A Community Bioarchaeology Project in the Flinders Group, Queensland, Australia
- PDF / 5,415,705 Bytes
- 24 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 83 Downloads / 190 Views
RESEARCH
Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress (Ó 2020) https://doi.org/10.1007/s11759-020-09411-w
Mark Collard, Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada Doug Williams, Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD 4111, Australia; Access Archaeology and Heritage Pty Ltd, Canberra, ACT 2617, Australia Clarence Flinders, Cape Melville, Flinders and Howick Islands Aboriginal Corporation, Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia Sally Wasef, Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD 4111, Australia Michael C. Westaway, School of Social Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia Accepted: 31 October 2020
ABSTRACT
Bioarchaeological research in Australia has lagged behind that in other regions due to understandable concerns arising from the disregard of Indigenous Australians rights over their ancestors’ remains. To improve this situation, bioarchaeologists working in Australia need to employ more communityoriented approaches to research. This paper reports a project in which we employed such an approach. The project focused on burials in the Flinders Group, Queensland. Traditional Owners played a key role in the excavations and helped devise analyses that would deliver both scientific contributions and socially relevant outcomes. The fieldwork and laboratory analyses yielded a number of interesting results. Most significantly, they revealed that the pattern of mortuary practices recorded by ethnographers in the region in the early Ó 2020 World Archaeological Congress
ARCHAEOLOGIES
________________________________________________________________
SHAUN ADAMS ET AL.
20th century—complex burial of powerful people and simple interment of less important individuals—has a time depth of several hundred years or more. More generally, the project shows that there can be fruitful collaboration between archaeologists and Indigenous communities in relation to the excavation and scientific analysis of Aboriginal ancestral remains. ________________________________________________________________
Resumen: La investigacio´n bioarqueolo´gica en Australia se ha quedado a la zaga de la de otras regiones debido a preocupaciones comprensibles que surgen del desprecio a los derechos de los indı´genas australianos sobre los restos de sus antepasados. Para mejorar esta situacio´n, los bioarqueo´logos que trabajan en Australia deben emplear enfoques de investigacio´n ma´s orientados a la comunidad. Este documento informa sobre un proyecto en el que empleamos este enfoque. El proyecto se centro´ en los entierros en Flinders Group, Queensland. Los propietarios tradicionales jugaron un papel clave en las excavaciones y ayudaron a disen˜ar ana´lisis que entregarı´an contribuciones cientı´ficas y resultados socialmente relevantes. El trabajo de campo y los ana´lisis de laboratorio arrojaron una serie de resultados interesantes. Ma´s significativamente, revelaron que el patro´
Data Loading...
