Madeline Fowler: Aboriginal Maritime Landscapes in South Australia: The Balance Ground
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BOOK REVIEW
Madeline Fowler: Aboriginal Maritime Landscapes in South Australia: The Balance Ground Routledge, UK, 2019, 196 pp Jennifer McKinnon1 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
It is a great time to be in the field of maritime archaeology to see the long overdue, yet incredibly thought-provoking and stimulating efforts of maritime archaeologists focusing on Indigenous/Aboriginal maritime cultures. Aboriginal Maritime Landscapes in South Australia (2019) by Madeline Fowler is a welcome primer for how to undertake such important and central work. Published by Routledge under the ‘‘Archaeology and Indigenous Peoples’’ series, the book fits comfortably within an Indigenous archaeology framework that has been challenging the discipline of archaeology to think critically about the ways in which Indigenous peoples and their heritage are represented in our field. More importantly, it addresses the subfield of maritime archaeology specifically, and the ways in which it has for years overlooked the incredibly rich and significant history and heritage of Australia’s Aboriginal maritime past and present. Fowler’s book is cross-disciplinary incorporating Indigenous, community, and maritime archaeological practices, as well as anthropology, history, and Indigenous studies. The book is comprised of eight chapters and provides sections on community permissions, use of language, a toponym glossary, and an index of Burgiyana people, all of which are essential to Indigenous and community archaeologies. Chapter one introduces briefly the Narungga as a maritime culture and Guuranda, their traditional sea and land. Fowler is careful to identify the colonial and Western constructs of archaeology that have created inherent biases in our interpretations of maritime peoples to the detriment of understanding this aspect within their broader cultural system. The chapter covers aspects of the sea from the physical (i.e. watercraft) to the ritual (i.e. cognitive and spiritual), while outlining how the process of contact and colonisation both structured and was structured by Indigenous peoples and their important contributions to Australia’s colonial maritime industry. It also covers several key theoretical concepts, methodological approaches, and data sets that shape the work including maritime cultural landscapes, entanglement, de-centring, lived experience, and intangible heritage. & Jennifer McKinnon [email protected] 1
Program in Maritime Studies, East Carolina University, Greenville, USA
123
Journal of Maritime Archaeology
Chapter two begins with an in-depth historical background of the colonisation of South Australia from the perspective of Aboriginal people. Fowler purposefully masters the centring of Indigenous peoples in that history, which has largely been told from the coloniser perspective. The chapter expands the oft espoused importance of pastoralism in the colonisation of South Australia by shifting focus to the sustentative contributions In
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