticulture, which

have been more clearly identified in later contexts at the Kuk

site (around 60005000 years ago) (Golson 1977, 1989; Golson

and Gardner 1990; Hope and Golson 1995). More recent work

and redating have continued at the site (Denham et al. 2003). In

the nearby Arona Valley, use of rockshelters, in an increasingly

more intensive fashion through time from about 9000 years

ago, were suggestive to Christensen (1975) of increasingly more

intensive hunter-gatherer practices; associated with the possible

development of horticulture in the proximity of the Kuk swamp

(White and OConnell 1982). Examples similar to the latter, ofincreases and changes in use of rockshelters throughout the

highlands during the terminal Pleistocene/mid-Holocene period,

are generally linked by New Guinea archaeologists to shifts from

hunting-gathering towards horticulture. Changes in artefacts,

such as the appearance of stone adzes, are similarly explained

(Feil 1987; White and OConnell 1982).

Throughout this very long period, therefore, from Pleistocene

to mid-Holocene times (c.40,0005000 years ago) in both

highland and lowland regions of New Guinea, and even longer

in some areas, hunter-gatherers have been constructed by

archaeologists in the following ways: as possibly participating

in forest clearance, pandanus harvesting, resource management(cuscus, some plant species) and distribution (obsidian), the

development of more logistical, and more extensive, settlement/

subsistence strategies, swamp management and water controls

related to plant management, and changing use of rockshelters

(and artefacts) as indicating trends towards more intensive

hunting-gathering and horticulture. Directional trends are

implicit in many of these key New Guinea examples; for example,

New Ireland, Buku, Arona Valley and Kuk. And the question of

intensification hangs over them all.

These archaeological data and interpretations, that are

suggestive of changing hunter-gatherer behaviour, appear in

the syntheses and papers included in both White and OConnell

(1982) and Allen and OConnell (1995) with minimal dissenting

commentary. But there is no intensification debate here in

New Guinea archaeology, even though questions of change and

intensification are central to all these archaeological examples.

And there is minimal scrutiny of these middle-range data and

their interpretation; in contrast to Australian archaeology

where the latter have been a focus, sometimes controversial

and heated, of the intensification debate. But given the

issues already raised in this paper, we should ask why not?

For many of the archaeological indices outlined above from

New Guinea archaeological contexts share general similarities

with those in Australian contexts. These include: increasing

and changing use of rockshelters, shifts to more logisticalsocio-economic strategies, more extensive and intensive use

of landscapes and resources, aspects of environmental and

resource manipulation, and new artefact types (including

stone handaxes and adzes) and also swamp management and

water controls. Archaeological clues to change are present in

all periods of Australian prehistory including the terminal

Pleistocene, but this is especially so in the mid-to-late Holocene

period (see Lourandos and Ross 1994; Lourandos 1997). Also,

directionality in trends, in Australian contexts, is often strongly

disputed (e.g. Bird and Frankel 1991); whereas in New Guinea

archaeology generally this is not a contentious issue.

In Australia this archaeological information was discussed

in the context of change within hunter-gatherer societies,

with suggestions of intensification, and not of shifts towards

horticulture/agriculture, as in New Guinea archaeology. Why

then should it have proven so contentious to discuss Australian

archaeological evidence in terms of changing hunter-gatherers,

but not so in New Guineas case?This surely is one of the main

questions posed by this paper. There was no intensification

debate in New Guinea, I would argue, including no sustained

critique of the middle-range data, because the interpretations of

archaeologists conformedto the traditional towards horticultureparadigm and narrative. The reverse was so in Australia, and

tension and debate arose when expectations and interpretations

ran contrary to the traditional paradigm and narrative (that is,

change instead of stability). This New Guinea example, therefore,

also appears to be a clear case of paradigm, and narrative,

controlling the direction of research and interpretation; and one

lying largely unexplored.

The answer, as I have argued here, also lies with the separate

constructions of hunter-gatherer in both regions, Australia

and New Guinea: passive versus active, stability versus change.

As we have seen, if change was acknowledged in Australian

archaeological contexts, then environment was often traditionallyassigned as cause. In New Guinea, however, change is interpreted

alsoin socio-cultural terms, with hunter-gatherers overcoming

challenges and constraints. Why this difference? And why cannot

hunter-gatherers of both Australia and New Guinea be viewed

within the same paradigm; one more like that of New Guinea

archaeology? That is, as active and changing, transforming

both natural and socio-cultural realms. These, indeed, are the

questions that underlie the Australian intensification debate,

and also are the arguments presented here (also Lourandos

1980a, 1980b, 1983a, 1985b, 1988, 1997).

While attempts were made to bridge this conceptual gap, by

discussing ethnographic examples from both regions as part of

a continuum, rather than separate or divided, archaeologists

were much slower to absorb this more consensual approach

and interpret Australian evidence in a similar way. Australian

archaeologists, in many ways, remained equivocal over questions

involving change, and this inheritance still influences the

discipline today.

In contrast, more heated debate in New Guinea anthropology

and archaeology has focused upon the intensification of

horticulture, rather than upon change within hunter-gatherer

societies, as in Australia. Debate in New Guinea has canvassed a

broad range of approaches and models employed to explain the

socio-economic transformations towards more intensive levels

of horticulture. For example, competing models have includedthe ecological, with emphasis on population controls (Rappaport

1967), or on diet and meat protein (Morren 1974, 1977); and,

in contrast to these, the socio-political (Modjeska 1977, 1982).


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While these debates drew heavily upon ethnographic examples,

a broadly similar bundle of varied approaches was aimed at

archaeological information. For example, the site of Kuk was

seen through a range of lenses from ecological (Golson 1977)

through to socio-political (Golson and Gardner 1990).

It is as if once horticulture has been identified as established

that social forces and social complexity become issues in New

Guinea, and a cause for serious debate. But before this time, when

horticulture presumably was being developed, for archaeologists

this was not at issue. We may, therefore, ask why not? Once again,

the answer seems to lie with the original traditional paradigm

or narrative: that social complexity followedthe development

of horticulture; it did not precede it. In this case too, therefore,

the traditional paradigm appears to have directed, or steered,

archaeological research and its interpretation. As mentioned

above, the world intensification debate, including its Australian

counterpart, reversed this narrative sequence by rethinking

hunter-gatherers, and suggesting that social complexity (or

aspects of it) preceded agriculture/horticulture itself. And,further, that this social complexity may have been involved in

the development of these changes.

Blurring Boundaries

Hunter-gatherer studies continue to undergo transformation.

Changing views of hunter-gatherers defined the World Hunter-

Gatherer Conferences from the mid-1960s through to the mid-

1980s. And this can be seen as the golden age of recent hunter-

gatherer studies. Here Bender and Morris (1988) saw a trend

over time from more ecologically-oriented approaches, and

attempts to fit hunter-gatherers into one unitary category, to

increasingly more varied approaches and definitions, includingthe socio-political. And this still continues today. This theoretical

trend also closely resembles the trend observed throughout

Australian and New Guinea archaeology over the same time

period, as discussed above.

But with the ever-widening of participants in archaeology

to include those of the Third World, beginning around the mid-

1980s (see also Bender 2006), together with emerging Indigenous

perspectives, the very usefulness of the term hunter-gatherer

has begun to be questioned. In Australian archaeology, critique

indicates the increasing destabilisation of the term (David and

Denham 2006; Lourandos et al. 2006), which can be identified

too closely with colonial constructions of Australias Indigenous

peoples and their histories. For example, anthropological

unilinear evolutionary models, from generations ago, begin

with hunter-gatherers, thereby underscoring their subservience.

David and Denham (2006) argue that the changing historical

use of the term hunter-gatherer has served to undermine its

effectiveness. By widening, and questioning, its use, for example,

to overlap it with other categories, such as hunter-horticulturalist

and agriculturalist, the boundaries around the term weakened.

And its use in historical and evolutionary narratives became

ambiguous, thus questioning the arguments themselves.

Today, the politics of constructing Indigenous peoples

identities, and the role of historical construction in these events,

is well demonstrated by more recent post-colonial studies(McNiven and Russell 2005). And these important issues are

also of concern to archaeologists, and the ways they go about

constructing the past. The traditional archaeological model of

Australian hunter-gatherers, as discussed here, also serves to

reinforce pre-1960s representations of Indigenous Australians,

by emphasising their acquiescent role in both natural and social

realms, and divorcing them from other Indigenous peoples, like

those of New Guinea. For before 1967, Indigenous Australians

were not classified officially along with the rest of Australias

people, and therefore, were excluded from being counted in

census data (Attwood and Andrew 2007). Aspects of these

earlier paternalistic policies and attitudes, unfortunately, have

continued until the present day.

McNiven and Russell (2005:38-41) discuss hunter-gatherer

as a colonial trope, one serving to justify the appropriation of

Indigenous peoples territories and stigmatising their populations

as other, as non-agricultural, primitive, different. Like David

and Denham (2006), they too question the use of the term

prehistory, suggesting that it divorces time from history itself,

thus placing it into an inferior or ambiguous category. Thus, in

these ways, once again the identities of Indigenous peoples, and

their pasts, are diminished; severed from those of other peopleswithhistories. They, thus, see this term also as serving imperial

narratives (McNiven and Russell 2005:218-222, 208-210). This

questioning, therefore, of the two key terms addressed by this

paper, underscores the underlying meanings behind their use in

archaeological narratives. It asks us to look beneath the surface

and examine the ways the terms have been constructed and used

in forming stories (histories), themselves employed for wider

purposes. In much the same way, the archaeological debates,

discussed in this paper and viewed through time, now need to

be more fully examined and deconstructed also, to substantiate

the impressions obtained in this review.

These general arguments can be extended also to the centralissues of this paper: the twin traditional prehistories of Australia

and New Guinea. As both the latter were broadly constructed on

either side of the nature-nurture debate, as argued here, then they

too can be viewed, in many ways, as colonial and post-colonial

artefacts. For that core debate and its separate constructions

of hunter-gatherer and agriculturalist/horticulturalist also

emerged from the period of colonialism and its aftermath when

Indigenous peoples and landscapes were being annexed, and the

story of this process justified in these ways (also Lourandos 1997:

xiv-xvi).

Australian archaeologys commitment to Indigenous

interests since the mid-1990s has been felt most strongly, and

most creatively, by its public face, and in the literature of public

archaeology (also McNiven and Russell 2005). Academic

archaeology, on the other hand, has a more conservative side, as

the review presented here, of over 40 years of the disciplines

growth, has demonstrated.

Questioning of prior traditional models also has continued

apace. For example, Goulds (1968, 1971, 1977a, 1977b, 1980)

more traditional view of arid Australias prehistory as largely

unchanging, has been redefined recently by looking to more

dynamic and complex models (Veth 2006; also Veth et al. 2000).

And David et al.s (2006) collection of papers on Australian

archaeology takes an interdisciplinary approach, where

Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers work side-by-side, tochallenge earlier perspectives. Such a fusion of archaeological,

anthropological and Indigenous perspectives, together with a

broader interdisciplinary approach, allows for a widening of


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Harry Lourandos

opportunities. New directions, including the phenomenological,

begin to leave behind the old division between nature and nurture;

a division itself wrapped in the folds of early colonialism.

And more reflexive attitudes also, allow the researcher to

question his or her own role, as well as that of the research, and

the wider effects of these, on others for example. Long-term

archaeological sequences, too, have been viewed in more socio-

culturally dynamic ways, leaving behind narrower environmental

frames (Barker 2004; Rowe 2006; Tibby et al. 2006). In these ways

also, many of the prior problems and limitations faced by hunter-

gatherer studies can be overcome. The underlying historical

dimension of these new, contemporary approaches renews and

reinvigorates prior debates, so often ahistorically formed. At

the same time they are able to accommodate present concerns

(Indigenous, for example). In these ways, too, the present and

the past are intertwined and, thus, can be viewed as being created

together (also Bender 2006).

ConclusionsI have argued here that the traditional constructions of

separate prehistories for Australia and New Guinea can be

traced back to different paradigms, narratives and debates in

world archaeology biological/ecological versus socio-cultural

mirroring the traditional nature versus nurture split. Likewise,

hunter-gatherers in both regions have been modelled differently,

following this theoretical divide. That is, as the passive hunter-

gatherers of Australia versus the more resourceful, expansive

hunters of New Guinea. While this apparently dichotomous,

black-and-white division is shaded grey on many issues, the basic

division is clearly borne out by a review of the ways archaeologists

have shaped hunter-gatherers and prehistory for both regions,over the past 40 years or so.

In New Guinea archaeology, hunter-gatherers were seen

as enterprising from the start; their attentions turning to

transformation of both natural and socio-cultural landscapes,

from early Pleistocene times and throughout the Pleistocene-

Holocene transition. This image was upheld, even though the

landmasses of both New Guinea and Australia were conjoined

for most of this time. So different is the traditional portrait

of Australian hunters: largely constrained and controlled by

environmental oscillations, resulting in long-term socio-cultural

continuity and minimal change.

This review, also, has demonstrated the role that individual

theoretical approaches, paradigms, play in shaping history or

prehistory. Had the same approach, or paradigm, we might

wonder, been initially applied to both regions, Australia and

New Guinea, how different would their prehistories then have

appeared? When a new approach, or paradigm, was introduced to

Australian archaeology, under the intensification umbrella, one

that more closely resembled the New Guinea transformational

approach, the clearly marked traditional boundaries between

Australian and New Guinea prehistories began to fall away. And

this alarmed many more conservative-minded archaeologists,

raised in different schools of thought. Had more dynamic models

been conceived for Australian archaeology earlier on, different

questions would have been asked; and information obtained andexamined differently, much as is happening today.

But, interestingly, no such intensification debate as regards

hunter-gatherers has emerged in New Guinea archaeology,

even though the underlying subtext of much of New Guinea

prehistory has been change within hunter-gatherer society. This

is even more puzzling, as change has been demonstrated in

New Guinea archaeology in many ways, by broadly comparable

middle-range data to those of Australia. More than likely, no

challenge was perceived here to the traditional paradigm, as

the hunter-gatherers of New Guinea, from the onset, had been

constructed as dynamic and transforming.

What, then, can all this tell us about the creation of prehistory?

For both regions here we have seen that archaeologists,

traditionally, have fitted information largely into pre-existing

models and points of view; and that tensions developed when

these expectations were not met. Separate narratives, if you like,

had been presented traditionally for both Australia and New

Guinea. And once these were called into question, a widening

occurred in ways of talking about the past. For Australia,

renewed debate centered upon change within hunter-gatherer

societies; while in New Guinea, it was upon the intensification of

horticulture. These separate arenas of tension and debate reflectedthe different emphases of the prior traditional approaches.

We can see also that history had been presented in the prior,

traditional phase, as largely uniform and discretely regionalised.

And this rather rigid frame became increasingly destabilised

and replaced by a freeing up of debate and opinion. Debate

on the past was now open to all, including voices silenced or

marginalised before, like the Indigenous. In just this way, the

intensification debate had democratised Australian archaeology

(Lourandos and Ross 1994). Control over knowledge, narrative

and debate, therefore, had shifted from more centralised to

more decentralised and diverse arenas. The past could now be

more creatively negotiated and imagined. And it became moredifficult for any uniform approach or model to dominate, as

before. In some ways, therefore, this trend in knowledge creation

resembles the shift to the more decentralised, globalised social

landscapes of today, where avenues of power lie increasingly in

mediation and negotiation.

The ways we imagine and mould hunter-gatherers, then, are

similar to this. Separate images of hunter-gatherers emerged

in the archaeologies of Australia and New Guinea, when they

were viewed through distinctly different lenses; even though the

archaeological information of both regions shared similarities.

These histories or prehistories, therefore, are but social

constructions; manipulations of present and past attitudes and

concerns. In these ways our own pasts, and therefore identities,

are formed; and in these ways also, we have molded the pasts and

identities of Indigenous peoples.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jacques Bierling, Bruno David and three referees

(Geoff Hunt and two anonymous) for reading and commenting

on earlier drafts of this paper; and to Sandra Bowdler for all her

support over the years.

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