the archaeology of rubbish or rubbishing archaeology: backward looks and forward glances j.v.s....

8/12/2019 The Archaeology of Rubbish or Rubbishing Archaeology: Backward Looks and Forward Glances J.v.s. MEGAW

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AUSTRALIAN HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 2, 1984

The Archaeology of Rubbish or RubbishingArchaeology: Backward Looks and ForwardGlances v s MEGAW

In this paper originally prepared as the concluding contribution to the Australian Society forHistorical Archaeology s 1982 conference on Talking rubbish: or what does archaeology mean tothe historian? Vincent Megaw the Society s first Vice-President offered a semi-autobiographicaln historical answer to the question posed by the conference title citing examplesfrom the UnitedKingdom the United States ofAmerica and of course Australia.

I suppose history and I have been bed-fellows too long; Ican never commence work on a new topic without firstexamining the documentary evidence. One thing at least Ilearnt and have frequently quoted from my teacher StuartPiggott is that an understanding of the history of one s ownsubject is a great help in thinking clearly about its problems . After all, to borrow from Glyn Daniel s Cambridge InauguralLecture, we are, as archaeologists, concerned primarily witha back-looking curiosity- but one in which it seems manyhistorians perceive nothing but fog. There is debate stillamongst archaeologists and histor ians as to the nature ofhistorical archaeology let alone historical archaeologists.Paradoxically in England at least it was largely historians-albeit unconventional ones such as W.G. Hoskins andMaurice Beresford who bui lt firmly the foundations forhistorical archaeology. And these foundations had alreadybeen laid by nineteenth-century antiquarians from the dayswhen Augustus Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers in 1889 restored andpartially excavated the thirteenth-century King John s Houseat Tollard Royal. Economic historians were behind theDeserted Medieval Village Research Group, which hasrecently celebrated its thirtieth birthday, and which includedamongst its founder members those who significantly in laterlife were to make their mark on Antipodean prehistory.Four years later in 1957 the Society of MedievalArchaeology was established, to be followed in turn ten yearslater still by the Society of Post-Medieval Archaeology. Inthe United States, John L Cotter, who had early beenassociated with the now-much-criticised Jamestown project,introduced in 1960 the first course in what was termed istorical Sites Archaeology , at the University ofPennsylvania. As is largely the case today, historicalarchaeology in America developed out of the work ofarchitects and others actively concerned with conservationof the man-made environment and such organisations as thevarious Nat ional Parks services and other governmentalinst rumentalit ies. In contrast, historical archaeology inEurope, at least in its most recent forms, has developed byand large out of the established bases of traditional prehistoryand a long-standing amateu r tradition relying on localsocieties and a network offurther education facilities almosttotally lacking in the United States. Be that as it may, it wasnot until 1968that in America the first meeting of the Societyfor H i st ori ca l A rc ha eology was held at ColonialWilliamsburg, whose Director today as then is Ivor NoelHume, who cut his archaeological teeth amidst the rubbleof the blitzed City of London.

Here in Australia, the Australian Society for HistoricalArchaeology came into being in 1971 but already in 1968 Ifind I was setting such questions for History IV Methodsstudents at the University of Sydney as I fhistory is bunk,archaeology is trash; discuss . Less pithily expressed, perhaps,was I f the archaeologists claim to write history can beconceded only if history is given the widest possible meaning,to what extent and in what areas of study can archaeologicalmethodology assist the historian? In this last I was followinganother inaugural lecture, that given at Cardiff in 1960 bymy other teacher, R.J.C. Atkinson, under the title ofArchaeology history and science. Atkinson concluded thato ur aim should be no less than to permit archaeology totrain upon the problem of man s history the full armamentof his science . The same lecture contains some tellingcomments about the way in which archaeological techniquescan assist the economic historian, although Atkinson regardsthe archaeologist as having b ut little claim to be a kin ofhistorian , which he defines as someone basically concernedwith answering the questions who? and when? . Today thishas a somewhat limit ing sound in terms of the not-so-newarchaeology new archaeology , a term first coined byJoseph R. Caldwell as long ago as 1959.4 Is it however simplychance that, whatever might be its nature, the newarchaeology spent its developmental childhood coterminously with the growth of the embryonic formal studyof historical archaeology? One cannot of course deny thatarchaeology, perhaps particularly in its historical context, hasin the past had its opponents, including those who havemaintained that if archaeology has been acclaimed as thescience of rubbish, as fast as the rubbish was dug up it waswritten down an d that archaeological discussion is as oftenan indulgence as a discipline; where they might exchangehypotheses archaeologists are apt to demand adherence andto hurl polemics or even charges of corruption . This mayseem to take a literally historical position but to cite yetanother product of the Edinburgh system, my contemporarylain Walker in his 1967 essay on Historical archaeology-methods an d principles , there is certainly evidence for acontinuing division between a historicalist view ofarchaeology as a source simply for raw data and theanthropological or processual interpretation of archaeologya dichotomy discussed also by ou r Editor in the first volumeof this Journal. Another term preferred by some isbehavioura l archaeology , as discussed for example byAmerican historical archaeologists. As represented amongsto thers by Stanley South, there is a view of archaeology as

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the study of interactions of natural and cultural processesthat create archaeological deposits'. t is just these historicalarchaeologists who forget the truism that in each area in agiven period different kinds of history can be written. Historyis a Protean hydra'. The manner in which in the UnitedStates the Vietnam War may have influenced archaeology'scourse, at a time when it was turning to the study of culturalvariation, is one interesting theory-though the rise of blackpower in the same period may have been even moresignificant. As Piggott commented in summing up aconference not on history and archaeology, but the historyofarchaeology, one needs continuously to be aware how vitalis the 'concept of changing truths and explanationsdemanded in archaeology and prehistory'.

t may however still be instructive to pursue further somehistorical attitudes. Walker also cites Dame Joan Evans,delivering in 1961 the anniversary address to the Society ofAntiquaries of London as its first (and so far only) womanpresident. Objecting to the use of archaeological techniquesin 'historic and well-documented sic medieval studies', sheclearly preferred the more subtle, more aesthetic and morecivilised methods of approach' of the art-historian, allegingthat the contemporary school of Bri ti sh medievalarchaeologists were more interested in 'plans of cowshedsand a series of the sections of the rims of cooking pots' .12t seems almost like an unconscious rebuttal of such views,that James Deetz should have entitled his stimulating 1977introduction to the archaeology of early colonial life inAmerica: In small things forgotten . .n the same year as Joan Evans' address however, EvansPritchard, then Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford,gave a lecture in Manchester entit led 'Anthropology andhistory'. nthis he developed further an earlier attack on thefunctionalist school of anthropologists and argued that socialanthropology was closer to certain kinds of history than tothe natural sciences. n a piece which should be requiredreading for all archaeologists, new or old, Evans-Pritchard

commented on how 'anthropologists have tended to beuncri tical in the use of documentary sources'; they 'haveseldom made very serious efforts to reconstruct fromhistorical records and verbal traditions the past of the peoplesthey have studied' and it is a clear 'measure of the lack ofinterest anthropologists have shown in the past of the simplersocieties that they [have] made little attempt to makea clear differentiation between history, myth, legend,anecdote and folk 10re 13 Substitute 'archaeologists' for'anthropologists' and the finger I think could point at manyof us who have professed an interest in uniting history andarchaeology. t is just as well that we have at least somemodel applications of the use of historical evidence-oralas well as written-in the service of regional archaeology, asrepresented by the work of Isabel McBryde and her studentsin the New England tablelands , to contrast with the naiveshot-gun approach or grab-bag of analogies offered byothers. From the other side of the Pacific, Bruce Trigger'swork on the Huron is a model of historical and ethnographicreconstruction. t may be significant to note that Trigger'sbackground, as that of the doyen of the history of Australianarchaeology in the service of all periods and all peoples, JohnMulvaney, is as an ancient historian. The antecedents andgenesis of historical archaeology in Australia will be revertedto in a later paragraph; first, however, briefly to return tothe Uni ted States, since it is here in a very real sense tha tthe science of rubbish has flourished.I have earlier referred to an historicalist or 'object-based'archaeology. Noel Hume s work at Colonial Williamsburg,for example, has demonstrated the need for a thoroughknowledge of the history and objects of the period of the sitebeing dug, a precept one would expect from the author ofGuide to the artifacts ofcolonial merica The same pointlies at the roots of urban archaeology in all those areas ofthe globe where the sound of the bulldozer has been heardin the land. nAmerican New England, the examination of8

pottery inventories at the port of Salem demonstrates 'thepersistence o.ftaste for English wares scarcely diminished bythe Revolut ion' and that the separation of the thirteencolonies from the mother country was for some time politicalrather than economic'. The importance of detailed ceramicstudy for medieval urban sites in southern England, forinterpret ing trading patterns with the Continent and thegeneral economic history of the period, is no less significant 19Here in Australia we ignore at our peril such basic data asthose available for the products of the Lithgow pottery, socarefully documented by n Evans. As a Celticnumismatist has put it in attempting yet another redefinitionof history versus archaeology, 'historical documents may provide invaluable evidence of the organisation of anindustry and of the social status and activity of some of thoseengaged in it, but only archaeological evidence candemonst rate the scale of production and geographicaldistribution of the product .Archaeology may fairly be claimed as literally amaterialistic study in which history may be used as a formof experimental control; an almost romantic view ofhistorical documents, as offering unbiased witnesses of thepast, is a view given considerable emphasis by some of thekeenest and most authori tative minds in contemporaryarchaeological thought. While it might be wondered whether,any more than with the camera, history never lies, LewisBinford has wri tten that 'we have the opt ion of excavatingthose places and, walking through history, as it were,alongside an historical character, trying to relate what wefind in the ground to what he reports as having occurredthere vnthe immediate post-World-War-II period the Cambridgeschool of environmental and economic prehistorians, underGrahame Clark and Eric Higgs, developed the meaningfulscience of rubbish and the messages transmitted down theline, in the peak period of archaeological colonisation of theAntipodes by Cambridge graduates, are perhaps onlygradually being translated from the prehistoric to thehistorical context and on into the contemporary period. na collection of essays edited by Richard Gould and MichaelSchiffer, under the title of Modern material culture: thearchaeology ofus Rathje in his main contribution mentionsA. Kidder's excavation of a town dump in Massachusetts,in the I920s, as a pioneering example of the use of such sitesas open-air laboratories for training in archaeological fieldprinciples, testing those principles and relating our societyto those of the past. Rathje's emphasis on the importanceof the training potential of the archaeology of rubbish isbrilliantly demonst ra ted in his own Tucson 'project dugarbage' established in 1972.24 Rathje's research may havebeen related to studies on stress patterns but also it startedas a training exercise for archaeology students. One isreminded of Mort imer Wheeler's 1930s' exercises in

stratigraphical interpretation, during the daily re-excavationof the Maiden Castle spoil heaps. t is also significant to note,with reference to Rathje's work, the interest evinced in it bythose concerned with consumer behaviour in the acquisition,use and disposal offood and other resources at the householdlevel. 25 And of course Lewis Binford, the oldest newarchaeologist in town' as Albert Spaulding has termed him,has himself of late been much concerned with bones. Amost interesting recent exercise in discerning pattern inmaterial culture, as revealed in waste disposal, is theexcavation of successive generations of refuse in theneighbourhood of Harvard Yard in Cambridge,Massachusetts; here it seems not only possible to detecttemporal variations but also notable differences betweenstudent and domestic household discards.The manner in which a study of the material culturalremains of the past may show significant variations inbehaviour patterns amongst minority groups within largersocial units, is something which should be of particularinterest to us here in Australia. But it is a process not without


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controversy, as witness Deetz interpretation of hisexcavation of the small settlement offree blacks establishedat Part ing Ways in Plymouth, Massachusetts, for about ageneration from c.A.D. 1790. is, to say the least, arguablewhether such work has established the validity ofarchaeological techniques for supplementing the traditionalhistorical sou rces for Afro-American culture.rNotwithstanding, one must note with approval therecognition which is given to archaeological approaches inthe study of Aboriginal and Islander history, in a recentlyproduced Handbook t

One clear area of continuing archaeological application isthe study of cultural change; there is an almost unchangingadherence to an evolutionary model, as applicable to brandpackaging as to Oscar Montelius railway carriages. ? Theprime example continues, of course, to be the study ofcemeteries. Edwin Dethlefsen s most recent excursion intothe use of an archaeological perspective in the study ofcommunity- to use his own words-has been theexamination of the last hundred years or so of a NorthFlorida Protestant cemetery. The basic approach has alteredlittle from preceding studies of the rubbish that is the deadin colonial New England-whether in North America orNew South l e s ~ o r medieval Old England. Graveyardarchaeology is another perfect example of the potential forstudent participation, which may be extended to secondaryeducational levels as a 1982 winning Welsh submission inthe schools section of the Brit ish Archaeological Awardsdemonstrated. Graveyards are also one of the most obviousexamples of visible cultural baggage , a term first coined byMax Crawford in the early 1950s and appropriated in the60s to describe materially observable aspects of evolvingAustralian society.v The phrase has become recently muchin vogue amongst Australian prehistorians, but then I entirelyagree with Stan South s observation that historicalarchaeology is not different from other kinds of archaeologyin its need to delineate patterns within past culturalsystems i- while Binford has recently claimed thatArchaeologists (and perhaps some historians) are the onlyresearchers with facts of direct relevance to evolutionaryepisodes .The setting up of more and more specialist institutionswould seem to endanger such a principle. This is not, ofcourse, t decry the importance of such developments as theestablishment of the Department of Archaeology at theUniversity of York, with its clearly historical bias, the interDepartmental Unit of Historical Archaeology at Sydney or,yet agaiJn the more recent development of diploma coursesoffered by the Institute of Industrial Archaeology, based onthe Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust and offered incooperation with the University of Birmingham sDepartment of Economic and Social History. One shouldhowever note that in none of these institutions is the centralneed for a basic training in suitable field techniques ignored.As one who has long ago been convert ed to Jesuisticaleducational principles, I have hinted several times in theprevious paragraphs at the usefulness of varying aspects ofthe examination of historical material, as a methodologicaltraining ground for students. At p rimary and secondaryschool levels, the Learning through the historical environmentproject of the History Teachers Association of Australia isone more welcome development. Conversely, it is aninteresting historical fact that many, nay most, central figuresin the gradual and continuing growth of historicalarchaeology in Australia are or were prehistorians. As suchthey embrace Central Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean andAfrica, all areas where once more the knowledge of thoseregions more recent history. is essential in understandingtheir distant past. In putting in a plug for the old archaeologyas the broad view, broad temporally and geographically, oneshould not forget the importance ofthis precept. In this sensethem,I believe that there is indeed no such readily identifiablespecies as an historical archaeologist.

One Australian example of material cultural baggage maysuffice to emphasise this point. The external round chimneyof the Cornish settlements of South Australia reflects anorigin in West Penwith, where I first encountered the typewhen in the mid-fifties I was practising historical archaeologybefore I knew there was such a thing. The round chimneyalso occurs at Port Essington, in the short-l ived militarysettlement of Victoria (A.D. 1838-1849).36 The roundchimney is an important indicat ion of the source of thelabour employed in its construction, even as the remains ofChateau Margaux burgundy bottles, here and at the site ofFirst Government House in Sydney. are witnesses to actualconfrontations during the Franco-British imperialist rivalriesof the early nineteenth century. (Incidentally, the thoroughstudy of Port Essington must rank with the examination oflames King s Irrawang pottery of 1833-1855,37 as amongstthe most thoroughly investigated and least extensivelypublished pioneering investigations into the potential valueof archaeological techniques in furthering Austra lianhistorical knowledge.)In the present con text of specialisation versusgeneralisation, one may consider the following statement onthe investigation by a prehistorian of a short-lived fort ofthe American War of Independence, regarded as an excellentexample of the maxim that with a scientific paradigm andskilful use of method, explanation of archaeologicalphenomena in terms of the past cultural system can beaccomplished without having to spend many yearsdeveloping an expertise in handling data from the historicperiod 38 Curiouser and curiouser and a prime exampleof what one might term the American-influenced look-afterthe-theory-and-the-practice-will-look-after-itseIr school. Ihope it is unlikely that such a view would be expounded byan Australian historical archaeologist, let alone many if anyof his or her British counterparts. Without specialistknowledge, what one may wonder would have been the valueof the industrial archaeological surveys in South Australiaby Dennis Cumming, without his engineering expertise, orof the growing importance of maritime archaeology in severalareas of Australia. This last has advanced greatly just throughthe establishment of the Western Austra lian Museum sDepartment of Maritime Archaeology, supported as it is byconservation facilities which must be the envy of manysimilar institutions in the Northern Hemisphere. There also,however, continue to be major contributions through thework of those who are technically amateur archaeologists,nowhere, to be once more the South Austral ian chauvinist,so well demonstrated than in the important and continuingwork of the Society for Underwater Historical Research Inc.In the renovat ion of historic sites and buildings and theirmanagement use, the need for continuous watching briefsby those qualified to conduct them might seem a superfluoust ruism. But it has been recently brought home to those ofus in Adelaide, who have evinced a concern as to thedevelopment of the historic North Terrace precinct right inthe heart of the city. A public concern in maintaining a futurefor the past may seem to be exemplified by the SouthAustralian Constitutional Museum, housed in the restoredformer Legislative Assembly building. However, in Sydneythe Battle of Bridge Street continues to rage over thefoundations of Governor Arthur Phillips GovernmentHouse, const ructed in the year of the arrival of the firstconvict fleet in 1788. Again, the salvage excavations carriedout on the site of Adelaide s Destitute Asylum, initially asmuch in spite of than because of state support , were theoutcome-and the victims-of a view of the past which isstill largely concerned to conserve only that which can beseen above ground, not what may be discovered belowground.s? Lest one is dazzled by a view of historicconservation in the United States being above suspicion, therecent short shrift given to the need for detailed examinationof Paul Revere s house, in historic downtown Boston,demonstrates that there too the price of preservation is morethan eternal vigilance. 9


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And here I wish finally to comment on one area ofhistorical archaeology which is totally outwi th my ownexpertise but yet is one where perhaps the most urgentpriorities for the immediate future for historical archaeologyin Australia lie. This is what one might refer to as theadequate recording of the past as perceived in the present.At the seminar on Industrial and Historical Archaeologyarranged at Goulbourn in 1979 by the New South WalesNational Trust, John Mulvaney commented on the need forfield archaeology in the sense of above-ground archaeologyas developed in Britain by O.G.S. Crawford in the 1920s.42 should be noted that in Europe, unlike Australia, selectiveexcavation has always been regarded as necessary to elucidatecertain aspects of structural history. For example, this hasalways been the case in the day-to-day workings of the U.K.Royal Commissions on Ancient and Historical Monuments(currently separate and unaffected by the 1979 AncientMonuments and Archaeological Areas Act, which created thenew umbrella organisation of the Historic Buildings andMonuments Commission). In the areas of industrialarchaeology, however, it is a curious feature of a too rigidfixing of the analytical eye above ground, that the onlythorough archaeological excavation that I know to havetaken place before 1980 in the Ironbridge Gorge was theexcavation of a rubbish dump at the Coalbrookdalepotteries and this by architectural students fromManchester. Again however things are changing.

might be asked why it is necessary to labour a pointmade so often by David Dymond in his undeservedly largelyignored 1974 study, rchaeology nd History subtitled,significantly for our present purposes, A plea forreconciliation . In referring to Carl Sauer s concept of the ultural landscape , Dymond comments that archaeologyin its largest dimension is close to, and hardly distinguishablefrom, historical geography .43 Of late, in addition to valuablepioneering work by Australian geographers and architecturalhistorians, some less welcome and pseudo-academic speciesmay be identified amongst the already overcrowdedgovernment-sponsored bi- and sesquicentennial surveys. Irefer here to such largely non-subjects as the study ofenvironmental arts . These compare ill with the thoroughsocial, geographic, historic and architectural approachdemonstrated by studies of the townships of the Adelaidehills and the Barossa Valley, being undertaken by the SouthAustralian Centre for Settlement Studies under the directionofGordon Young. These have properly found a place in theinterim publications of the Australian Bicentennial History s ustralian Historical GeographyBulletinand it will not haveescaped any who have studied the Centre s researches intothe British and continental European antecedents of thesesettlements, as revealed in their organisation, construction,social life and material culture. that Young is a Mancuniantrained architect. At the University of Manchester s Schoolof Architecture is one of the centres of still-growing interestin vernacular architecture, of which R.W. Brunskill s workis simply the best known. The social history of minoritygroups in Australia, be they the First Australians of all,German rural settlers or Chinese miners and marketgardeners in the goldfields of Queensland, can only beadvanced through the addition of the examination of theirsocial archaeology, that is, information which can only berecovered by archaeological methods. One must, however,guard against an artificial separation of public awareness ofthe varying intertwining strands of a multi-cultural society.The understanding of cultural institutions, the real effects ofthe assimilation of cultural baggage, will be meaningless ifwe do not realise the need, suitably guided, continually tocross inter-disciplinary boundaries. Once again, to studystructures without artefacts or vice vers is to dissect thecadaver of the past by examining the skeleton and discardingthe vital organs.There is a yet more basic need to build up and tocorrelate our total data bank of source materials, including10

those of oral history. Such sources naturally include pictOrialmaterial , as was highlighted by the historic photographsproject of the University of Sydney s Macleay Museum. there is much to be done in terms of field archaeology sensuCrawford, there remains a fair amount of armchair or librarydesk archaeology which is as yet underestimated. Certainly,there have been some notable attempts to prevent thedegeneration into mere rubbish of two-dimensional no lessthan three-dimensional records, largely as the result of thework of architects, geographers and engineers. One may citenot only the work of Jeans and Cumming but also the twovolumes of the Manual of architectural history sourcespublished in 1981 by the Department ofArchitecture at theUniversity of Adelaide, under the editorship of DavidSaunders. Thinking not only of student projects but of theincreasing output of contract research, there is a continuallygrowing number of detailed studies. As has been discussedat recent meetings of the Australian and New ZealandAssociation for the Advancement of Science, these contributeto what seems to be an increasing problem of access to andpublication of such work. A time of shrinking resources inthe educational field is hardly apposite for suggesting newuniversity initiat ives, but I seriously wonder (and not forthe first time) if, with the cooperation of the AustralianHeritage Commission, there could not be developed somesuch scheme as the University of Leicester s GraduateCertificate in Post-Excavation Studies, the aim of which isto offer training in the preparation for publication of alreadyexisting data. Too often there seems to be an institutionalisedview that look after the field work and the publication willlook after itself. Private sponsorship, in an age (it wouldseem) of growing privati sat ion, is another area ripe fordevelopment and in an Australian context it is somewhatironical to comment on the substantial contributions whichin Britain historical archaeology has received from the majortrading banks; in the Antipodes such institutions are hardlyin the forefront of moves to conserve the historic heritage.Nevertheless, in 1972 David Frankel wrote in the staffmagazine of the Bank of New South Wales: The preservationand the growing awareness of the potential of properlycollected material is to be seen as a first step in thedevelopment of an historical archaeology which can addsignificantly to our knowledge of the colonial past and so invarious ways further our understanding of the present . Ifeel, for those who do not believe in the validity of historicalarchaeology, that this is not a bad statement to ponder -or is tha t view now to be regarded as so much meaninglessrubbish?

NOTESI Piggott 1959: 14.2. Daniel 1976.3. Atkinson 196 : 30.4. Willey Sabloff 1974: 186 ff5. McEvedy 1967: 9.6. Walker 1967.7. Connah 1983.8. South 1977: see here especially, Research strategies inhistorical archaeology: the scientific paradigm , 1 ff9. Jack 1977: 24; see also Jack s useful survey currently inpress.10. I owe theseinteresting suggestions respectivelyto Dr BrianEgloffand Dr M. Ruth Megaw11. Piggott 1981: 187.12. Evans 1961.13. Evans-Pritchard 1961: 20-21.14. McBryde 1978.15. See for example Megaw 1967.


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BIBLIOGRAPHYALLEN, F.J . 1967. The Cornish round chimney in Australia,Cornish Archaeology 6: 68-73.ALLEN, F J 1973. The archaeology of nineteenth-centurycolonialism: an Australian case study, World Archaeology 5 (1):44-60.ATKINSON R.J.C. 1960. Archaeology history and scienceUniversity of Wales Press, Cardiff.BARWICK D.. MACE, M. STANNAGE T. (eds) 1980.HandbookforAboriginal and Islander history A.N.U. Press, Canberra.BINFORD. L.R. 1981. Bones: ancient men and modern mythsAcademic Press, New York London.BINFORD L.R. 1983. In pursuit of the past: decoding thearchaeological record Thames Hudson, London.BIRMINGHAM J.M. 1974. Lithgow Pottery: three early cataloguesfrom New South Wales Studies in Historical Archaeology(Sydney) 2.BIRMINGHAM J.M. 1976. The archaeological contribution tonineteenth-century history: some Australian case studies, WorldArchaeology 7 (3): 306-17.BIRMINGHAM J.M. JAMES, P. (eds) 1981. Industrial and historicalarchaeology The National Trust of Australia (N.S.W.), Sydney.

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24.25.26.27.28.29.30.31.32.33.34.35.36.37.38.39.40.41.42.43.44.45.46.47.

Trigger 1976.Noel Hume 1970.Cotter 1976.Hodges 1982.Evans 1980; see also Birmingham 1974 and LithgowPottery: a source book I II Australian Society forHistorical Archaeology Occasional Papers 4-5 (1979).Nash 1980: 45.Binford 1983: 26.Compare the partial (the word is the authors own) viewof the recent development of prehistoric studies inAustralia given by Murray White 1981.See for example Rathje McCarthy 1977; Rathje 1981.Gould Schiffer 1981: passim.Binford 1981; 1983.Graffam 1982.Deetz 1976; 1977: 138 Barwick et al. 1980: section 10.Soechting 1977.Dethlefsen 1981.I owe this reference to Professor D.J. Mulvaney; see alsoYarwood 1964; 1968.South 1977: 1 Binford 1983: 194.Mackinolty 1983.Allen 1967.The most useful precis of both sites are to be foundrespectively in Allen 1973 and Birmingham 1976.South 1977: 6 commenting on Ferguson 1977.Cumming 1981.Compare the picture of general awareness of the potentialoffered by urban archaeology given by Dickens 1982.Elia 1983.Mulvaney 1981.Dymond 1974.Young 1981; 1983.Brunskill 1981; 1982.Frankel 1972.I acknowledge here the contributions of myoid friendsand former colleagues, Judy Birmingham and Ian Jack,and many years spent jointly in sifting through the rubbishof the past and sometimes the rubbish of the present.

BRUNSKILL R.W. 1981. Traditional buildings of England: anintroduction to vernacular architecture Gollancz, London.BRUNSKILL R.W. 1982. Houses Collins, London.CONNAH G. 1983.Stamp-collecting or increasing understanding?:the dilemma of historical archaeology, Australian Journal ofHistorical Archaeology I: 15-21.COTTER J.L. 1976. Historical archaeology: an introduction,Archaeology 29 (3): 150-1.CUMMING D.A. 1981. Some industrial sites and complexes inGawler, South Australia, in Birmingham James 1981: 44-46.DANIEL G.E. 1976. Cambridge and the back looking curiosity: aninaugural lecture Cambridge University Press.DEETZ, J . 1976. Black settlement in Plymouth, Archaeology 29(3): 207.DEETZ, J. 1977. In small things forgotten: the archaeology ofearlyAmerican life Doubleday-Anchor, Garden City N.Y.DETHLEFSEN E.S. 1981. The cemetery and culture change:archaeological focus and ethnographic perspective, in Gould Schiffer 1981: 137-59.DICKENS R.S. (ed.) 1982. Archaeology of urban America: thesearch for pattern and process Academic Press, New York London.DYMOND D.P. 1974. Archaeology and history: a plea forreconciliation Thames Hudson, London.ELlA, R. 1983. Urban archaeology at the Paul Revere house,Context (Boston) 3 (1-2): 5-7,EVANS. I. 1980. The Lithgow Pottery Flannel Flower Press, Glebe,N.S.W.EVANS, J. 1961. Anniversary address, Antiquaries Journal :149-53.EVANS PRITCHARD E.E. 1961. nthropology and historyUniversity of Manchester Press.FERGUSON L.G. 1977. An archaeological-historical analysis ofFort Watson: Dec. 1780 Aprill781 in South 1977: 41-74.FRANKEL D. 1972. Historical archaeology in Australia, TheEtruscan 21 (2): 19-22.GOULD R.A. SCHIFFER. M.B. 1981.Modern materialculture: thearchaeology of us Academic Press, New York London.GRAFFAM. G. 1982. The use of pattern in student material culture:a preliminary report from Harvard Yard, North AmericanArchaeologist 3 (3): 207-24.HODGES R. 1982. Dark Age economics: the origins of towns andtrade A.D. 600 /000 Duckworth, London.JACK, R.I. 1977. Local history in Australia, Current AffairsBulletin 54 (2): 24-30,JACK, R.I. in press. The archaeology of colonial Australia, inDyson, S.L. (ed.) Colonial archaeology British ArchaeologicalReports, International Series, Oxford.McBRYDE I. (ed.) 1978. Records of times past: ethnohistoricalessays on the culture and ecology of the New England tribesAustralian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra.McEVEDY, C. 1967. Penguin atlas of ancient history PenguinBooks, Harmondsworth.MACKlNOLTY J. (ed.) 1983. Past continuous: learning through thehistorical environment History Teachers Association ofAustralia, Sydney.MEGAW, J.V.S. 1967. Archaeology, art and Aborigines: a surveyof historical sources and later Australian prehistory, Journal ofthe oyal Australian Historical Society 53 (4): 277-94.MULVANEY D.J. 1981. The heritage value of historical relics: aplea for romantic intellectualism, in Birmingham James 1981:3-6.MURRAY T. WHITE J.P. 1981. Cambridge in the bush?Archaeology in Australia and New Guinea, World Archaeology13 (2): 255-63.NASH D. 1980. Historical archaeology, in Sherratt , A. (ed.)Cambridge encyclopedia ofarchaeology Cambridge UniversityPress, pp. 43-45.NOEL HUME I. 1970.A guide to the artifacts ofcolonial AmericaKnopf, New York.


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PIGGOTTLondon,1959, Approach to archaeology, A. C. Black, WALKER r.c 1967. Historical archaeology methodsprinciples, Historical Archaeology I: 25-34.

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the archaeology of rubbish or rubbishing archaeology: backward looks and forward glances j.v.s....

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