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Archaeology and aboriginal protest: the influence of Rhys Jones's Tasmanian work on Australian historiography
Citation
Taylor, R, Archaeology and aboriginal protest: the influence of Rhys Jones's Tasmanian work on Australian historiography, Australian Historical Studies, 45, (3) pp. 331-349. ISSN 1031-461X (2014) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2019 Informa UK Limited This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Australian Historical Studies on 19 September 2014, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1031461X.2014.948021
DOI: doi:10.1080/1031461X.2014.948021
Abstract
In 1977 archaeologist Rhys Jones asked a question that sparked a controversy: if Europeans had never reached Tasmania, had the Aborigines been nonetheless ‘doomed to a slow strangulation of the mind’? Some contemporaries accused Jones of reiterating nineteenth-century ‘Social Darwinism’, a charge Lyndall Ryan has recently renewed as ‘scientific racism’. In contrast, this article argues that Jones, a left-wing Welshman, intended to make a poetic comparison between the possible effects of isolation and a history of genocide. The assumption that genocide had ended in Tasmanian Aboriginal extinction potentially undermined Australia's earliest and most radical emergent indigenous movement. The controversy that followed was pivotal to Australian Aboriginal and academic relations, and has shaped fundamentally how Tasmanian, and Australian, history is written.
Item Details
| Item Type: | Refereed Article |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | Tasmanian Aboriginal archaeology, history, protest history |
| Research Division: | Indigenous Studies |
| Research Group: | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, language and history |
| Research Field: | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history |
| Objective Division: | Indigenous |
| Objective Group: | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage and culture |
| Objective Field: | Conserving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage and culture |
| UTAS Author: | Taylor, R (Dr Rebe Taylor) |
| ID Code: | 135656 |
| Year Published: | 2014 |
| Web of Science® Times Cited: | 5 |
| Deposited By: | College Office - CALE |
| Deposited On: | 2019-11-07 |
| Last Modified: | 2019-12-04 |
| Downloads: | 26 View Download Statistics |
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