once were foragers: the archaeology of agrarian...

Once were foragers: The archaeology of agrarian Australia andthe fate of Aboriginal land managementPaterson, A. (2017). Once were foragers: The archaeology of agrarian Australia and the fate of Aboriginalland management. Quaternary International. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2016.12.047

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Once were foragers: The archaeology of agrarian Australia and the fateof Aboriginal land management

Alistair Paterson a, b, *

a Archaeology, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6907, Australiab Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2PG, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 12 July 2016Received in revised form7 December 2016Accepted 7 December 2016Available online xxx

* Corresponding author. Archaeology, University ofHighway, Crawley, WA 6907, Australia.

E-mail address: [email protected].

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2016.12.0471040-6182/Crown Copyright © 2017 Published by Els

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a b s t r a c t

The arrival of European agriculturalists emphatically disrupted the foraging economies of AustraliaAboriginal peoples. Introduced farming based on non-native species was practiced over southern andeastern Australia, while much of arid and tropical Australia supported ranch pastoralism. Thus the pri-mary setting for culture contact between Aboriginal societies and outsiders involved agrarian colo-nialism. In this configuration, some hunter-foragers became herders, domestic animal handlers, andgardeners. The transformation occurred quickly, within a single generation, although was essentially'uneven' across families, kin groups, and regions. Much of the unevenness resulted from the social andpolitical realities of colonial Australia, alongside environmental parameters. While Australia providesinsight into how foraging societies transformed when faced with farmers, these changes occurred inspecific historical contexts wherein the contingencies of agrarian colonialism greatly restricted the rangeof possibilities for Aboriginal people while destabilizing prevailing indigenous anthropogenic environ-ments. This paper argues for an archaeology of agrarian Australia that aims to understand the emergenceof Australian historical landscapes from combined Holocene Australian and Early Modern Europeanroots.

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1. Introduction

Human societies have always coexisted in their environmentswith populations of animals and plants. Archaeological studies ofpast transitions in food procurement focus on the shift fromforaging to forms of food production (see papers this volume), thecontribution of contacts between foragers and farmers to changingecodynamics (Fitzhugh et al., 2016) and the development ofagrarian societies (Castillo, 2014). Most of our data to understandthis topic comes from archaeological evidence, given that thesetransitions often occurred in periods and contexts with no writtenaccounts, however some contacts did occur in historical periods(Jordan and Weber, 2016). The history of Australia provides theopportunity to explore the interface between foragers and farmersin a more recent period, as the shift from indigenous economies offood procurement to farming occurred following European arrivalin 1788. The aim of this paper is to explore aspects of this transition

Western Australia, 35 Stirling

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, A., Once were foragers: Th7), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/

on either side of 1788. This discussion reveals that the options forAboriginal people were constrained by environmental, social, andpolitical factors of agrarian colonization backed by settler colo-nialism that together destabilized prevailing pre-1788 indigenouspeople's relationships with Australian environments.

By way of background, my research focuses on the evidence forindigenous involvement in rural industries dominated by sheepand cattle raising, particularly the earliest decades of Europeansettlement when many Aboriginal people were pastoral stationworkers (Paterson, 2003, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2011, 2012) (Fig. 1).Sheep and cattle industries were the most extensive form ofintroduced farming in Australia and thus impacted on a significantnumber of Aboriginal societies. Previously I have explored thematerial correlates of historical processes, such as indigenous re-sponses to change, how farming was resisted or co-opted, and theemergence of a cross-cultural pastoral domain. This paper takesthat work as a foundation to further explore the development ofhistorical landscapes in agrarian Australia.

I first consider Aboriginal landscape enhancement prior to 1788.I then present evidence for Aboriginal peoples' involvement infarming and ranch pastoralism particularly in the early contactperiod, highlighting social and environmental dimensions, and the

e archaeology of agrarian Australia and the fate of Aboriginal landj.quaint.2016.12.047

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Fig. 1. Image of Aboriginal campsite in Warriner Creek during the visit of the South Australian Pastoral Lands Commission in 1891 (Photograph: State Library of South Australia, PRG280/1/40/121).

A. Paterson / Quaternary International xxx (2017) 1e132

implications of social and political restrictions imposed onAboriginal people in colonial Australia. I conclude by arguing forregional studies taking into account interactions between people(indigenous and non-indigenous), landscapes, and ecosystems, asframed by agrarian colonialism.

2. Regional approaches to landscape enhancement andculture contacts

Across Australia, from the tropics to temperate regions, foragerlifeways supported the rich social diversity of Aboriginal people. Infields of research interested in the classifications of ‘hunter-forager'and ‘farmer,' Australia is unique amongst the habitable continentsbeing the only place where animal and plant domestication andfarming lifeways did not occur independentlydalthough encoun-ters with agriculturalists in PNG occurred through communities ofTorres Straight. The biographical and physical barrier of Wallaceapreserved Australia's distinctive endemic fauna and flora resultingin a continent that had never seen a hooved animal until 1788.

The global massmigrations initiated by Europeans after the 15thcentury AD translocated farming practices. Albert Crosby's‘Columbian Exchange' described the exchange of plants, animals,diseases, and technology that occurred following increased con-tacts between the Old and New Worlds. He saw this as a form of"ecological imperialism" (Crosby, 1986, 2003) fuelled by culturalprocesses driving European travel and colonization. When farmerscame to Australia in the 18th century AD: "Australia, unlike mostother parts of the New World, experienced colonization andindustrialization almost coincidentally, a compressed, double rev-olution" (Griffiths, 1997). For environmental historical Tom Grif-fiths, 1788, like 1492, is a "momentous date in world ecologicalhistory." Similarly, regarding human history, 1788 is equallymomentous, representing the only instance where a "continent ofhunter-gatherers" (Lourandos, 1997) had to deal with the demicdiffusionda human and biological invasiondof farmers and their

Please cite this article in press as: Paterson, A., Once were foragers: Thmanagement, Quaternary International (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/

companion species. Alison Bashford, in a review of historicalstudies of the Anthropocene, observes that:

Despite great environmental and ecological damage in the earlyyears of colonization, it was an agrarian not an industrialeconomy that was transported, at least initially, a distinctionthat archaeologists sometimes overlook when they see twocultures meeting. Aboriginal and British cultures ‘met,' one atthe expense of the other, and certainly their different energy-economies clashed. (Bashford, 2013, p. 348)

These cross-cultural encounters occurred against a backdrop ofengagements with new animals and plants, changing environ-ments, and settler driven agrarian colonialism. Indigenous peoplewere subject to dispossession (Reynolds, 1989), frontier violence,and attempts at genocide (Reynolds, 1990b, 2001). Foreign patho-gens devastated Aboriginal populations. Demographic impactshave been difficult to determine given the poor pathological recordand the fact that diseases moved ahead of European observers.Research in southern Australia (Dowling, 1990, 1997) and CentralAustralia (Campbell, 2002; Kimber, 1988, 1990) supports evidenceelsewhere (Doybyns, 1983; Ramenofsky, 1987) that Aboriginalcommunities suffered significant loss of life from smallpox andother diseases. The consequences of subsequent changes in human-environmental relationships following reduced indigenous pop-ulations and the curtailing of landscape management practiceshave been highlighted (Head, 2000a; 2000b; Gammage, 2011).

From an economic production perspective we can placeAustralia on a global spectrum whose increments locate differenthuman relationships with animals and plants. For Tapper (1988, p.52) the primary systems of human-animal relations of productionare hunting and gathering, pastoralism, agriculture, and urban-industrial production. There is much variance within these cate-gories: the degree to which ‘hunter-gatherers' relied on collectedplants versus that of animal varies, as does the extent of terrestrial


A. Paterson / Quaternary International xxx (2017) 1e13 3

versus marine exploitation. Farmers often rely on ‘wild' foods,through gathering and hunting, and foragers sometimes huntdomesticated animals.

Aboriginal Australians were once widely perceived in economicterms, as passive hunters and gatherers trapped on a continentunable to change. However, archaeology, history, and ethnobotanyhave illustrated how Aboriginal people practiced forms of resourcemanagement and enhanced the food quest. Peter Hiscock sum-marizes the many diverse ways food was procured across Austra-lian environments, preferring the term ‘forager' for the "diversityprocurement and processing observed historically in Australia"(2008, p. 9). Indigenous food procurement around Australiainvolved many different activities and collective behaviors. Itencompassed passive trapping through to forms of foraging thatrequired landscape and environmental manipulation, such as theuse of fire, and the maintenance of ditches and traps. Managementof some environments to enhance food productivity were akin toactivities associated with agriculturalists elsewhere, while foodwas prepared in many different ways including complex forms ofprocessing and storage (Hiscock, 2008, p. 9).

Across Australia the yields of targeted species were once pro-moted by the deliberate enhancement of the landscape. Increas-ingly, pre-European Aboriginal land management practices andanthropogenic landscapes are recognized (Head, 2000a,b), earlierfuelled by the concept of ‘fire stick farming’ forwarded by RhysJones (1969; see also Latz, 1995; Flannery, 1994). Many colonialhistorical accounts described how Aboriginal peoples used fire tomanage landscapes for the better attainment of targeted foodplants and hunted animals (Gammage, 2011). However, suchmanagement tended to end with the arrival of Europeans.

Fire, however, was only one potential ‘tool’ in indigenous peo-ples' foraging and was not used in the same manner across thecontinent. Evidence for regional specialization in the enhancementof resources encompasses plants, fish, eels, shellfish, reptiles, andinsects. ‘Wild harvesting’ was described for southern Australia byBeth Gott using ethnobotanical research, covering a broad range ofwetland and dryland plants including root plants like Microserisscapigera (murnong, daisy yam), and ferns. Gott saw ‘naturalcultivation’ in historical accounts of Aboriginal firing, gathering,and digging. Burning reduced undergrowth in timbered areas,which increased the abundance and productivity of plants inseveral ways: allowing sunlight to reach selected plants, providingnutrients, maintaining clear areas for seeds to germinate and grow,lessening crowding and competition, and reducing the size ofstands of preferred clumping plants like Typha, Scirpus, and Pteri-dium (Gott, 1983, p. 65). The digging of topsoil aerated and enrichedsoils that aided seed germination and root growth, and dispersedroots and seeds. The manual transfer of rhizomes spread usefulplants. For Gott, these strategies broke down the commondistinction made between ‘gathering' and ‘cultivating,' now "lesssharp than one might have expected" (Gott, 1982, p. 65) andanticipated the now well established field of archaeobotany(Antolín et al., 2016). However, these anthropogenic systems weredisrupted by the arrival of sheep and cattle. Introduced animalsconsumed root plants, and assisted the spread of new invasivespecies through grazing and the transformation of the topsoilthrough hooves.

For Southwest Australia Slyvia Hallam (1975) similarly arguedhow regular Aboriginal burning modified the environment toenhance the availability of useful plants and to create easier accessto coastal and estuarine resources. For her, the historical accountsof yam (Dioscorea, or warran) gathering grounds east and north ofthe Swan River Colony described a form of cultivation, whose traceswere evident to the European settlers by large holes and moundsresulting the tending and extraction of the plants.


In tropical Cape York Hynes and Chase (1982) described howcomplex relationships between Aboriginal people and plant com-munities survived European colonization, including the harvestingof yams, the designation of abundant areas as ‘gardens’ markedwith poles, the protection of important wild plant communitiesthrough fencing and burning, and possible human transfer of yamsto offshore islands. In their study of the distribution of native fruittree species, they promoted the concept of ‘domiculture,’ deployingStanner's concept of domain as a series of hearth-centered envi-ronments, where "selective environmental knowledge and re-sources strategies are applied" (p. 38). For the coastal site ofKungathan, they argued that the distribution of fruit trees andshrub groves resulted from the monitored care of the germinationof fruits collected elsewhere and established at the margins of thesettlement.

These and other studies over three decades ago promoted theconcept that Aboriginal people manipulated their local environ-ment to increase food yields to make foraging easier and reliable.This concept highlighted the complex relationships betweenAboriginal people and environmental systems, and promoted ahistory of anthropogenic-influenced ecosystems in the periodpreceding European arrival. This research fuelled the model byLourandos (1997), presented in Continent of Hunter-Gatherers: NewPerspectives in Australian Prehistory, of ‘intensification' in the mid-late Holocene across the Australian continent characterized byincreasingly intensive food production and, when compared to thePleistocene, less homogeneous societies exhibiting greater societalchange (Hiscock, 2008, p. 106). Any continental model, however,suffers under the weight of assumed homogeneity. Given thediverse environments of Australia what regionalisation existed?How did the proposal that these developments occurred syn-chronistically in the recent Holocene stand up? Recently Hiscock(2008) and Ulm (2012) have argued that the patterns often citedas characterizing the Holocene are not necessarily Holocene norcontinental, instead arguing for "understanding regional diversityin terms of an Australian past comprising a mosaic of independentcultural trajectories based on continuous adjustments to localphysical and social exigencies" (Ulm, 2012, p. 189). Ulm and His-cocks' rejection of grand continental narratives focuses firmly onpeople in changing local environments over time:

[t]herefore we might conceive of a landscape in which at anypoint in time there might be a range of higher-density pop-ulations distributed across resource-rich areas separated bylower-density populations. Not every society needs to be com-plex andwe should not have the expectation that this will be thecase. This is not denying anyone agency or ability; it simplyrecognizes the fact that different people developed differentways of living to meet particular needs in particular circum-stances shaped by what came before (i.e. historical contin-gency). (Ulm, 2012, p. 189)

A regional approach does not necessitate a new narrative ofisolation, as there is evidence for connections between Aboriginalsocieties through trade and social networks across the continent,which in Torres Strait created contacts with Papua NewGuinea. Thearrival in Australia of dingos in the mid-Holocene resulted in con-tinental dispersal. Dingoes arrived as a domesticated animal but as"we do not know the purpose of that domestication and once theyarrived, they became ‘wild’" (Balme and O'Connor, 2015, p. 4). Dogsbecame an important part of Aboriginal social and ritual life acrossmainland Australia as companions, warmth, camp followers, sen-tries, and hunters. Although their usefulness in hunts has beendebated, Balme and O'Connor's review of the ethnographic andarchaeological evidence suggests they were useful in hunting,



possibly more so for women who may have enjoyed increased re-turn rates for hunted meat. Thus while the dispersal of dingo iscontinental, dingos played different slightly roles within regions.

In a regional approach, the grand narrative that Aboriginalpeople across Australia were on the verge of a significant economicand social change that was "nipped in the bud by the coming of theEuropeans" (Lourandos, 1983, p. 92) is difficult to sustain. This doesnot preclude local innovations in indigenous practice, althoughthese then need to be demonstrated through regional studies. To doso requires understanding the environmental and archaeologicalsignatures around European colonization. While the Holocene didnot end in 1788, the boundary between Holocene archaeology and'historical' archaeology has often been distinct: one side askingquestions about Aboriginal history, the other interested in Euro-peans and other non-Aboriginal people in Australia. A local frame ofanalysis invites integrated research bridging indigenous and non-indigenous histories, as established in archaeological studies ofcontact and cross-cultural contexts (Harrison and Williamson,2004; Torrence and Clarke, 2000; Lydon, 2009; Paterson, 2011).This work has demonstrated how Aboriginal people activelyresponded to settler colonialism through strategies such as evasion,resistance, accommodation, agency, and innovation. The archaeo-logical evidence has included settlement patterns, material culture,rock art, subsistence, diet, and ideology, and encompassedmuseumand ethnographic collections. Historical changes in indigenouslandscape management have also been documented, such as in theNorthern Territory where Lesley Head records Aboriginal fire re-gimes on cattle properties (Head, 1994). A robust set of research inTorres Strait has provided a fine-grained archaeological under-standing of social and economic life characterized by inter-islandcontacts, and with Australia and PNG. In more recent centuriesIslander village life and mobility responded to the presence ofEuropeans (McNiven and Quinell, 2004; McNiven, 2008; Wrightand Ricardi, 2014). In the Northern Territory, archaeological workdemonstrates the extent that Macassan expeditions in recentcenturies transformed coastal and island Aboriginal societies. Thework of Scott Mitchell (1996) and Annie Clarke (2000) in ArnhemLand and Groote Eylandt reveals changes in the organization offood procurement, hunting techniques (with the introduction ofdugout canoes and metal for implements), foraging ranges, the sizeof residential groups which became sometimes larger, and theseasonal organization of mobility. Recent rock art provides insightinto indigenous concepts regarding the arrival of non-indigenousoutsiders and the colonial world (O'Connor et al., 2013; Patersonand van Duivenvorde, 2014; May et al., 2013; Taçon et al., 2012;Frederick, 2000).

In terms of the environment, local archaeological and environ-mental records for the late Holocene, including post 1788 Australia,capture significant social and environmental developments. An-thropologist Emilio Moran (2006, p. 68) argues that the contribu-tion of archaeology to the study of human-environmentalinteractions is archaeology's ability to consider human agency andlandscape change over time. Ecological ‘deep time' histories beingwritten with archaeological data are becoming more common inAustralia (Griffith Taylor, 1933; Macintyre, 2009; Veth andO'Connor, 2013). Moran sees this as a form of social ecology,measuring human resilience within environments over time(Redman and Kinzig, 2003; Holling, 2001).

The resilience of diverse Australian Aboriginal communities isprofiled in Ian Keen's (2003) study of indigenous economies at‘contact' across seven regions, demonstrating the various wayspeople managed natural resources in the changing circumstancesof recent centuries. Other studies highlight the ways that Aborig-inal people maintained and negotiated connections to ‘country,'characterized by a "deep sense of connection and belonging"


(Strang, 1997, p. 286). For non-Aboriginal people, a sense ofconnection to landscapes contrasted against Aboriginal attachmentraises complex issues that emerge directly from histories of racialdifference. In a study of "the landed identities of Blackfellas andWhitefellas" in the "shared space" of pastoralism (ranching) in theGulf Country of northern Australia David Trigger and RichardMartin suggest that "theorizing ontologies of place can be enrichedand productively contextualized by complementary researchattention to the interpenetrating culture, beliefs, and practices ofco-resident non-Aboriginal people" (2016, p. 3). The experiences ofthe Gulf Country described in their research deserve comparisonwith other regions to understand how Aboriginal attachment tocountry has travelled down through the centuries within agrariansettings, and the degree to which non-Aboriginal people haveknown these attachments, if at all. As explored below, the cross-cultural world of farming has been described as a ‘shared space’in Australia. However, Trigger andMartins' ethnography alerts us tothe fact that cultural differences are pernicious, and indigenous andnon-indigenous people have "inherited social identities … [with]very different relationships to land" (p. 11) and, by implication,potentially different experiences of agrarian Australia.

3. The agrarian colonization of Australia

British colonists introduced an agrarian economy backed bysettler colonialism that was promulgated by government policies,created the social fabric of much of Australia, and resulted inenvironmental and landform changes across the continent. Largenumbers of new plants and animals and animals were introducedto Australia after 1788; from an agrarian perspective these areclassified as ‘domestic’ or not, for example as weeds or feral ani-mals. For Aboriginal people, such distinctions would have beenunimportant, and ‘first contact’ may well have been with escapedanimal populations rather than Europeans. In fact, when in 1788the first cattle were brought to Botany Bay, a bull and five cowsescaped and were found alive seven years later (Davidson, 1989, p.61). Other introduced animals escaped forming wild populations,including horses, cattle, pigs, camels, donkeys, goats, chickens, cats,rabbits, and rodents. Unlike elsewhere in the world, however, nonative animals were domesticated as a result of the introduction offarming.

By the 18th century, selective breeding and the developingscience of animal and plant rearing increasingly informed settlers.Breeds of sheep, cattle, and other animals were selected for andtested in Australian conditions, leading to economically successfulbreeds like Merino sheep. Despite the developing science of animalhusbandry, some forms of farming such as sheep and cattle raisingon an open range imported to Australia resembled Medievalpractices. While early settlements supported nascent colonial set-tlements, by the 19th century the scale of farming escalated. Thepace of agrarian expansion accelerated as farms moved from theshadows of coastal settlements into inland plains, and increasinglyarid or tropical environments which, being unsuited to crop raising,saw sheep and cattle farming dominate (Fig. 2).

Before the colonization of Australia, British ideas of their ani-mals and food production were changing from an Early Modernmindset that conceptualised human similarities to the animalworld to one that marginalized animals at the edges of social life-das food and industrial products (Tapper, 1988, 48). Pastoralism inAustralian was not pastoral nomadism, characterized by animalherding and transhumance; rather most Australian pastoralism canbe described as ‘ranching,’ as animals were typically herded in largenumbers and came into contact with humansmore rarely thanwithother forms of animal raising, such as dairy farming. Thus,Australian animal raising, where shepherds patrolled large


Fig. 2. The distribution of sheep and cattle properties across Australia, c.1950.


unfenced farms, traced its patterns of landuse and labor back toEarly Modern Europe.

Today the legacy is two-thirds of the continent dedicated tofarming production, of which ninety per cent is for pastoral grazingon native pastures arid and semi-arid zones (AustralianGovernment, 2016). The distinction between crop farming andpastoralism was determined by rainfall, with 12 inches (30 cm) acritical division. Agriculture led to massive land clearance andimplementation of infrastructure (termed ‘improvements’) such asfences, bores, dams, tracks, and yards, as well as regional networksof railways, droving routes and roads. For much of Australia openrange, grazing prevailed for decades, and animals ranged freelyduring the day to be protected at night in yards, akin to medievalhusbandry. Shepherds and shepherdesses kept animals from get-ting lost and provided protection from predators. Fences wouldeventually reduce the need for intensive livestock husbandry.However, even today in northern and central Australia cattle sta-tions are mostly unfenced and when stock require tending they areherded into drafting yards.

The Australian colonial ‘frontier’ can be envisaged as a boundarybetween foragers and farmers, both often occupying the samelandscape and vying for it. Colonial laws failed to recognizeAboriginal land ownership (Reynolds, 1990a). The absence ofrecognizable indigenous farms and gardens was used to justifywhite claims to land ownership, despite historical accounts ofAboriginal land modification (Gott, 1982; Gammage, 2011). In fact,with legal recognition of Aboriginal land tenure in the 1990s,indigenous gardens would play a significant role in the criticalMabo decision. In the colonial landscape, farms and the margins ofthe agrarian country were settings for cross-cultural violence, fol-lowed by the marginalization of indigenous survivors andincreasingly controlled access to traditional country. Australia wasnever a ‘level playing field,’ a point that bears remembering whenasking the question about why Aboriginal people did not excel in


certain economic pursuits such as farming.Farming resulted in profitable industries across Australia. Today

primary resources from farming are still a significant part of thenational economydAustralia still produces one-quarter of theworld's wool for example (Australian Government, 2016). Vastproperties (when compared to Europe) reflected both the lowcarrying capacity of the environment in more arid regions coupledwith the scale of industrial animal production. The challengingdistances were bridged by long-distance stock droving routes,railways, and clipper ships. Pastoral magnates such as Sidney Kid-man created portfolios of farms and stations to offset the risks ofdrought, lower transport costs, and improve breeding. The devel-opment of refrigerated food transport and food canning in the latenineteenth century saw Australia become one of the world's largestexporters of food, propped up by extensive use of tariffs as pro-tection programs.

Farms benefitted from Aboriginal people. The open pastures thatearly pastoralists enjoyed were often the result of Aboriginal landmanagement practices, particularly burning. The colonist ThomasMitchell described how "Fire is necessary to burn the grass, andform these open forests. . . . But for this simple process, theAustralian woods had probably continued as thick as a jungle asthose of New Zealand or America" (cited in Gammage, 2011, p. vii).The creation of an Aboriginal workforce made these industrieseconomically viable, especially during periods such as the goldrushes when labor was scarce (Castle and Hagan, 1988). Conse-quently, Aboriginal workers became part of the identity of agrarianAustralia (McGrath, 1987; Reynolds, 1990a). For Aboriginal com-munities historically bound to unpaid farm and pastoral work therise of civil rights movement in the twentieth century was longoverdue, yet paradoxically land rights and wage equity resulted ingreater physical separation from traditional country for manyAboriginal people (Reynolds, 1989; Castle and Hagan, 1988).

It should thus be clear that the study of agrarian Australia



includes the longer history of indigenous foraging and landscapeenhancement as well as its fate after 1788. The evidence for this isdiverse, encompassing oral histories and written accounts, inaddition to archaeological and environmental sources. Thearchaeological evidence of agrarian Australia includes: farmscomprised of residences, work sites, workers' settlements andcamps (including for Aboriginal residents on pastoral leases),specialist work sites, infrastructure for water management,fencing; the landscape-level evidence for enclosures, land com-partmentalisation, routes for people and animals; and evidence forAboriginal peoples' settlements and activities outside the pastoraldomain (Fig. 3).

The environmental record extends from the late Holocene intopost-1788 contexts. The impact of farming and introduced specieshas been profound, with deforestation, increased erosion, topsoilloss, flooding, soil degradation, increased salinity, water catchmentdegradation, reduced aquifer levels, degradation of natural springs,reduced water flows and poorer water quality including algaloutbreaks and stagnant waters. Farming and grazing caused asubstantial shift from native plants to introduced crops and grassesand reduced native fauna ranges. The environmental record en-compasses the landscape-level evidence for these changes; proxyrecords for changing environments and ecologies, such as fromcores extracted from swamps and lakes; plant and animal remainsfrom archaeological or other contexts; and soil records, such asphosphate levels derived from animal manures.

Fig. 3. The remains of Old Woodbrook sheep station with engraving of a goat inforeground, Western Australia (Photograph: Alistair Paterson).


4. Aboriginal agency in agrarian Australia

4.1. Animals

Introduced animals, whether wild or herded, were potentiallyavailable for hunting (Davison, 1989). Aboriginal hunting of stockwas historically described as the cause of frontier conflicts acrossthe colonial frontier. In many regions the use of shepherds andyards was for protection from Aboriginal hunting and dogattacksdthere were no other predatorial terrestrial species untilfox populations grew.

Europeans also hunted, especially during the early colonialperiod when hunted meat was more vital. Introduced breeds ofhunting dog such as Irish wolfhounds and deerhounds interbredwith dingoes. In Tasmania, where there had never been anydingoes, Aboriginal people adopted European dogs for similarpurposes that mainland Aboriginal people had for millennia,including ritual life (Robinson's Journal, November 1830, p. 278cited in Balme and O'Connor, 2015, p. 4).

Some Aboriginal people quickly became skilled at animal hus-bandry, often within the first generation of Aboriginal people indirect contact with pastoralists. The archaeological evidence forAboriginal work is at sites for animal shepherding, drafting,shearing, watering, and gardening. Historical accounts describeAboriginal men, women, and children as workers. Sometimeswhole families tended to flocks at distant outstations. Childrenwere trained as laborers from a young age. Womenwere valued forwork with animals that required a gentler handdas well as formaintaining gardens, as midwives, and household workers. Somepastoralists preferred women stock workers as they would collectbush foods and provide sexual services and companionship(McGrath, 1987).

The skills demonstrated in animal husbandry were notrestricted to any particular species, with Aboriginal people tendingintroduced domesticated animals including cattle, sheep, horses,donkeys, camels, and goats. These divide into animals typicallyused (1) for transport and non-food purposes (horse, donkey,camel), (2) for food and animal product production (sheep, goat,pig, cattle), or (3) as commensal species (dog, cat). As dingoesoccupied the commensal niche, there was competition between‘native' dogs and stock, especially sheep. Native dogs wereconsidered a threat by white pastoralists who sometimes had themkilled, raising problems for Aboriginal people reliant on them.

Archaeological sites can potentially register shifts in huntingregimes and indigenous diet. In Lake Eyre Basin domesticatedfaunal remains occur at historical Aboriginal campsites. However, itis not clear whether these were from hunting, as payment forpastoral work, or from other forms of rations distribution. Thisinterpretative challenge is faced elsewhere d for example, IainDavidson (1989) asks whether faunal records in Mesolithic Spainand France could reflect the hunting of domesticated animals thathave formed wild populations, rather than the migration offarmers. In southern Africa, the presence of foragers performing therole of client herders for neighboring pastoralists confuses themeaning of domesticated animal remains in the archaeologicalrecord. Interestingly, in Central Australia, a distance decay analysissuggests that Aboriginal settlements remote from white pastoral-ists are just as likely to contain domesticated fauna as those locatedvery close to pastoral stations (Paterson, 2003).

Agrarian work is revealed materially in complex ways. Aborig-inal settlements contained items such as metal wool shears which,once broken, were used as tools as well as other repurposed ironand glass objects (Harrison, 2002; Paterson, 2003). Since agrarianinfrastructure also resulted from indigenous labor and design, sitessuch as stockyards and animal pens are valued by Aboriginal people



as pastoral heritage and as settings for social histories (Paterson,2003; Gill and Paterson, 2007) (Fig. 4).

Aboriginal people became experts at handling animals fortransport, particularly horses, but also donkeys and camels. SouthAsian men had been brought to Australia to handle the camels, andin inland Australia Aboriginal and 'Afghan' lives were enmeshed(Hercus, 1981; Stevens, 1989). Aboriginal people providing trans-port services found a rare form of independence beyond farmlaboring, for example, in the Murchison Ranges, Northern Territory,in the early twentieth century, some Aboriginal people ran a set-tlement maintaining at least a hundred donkeys used for donkeytrain transport (Gill et al., 2001).

Aboriginal work with domesticated species is often fondlyremembered, for example, women sometimes recall tending ofgoats and sheep. Horses were essential for transport, stock droving,herding stock, and ‘breaking' other horses and cattle. Indigenousmen and women were skilled riders, sometimes working on longdistance droving routes. Aboriginal people were often involved inthe work of breaking wild animals on stations, and this workcontinues today in regions such as the Gulf Country (Trigger andMartin, 2016).

While across Australia indigenous perceptions of new animalsand related husbandry practices are reflected in rock art (Taçonet al., 2012), images of horses are probably more common. De-pictions of horses and horse breaking (taming) are found in thePilbara (Paterson, 2012), and art making clustered at NorthernAustralian pastoral sites such as along droving routes (Lewis, 1992).The focus on horses over other animals as instruments of indige-nous power and work is reflected globally in culture contact set-tings, as demonstrated in a recent worldwide review on the impactof the horse on indigenous societies post-1492 (Mitchell, 2015).

4.2. Crops and farms

By the 1840s in southern and eastern Australia, Aboriginalpeople worked planting and harvesting crops, as well as in forestscollecting timber and bark (Castle and Hagan, 1988, p. 22). This

Fig. 4. Abandoned sheep yards with stone flooring, Tambrey S


work re-enforced the role for Aboriginal people at the margins ofthe colonial society. It is worth noting that Aboriginal people tookup plant farming where it was socially viable. For example, Cor-anderrk (Victoria) Aboriginal Missionwas established in 1863 thirtyyears after the arrival of Europeans. Coranderrk was a successfulAboriginal enterprise selling wheat, hops, and craftsdthe producefrom the farm won First Prize at the Melbourne InternationalExhibition in 1872 (Lydon, 2002).

In another study, Tiffany Shellam details how at the Benedictinemission settlement of New Norcia, Western Australia, in the 1840s,Yuin people lived and farmed alongside the missionaries whosevision was of a self-supporting mission village after the model ofEuropean monastic towns. After twenty years Yuin people's‘ownership’ was threatened and "determined to retain access totheir land, Aboriginal farmers at New Norcia cultivated a spacethrough their written protests to colonial authorities in which theynegotiated their changing identities of being both ‘Aboriginal' andsettled ‘farmer’" (Shellam, 2015, p. 64). Some New Norcia residentswent on to own farms for, in Western Australia, Aboriginal peoplewere able to apply for leases under the 1898 Land Act whereby "upto 200 acres of land could be granted or leased to an Aboriginal onapplication, for the purpose of residence or cultivation" (Shellam,2015, p. 75). However, Shellam's review of the literature indicatesfew people expected Aboriginal people to successfully meet therequirements of the regulations sufficient to hold the land.

Both Coranderrk and New Norcia missionaries held the viewthat agrarian lifeways would assist Aboriginal people, for "thecultivation of the soil and the private enclosure of land were pri-mary factors legitimizing ownership and denoting civilization"(Mitchell, 2011, p. 96, cited in Shellam, 2015, p. 65). At New Norcia,Aboriginal people could borrow funds to purchase cattle and sheepfor their farms (Shellam, 2015, p. 71). Outside of mission settle-ments were other Aboriginal farmers, although they suffered at thehands of discrimination. For example, in 1907 an Aboriginal mannear Toodyay, Western Australia, wrote to the Protector of Ab-origines complaining that his land was granted to another whiteman: "‘I think it is not a fair thing to have me shifted out of my best

tation, Western Australia (Photograph: Alistair Paterson).



ground and what labour I done in it" (Charles Ponan to E. Pechelle,Catabody, 1907 cited in Shellam, 2015, p. 78).

Most farms had gardens, sometimes tended by Aboriginalpeople, particularly at sheep and cattle stations where gardenswere situated close to the head station for access and to provideprotection from stock and other predators. The location and designof gardens are in the archaeological record with fenced areas,garden beds, tanks and other water containers (Smith, 2008).

4.3. Social and political dimensions

European agrarian colonization was in direct competition toAboriginal settlement. While Aboriginal people provided labor asdetailed above, foraging was in competition and opposition tofarming, despite being recognized as successful.

The aborigines of Western Australia…are a nomadic, or wan-dering race; have no fixed habitations, flocks, or herd, and nevercultivate the earth; they subsist by hunting and fishing…yet dono manner of work for themselves; but as they eat nearly everyproduction of the animal and vegetable kingdoms do, notwithstanding, generally obtain an abundance of food… (Anon,1846, pp. 10e11, emphasis in original).

A sense of inevitable change ran through many colonial ac-counts, extending to Australian fauna:

The quadrupeds of the settlement comprise kangaroos ofvarious kinds, native dogs, opossums, flying squirrels, wild cats,and kangaroo rats, but these creatures are seldom very trou-blesome to the colonists, and usually abandon the settled dis-tricts. (Anon, 1846, p. 10)

White settlers often justified frontier violence as necessary topreserve their right to propagate their stock and maintain theirfarms. However, introduced stock had an immediate impact on theresources that Aboriginal people relied on. The threat farmingpresented to Aboriginal subsistence was recognized by colonialadministrations; as revealed in instructions from the British Sec-retary of State for the Colonies to the Governor of New SouthWalesin 1848 urging that it was:

…incumbent on Government to prevent [Aboriginal Tribes]from being altogether excluded from the land under pastoraloccupation. I think it essential that it should be generally un-derstood that leases granted for this purpose give the granteesonly an exclusive right of pasturage for their cattle, and ofcultivating such land as they may require within the large limitsthus assigned to them, but that these leases are not intended todeprive the natives of their former right to hunt over theseDistricts, or to wander over them in search of subsistence, in themanner to which they have been heretofore accustomed, fromthe spontaneous produce of the soil. (Earl Grey to Fitzroy, 11February 1848 cited in Reynolds, 1993, pp. 34e35)

When traditional subsistence was threatened Aboriginal peoplehad limited options: resist, be marginalized, or be incorporated intothe agrarian ‘domain' where labor was paid for with food rations,clothes and possibly small amounts of money (McGrath, 1987).Some farms and other settlements distributed government rationsto Aboriginal people. The distributions of rations played a role increating new dependencies (Rowse, 1998, p. 7). Hamilton describesthe attraction of new foods as a "super waterhole" (1972), whileRowse describes the "ceremonial momentum" (1998, pp. 78e79)


towards rationed camps that provided opportunities to maintainsocial obligations.

Conversely, when there was no demand for labor Aboriginalpeople were expected to rely on traditional forms of subsistence aslong as they did not interfere with farmingda difficult proposition,although on northern cattle stations this seasonal balance betweenwork and wider subsistence operated more successfully than othermore settled regions (Head and Fullagar, 1997, 1999).

Sometimes two economiesdforager and farmerdperformedtogether for generations. For example, Northern Territory patrolofficers in the mid-twentieth century considered Aboriginal peopleas "still nomadic" and reported how indigenous workers main-tained hunting and fishing (Paterson, 2005a, p. 285). Wherepossible foraging probably continued on farms, alongside andoutside the expectations of white pastoralists. We need to betesting for evidence for the maintenance of different indigenouseconomic strategies in colonial agrarian landscapes, possibly incompetition with farming, sometimes hidden, and probably rarelyuncontested.

Aboriginal people ‘came in’ to farms for various reasons; somegroups desired to stop fighting, others maintained access to coun-try, for community survival, out of a desire for new items and foods,and indeed to assist white settlers (McGrath, 1987). For some itallowed them to escape from social restrictions, such as penaltiesfor transgressions of tribal law. As the early generations of workersgrew to adulthood in the agrarian setting economically andculturally they were between two worlds. Social obligations oftencompeted with work requirements. Aboriginal workers sometimesworked with farmers to control local outbreaks of violence. Men,women, and children acted as intermediaries with the widerindigenous community (Myers, 1986). If the relations of Aboriginalworkers became reliant on their kin, they sometimes relocated tocamps close to the station.

While it is not always clear how indigenous workers becameinvolved with the farmers, nor all of the services they fulfilled, thearchaeological record does reveal the material evidence forAboriginal peoples' close association with agrarian work (Harrison,2004a, 2004b; Paterson, 2003). Rock art depicts new fauna, para-phernalia, postures, clothing, transport, labor, and social customs(Taçon et al., 2012). Across farming landscapes, the shared heritageof Aboriginal occupation and farming work has been detailed(Harrison, 2004a; Byrne and Nugent, 2004). Evidence of stationcamps, forms of payment, and rations are revealed by clothing parts(boots, buttons, clothing clasps), the presence of structural mate-rials (nails, canvas sheets), food (eating implements, food cans,faunal remains), tobacco (pipes), and access to glass vessels for toolmaking and possible alcohol consumption. Residential sites wereoften located close to work sites, although distance, privacy, andsurveillance were equally factors for many Aboriginal people.

The archaeological record supports a shift to new foods, asAboriginal people increasingly relied on flour, tea, and sugar,despite the resulting poorer health (Rowse, 1998). The availabilityof flour reduced peoples' reliance on traditional foods as revealed,for example, in the Lake Eyre Basin where grindstones for grindinggrass and acacia seeds were a valued trade item before contact(McBryde, 1987). The survey of Aboriginal sites on sheep stationsreveals a reduction in plant processing equipment such as grind-stones in the 19th century suggesting decreased reliance on thestaple of ground seeds (Paterson, 2003).

In some settings the relationships between Aboriginal people onstations and pastoralists were enshrined in laws, and overseen bycolonial administrators. In Western Australia, for example, in re-gions considered too remote for convict labor, the Master andServant Act was intended to bind Aboriginal people to farms andpenalize absconders. Laws in the Northern Territory, Kimberley,



and northern Queensland dealt with Aboriginal labor on cattlestations. Minister C.L.A. Abbott (1950, p. 138 cited in Anthony, 2004,p. 122) stated in 1929:

From my experience in Queensland, I say that the natives makegood stockmen and cattlemen; their services are valuable and,indeed, almost vital to the continuance of the successful policyof settlement in North and Central Australia.

In some instances, these laws and practices enshrined forms ofunfree labor to the benefit of white farmers. Reverend Gribble, in1885, described how at farms in Northwestern Australia he sawAboriginal people in chains, mistreatment of women, and anassignment systemwhereby workers were allocated to pastoraliststhat Gribble (1987) described as akin to slavery. This led to debatesin newspapers in Perth and overseasdthe New York Times pub-lished an article “Slavery in Western Australia” on September 19,1886:

The English Government, which has always stood as the fore-most power in demanding the abolition of slavery and the slavetrade, is now brought face to facewith the fact that the natives ofWestern Australia are subjected by the Queen's subjects to asystem in involuntary servitude, which is characterized by allthe horrors of slavery as practiced in barbarous countries.

Despite these humanitarian debates, cheap Aboriginal laborremained integral to sheep and cattle industries up until the 1960swhen changes in wages for Aboriginal workers were imposed, suchas the Cattle Station Industry Equal Pay Case of the CommonwealthConciliation and Arbitration Commission. Thus, for well over acentury distinct social relations along racial lines were maintainedthroughout agrarian Australia: "the absence of wages for Aborig-ines on cattle stations was as much about the reproduction offeudal social relations of dependence and power, as about assuringa cheap labor force" (Anthony, 2004, p. 118).

5. The transformation of historical landscapes

The transformation of Australian landscapes, from indigenous toagrarian, began after 1788 (Port Jackson) and continued for twocenturies. After WW1 large unfarmed areas were cleared of vege-tation for returning soldiers, often to be abandoned as unviable forfarming. Even in the later 20th-century, new farming regions innorthern Australia were developed, such as the Ord River region inthe east Kimberley while debates continue regarding appropriatewater management faced with the demands of industrial foodproduction.

Today, many farming regions have been abandoned, de-stocked,or are managed with minimal stock numbers. Furthermore, withinternational demand for beef, there has been a shift of cattlefarming into regions once dominated by sheep such as the Pilbara,leaving the rapidly degrading heritage of paddocks, shearing sheds,and yards (Gill and Paterson, 2007). Vast networks of drovingroutes for stock now lay abandoned, made obsolete by road trains.In fact, much of rural and regional Australia is littered with thematerial remains of abandoned farming, alongside that of otherpast industries such as mining and timber getting (Winter andPaterson, 2017). Additionally, many rural regions contain evi-dence for historical Aboriginal settlement, extending up to the‘walk-off’ period during the land rights social movement. Thesemore recent sites are rarely considered important heritage despitethe rise of contemporary archaeology (Gill and Paterson, 2007),with some exceptions (Byrne and Nugent, 2004).


Seasons played a role in the changes in agrarian landscapes,given the seasonal demands of farming and the tempo of indige-nous life. For example, in desert regions such as Central Australiathere was an increased demand for Aboriginal shepherds and la-bour when rain fell: clashing with periods when Aboriginal sub-sistence would have shifted out from permanent waters to accesstemporary waters collected after rainfalldit is thus possible thesheep industry disrupted the ability to visit areas of traditionalcountry (Paterson, 2003). Conversely, in northern Australia, thereduced work demands in the wet season may have allowedAboriginal people to visit areas of traditional country (Head andFullagar, 1997).

As stated, the cessation of Aboriginal land management prac-tices could have implications for the landscape. Despite the factthat regular burning was potentially useful for promoting freshgrasses and generating a ‘parklands’ suitable for grazing, it also waspotentially hazardous for farm infrastructure such as fences andbuildings (Paterson, 2013). Consequently, over much of ruralAustralia, fire was not used widely as a tool to improve landscapes.However, in the tropics at least in earlier ‘station times’whenmanyAboriginal people stayed on station territory, the use of regularfiring did not conflict with raising stock (Head, 1994).

Contrary to much settler mythology Aboriginal knowledge wasoften a critical aspect of the establishment of agrarian Australia.Aboriginal people provided information regarding routes and otherlandscape features and, critically, the location of water. Aboriginalpeople also deliberately led people away from critical waters andsacred places, as revealed to American anthropologist NormanTindale in the 1920s (Forbes and Hercock, 2007, p. 6). Indigenousinformation regarding rainfall and surface waters helped the keepstock alive in more arid environments. Aboriginal workers acted asintermediaries between other Aboriginal people and farmers,providing cultural insights, translating, and forging alliances toaccess laborers. Without this many early pastoral stations may havefaltered.

It has been argued that early pastoral stations mimicked foragerland-use patterns (Paterson, 2005a,b,c). Farmers and foragers oftenrelied on the same waters. Many farm work sites are located atreliable water resources on rivers or artesian springs. Unsurpris-ingly, these places were also significant to Aboriginal people forcampsites, resources, ceremony, and cultural activities. Thecompetition for natural resources such as water was sometimesintense for both humans and other species. The spatial patterns ofagrarian landscape use overlays forager patterns, sometimesreflecting processes of ‘landscape learning’ originating from cross-cultural knowledge transfer (Rockman and Steele, 2003). Over de-cades European farmers created a new pastoral domain throughindustrialization, where the spatial pattern resulted from largefenced and cleared areas, the use of mechanized bores and wells,and new transport routes including stock routes, roads, and rail-ways. Across agrarian Australian, Aboriginal people were pushedfrom centers to margins, yet remained sufficiently proximate toprovide labor.

6. Modelling interactions between foragers and farmers

Interactions between foraging and farming lifeways haveoccurred through human history, as farmers have migrated outfrom core farming regions. Setter societies such as Australia aremerely recent examples. In Australia the transformation fromforager-dominated economies to an agrarian economy saw therapid continental-wide colonization of people and new plants andanimals. At the same time, agrarian Australia was, at least initially,an overlay of agricultural economies over indigenous land use.Comparatively, the pace of social and economic change is worth



noting. Some Aboriginal people became farmworkers and adept atanimal husbandry work within a generation. From an archaeolog-ical perspective, such a change may appear to be instantaneousdornon-existent in the absence of introduced material culture (Colley,1997; Colley and Bickford, 1996).

Agrarian domains were often cross-cultural, requiring attentionto the archaeology of cultural difference (Torrence and Clarke,2000), the historical archaeology of Aboriginal Australia (Murray,1992), and historical objects in museum collections (Jones, 2007;Sculthorpe et al., 2015). In spite of the cessation or diminishmentof foraging lifeways in many regions, indigenous cultural survivalcontinued as evident in the maintenance of surviving languagesand cultural practices, efforts to maintain obligations on ‘country’to places and environments, and genetics. Thus, the preservation of‘traditional’ economic practices is not necessarily the strongestindicator of cultural survival. That said, despite changes in economyand diet, in parts of Australia native species and food collection oncountry remain relevant for social and dietary reasons (English,2002). Land management is sometimes revived, for example offire management in the Western Desert by Martu (Zeanah et al.,2015).

In the wider literature, various explanatory positions posit howforagers dealt with the presence and possibility of farming lifeways.The first set of explanations hypothesizes that foragers adoptfarming and accompanying biota to shift towards farming lifeways.Archaeologically this requires recognizing processes such asadoption, mimicry, and innovation, as well as changes in the waysforaging people related to animals. In Australia, this included ani-mals with no immediate cosmological place for indigenous Aus-tralians. However, while Aboriginal people proved they could farmand conduct animal husbandry, an extensive indigenous farmingsociety does not develop across Australia, largely due to social andpolitical restrictions by colonial society. Instead many Aboriginalpeople were moved to the margins of agrarian society despite theirwork (we should avoid the term ‘employee’ here as most peopleprovided work for little remuneration) and practiced both animalpredation and protection (following Ingold, 1980, 2).

The second set of explanations hypothesizes that farmersreplace foragers. The mechanisms for these processes typicallyinclude migration, colonization, resistance, and conflict. Thesebetter explain how Aboriginal people were increasingly marginal-ized spatially and visually, often translocated, and their economicand cultural practicesdincluding food procurement and landscapemanagementddisrupted or curtailed. There were attempts toeliminate Aboriginal peopledin Tasmania and elsewheredtocreate a stable agrarian society. The replacement does occur acrossmuch of Australia, with the widescale loss of Aboriginal countryand the cessation of most foraging. Despite this, Aboriginal peopleand culture survived, as did Native Title.

The third set of models sits somewhere between the extremes ofadoption or replacement, highlighting the ways new margins,niches, and conditions were created between farming and hunter-foraging communities. These interstices raise challenging problemsfor archaeologists as demonstrated, for example, in literaturerelated to the expansion of pastoralists into Southern Africa (Smith,1998, 2005). How can one differentiate between foragers who shifttowards seasonal client herding, those who were forced into‘encapsulation’ by cattle pastoralists (Sadr and Plug, 2001), or thosewho actively resist the incursion of herders by hunting and conflict(Parkington, 1984)? Are the changes in the late Holocene inSouthern Africa best explained by migration or diffusion (Orton,2015; comparing Smith, 2014 to Sadr, 2014)? Indeed, couldforgers deploy different strategies at the same time and if so canone discern the resulting archaeological patterns? For example, inthe Namib Desert, Kinahan (2000) highlights how the presence of


domesticated fauna in forager sites could arise from hunting orpayment for labor as client pastoralists. Throughout global pre-history, the response by hunter-foraging people to the presence offarming lifeways presumably involve myriad forms. In Australia,there was the marginalization of foragers, as well as forms of rapidencapsulation and creation of forms of client herders. Woodburn's(1988) concept of encapsulation as deployed by Sadr (2002, p. 31)seems particularly relevant, describing how indigenous groupsbecame increasingly forced into dealing with farmers and theirmaterial world, leading to greater degrees of loss of autonomy.

Various models have been deployed from different disciplinarybases to explain the historical cross-cultural processes thatoccurred in the Australian historical landscape. These have high-lighted cultural acculturation, resistance, dominance, accommo-dation, and individual agency (see Birmingham, 1992; Harrisonand Williamson, 2004; Torrence and Clarke, 2000; Harrison,2006; Lydon, 2009)dmatching the ‘tenacity of the traditional’(Bedford, 2004) against indigenous creative responses. Despite thegreat variety of explanations of culture contact, these models tendto stress forms of indigenous continuity or change. For archaeol-ogists, the primary focus has been indigenous responses as re-flected in material culture and behaviours (Murray, 1992;Birmingham, 2000) in what Harrison termed Australia's ‘IronAge’ (Harrison, 2002) given the indigenous innovative adoption ofnew materials such as glass and metal. These models often focuson the Aboriginal responses to the colonial world and thus tend tosee the ‘historical period' in a frame of the late Holocene (Lilley,2000) while being less interested in non-indigenous histories.However, communities in contact were not simply bimodal butinherently textured, with evidence for individual agency in bothdocumentary and material realms (Paterson, 2003). Creolizationmodels, while prevalent in the Americas (Loren, 2005), have beenless common in Australia except in mission studies (Birmingham,2000).

It is interesting that much of the work of archaeology has beeninto Aboriginal societies rather than the establishment of farmingand development of agrarian Australia. Is the archaeology ofagrarian Australia worth developing as a critical field as it is else-where (Castillo, 2014)? What contribution can the Australian evi-dence contribute to an understanding of agrarian societieselsewhere? There are many implications that can be drawn fromAustralia which may contribute to models for transitions fromhunter-foraging to farming economies, especially when farmingwas ‘imported' and where cross-cultural interactions led to contestfor land and resources, like in New Zealand, USA, Canada, andArgentina. The central role of colonialism in agrarian expansionperhaps allows us to consider other settings where colonialismwasa critical part of agricultural colonization (Gosden, 2004).

Comparisons can be made with other settings. For example, themigration of Bantu pastoralists in Africa, or farmers across Eurasiaboth saw the migration of people and their stock into regionsoccupied by forager peoples. In many of these contexts forms ofclient herding developed, whereby foragers cared for stock forherders. Yet in Australia stock remained the property of the pas-toralists, and expert labor and knowledge did not translate widelyto indigenous ownership of stock. Despite this, there have beenAboriginal commercial ventures often on country of a more mar-ginal nature (Gill and Paterson, 2007) and a distinct set ofAboriginal industries have arisen (Gill, 2005; Altman, 2003). As aresult of the social and legal changes since the 1980s, a largenumber of cattle stations in Central and Northern Australia aretoday managed by indigenous bodies, heralding a significantchange in the cultural history of pastoralism (Trigger and Martin,2016) and contemporary commercial indigenous land manage-ment (Gill, 2005).



7. Conclusions

Summing up, it is clear that the role of farming in Aboriginalhistory, and of Aboriginal people in the development of colonialagrarian Australia, continue to raise important questions. However,the question of why Aboriginal people did or did not ‘becomefarmers’ is flawed, as it risks adopting a teleological worldview thatplaces primacy on farming over foragers, and maintains a concep-tual marginalization of Aboriginal people. To advance the topicrequires moving beyond definitions of foragers and farmers aseconomic practices to consider peoples' relationships withAustralian environments over time more broadly. These environ-ments were dominated by new species and practices that came todefine modern Australia but need to be understood equally as partof Aboriginal people's history. There is a need for holistic, integra-tive approaches that map how indigenous and non-indigenousrelationships with Australian environments operated, even wherefarming has been practiced for more than two centuries.

This invites the development of an archaeology of late Holoceneagrarian Australia, building on the existing work of archaeologistsin Australia into indigenous, cross-cultural, and historical topics.Following Ulm (2012) an essential characteristic of this will beregional studies that document the development of differentAustralian historical landscapes as extensions of the late Holocene.Across these regions: 1. What was the fate of indigenous relation-ships with the environment and within landscapes? 2. How didAustralian historical landscapes and societies develop? 3. How arelandscapes and environments relics of humanmanipulation? Thesequestions require further study into Aboriginal and agrarianhuman-environmental relationships, and the development of newsocial and economic histories of farming and animal managementin historical Australian landscapes.

An essential challenge is the integration of environmental andarchaeological data sets to address shared questions. Archaeologycould explore the transition to agrarian animal and plant hus-bandry in historical Australia by incorporating environmental andpaleoenvironmental data as advocated for Europe (Castillo, 2014),particularly faunal and archaeobotanical data. The use of data frompaleoenvironmental cores testing historical landscape change ispromising, although not extensive for agrarian archaeology. Theapproach has been successfully applied to archaeological andenvironmental histories of a farmed landscape in South Australia(Denham et al., 2012). Recent core data from the Kimberley docu-ments the change in vegetation that occurred with the introductionof cattle (Trevise, 2015). A challenge for many agrarian historicalsites is the poor survival of faunal records. However, this is notexclusive, for example, work in Torres Strait provide records ofmarine fauna extending into historical periods (Wright and Ricardi,2014) and historical archaeological sites often provide records ofpast fauna to address these questions. A model for the multiscalesettings that an archaeology of agrarian Australian requires isprovided by the historical archaeology study of water regimes inVictorian goldfields (Lawrence et al., 2016). The growing impor-tance of the Indigenous knowledge in cultural heritage, environ-mental and biodiversity management suggest pathways models forcollaborative knowledge work (Brown, 2010; English, 2000; Ross,2011).

The development of an archaeology of agrarian Australia as acritical body of work needs also to focus on the social constructionof historical landscapes. The studies considered in this paper revealthe important social and political aspects that run parallel tohuman-environmental relationships. A social approach couldfurther explore agrarian settings as part of cross-cultural land-scapes wherein distinct historical identities emerge. In theselandscapes existed social relationships with domesticated and


other species; evidence for the ways that settler colonialismworked, particularly to regulate Aboriginal lives; and farming andindigenous landscapes in palimpsests. The social aspects of theemergence of agrarian Australia are captured in the remains ofsettlements, as well as evidence for animal husbandry and cropraising across the landscape. Encouragingly the heritage of farmingis recognized as a shared heritage tracking white and Aboriginalhistory (Byrne, 2003; Brown, 2011; Harrison, 2004a).

From this new topics may emerge, such as studies of settlementshapes and patterns, nomenclature of historical places, the role ofviolence and authority, the use of water, patterns of consumptionand foodways in agrarian settings, and the emergence of contem-porary Australian landscapes.

In conclusion, the primary setting for culture contact betweenAboriginal societies and outsiders often involved agrarian colo-nialism. Aboriginal people provide labor and knowledge, and lostaccess to traditional lands, during the development of agrarianAustralian. The question of how forager societies transformedwhen faced with farmers (and vice versa) have to be understood aspart of agrarian colonialismwhich limited the range of possibilitiesfor Aboriginal peoples and destabilized prevailing indigenousanthropogenic environments. Future work could better researchthe archaeology of agrarian Australia, and explore how Australianhistorical landscapes emerged from both Holocene Australian andEarly Modern European roots.

Acknowledgements

Role of the funding sources: this paper draws on research fromAustralian Research Council funded projects: The Barrow IslandArchaeology Project: the dynamism of maritime societies innorthern Australia (ARC DP130100802); Picturing change: 21stCentury perspectives on recent Australian rock art, especially thatfrom the European contact period (ARC DP0877463); and The his-torical archaeology of the post-European period in the Pilbara,Western Australia (ARC DP0208298).

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