It is more than 40 years since I began work at Port Essington and 38 years since the doctoral thesis that forms the basis of this monograph was completed. I was thus reticent when Susan Lawrence approached me with the proposal that ASHA publish the thesis. My hesitancy was multi-facetted. The work was 40 years out of date; at least one long history of Port Essington (Spillett 1972) had appeared that suggested that my documentary search, exhaustive as it might have been, was not complete. I was also aware that other important documents had surfaced in the meantime, foremost among them a notebook kept by the commandant, John McArthur and his son John Junior at the settlement (McArthur 1843-49). As well, immediately I completed my thesis I took up a lectureship in prehistoric archaeology that took me away from historical archaeology; I can no longer claim particular expertise in a subject that has in the last decade claimed a firm place in Australian academic studies. Perhaps overriding these considerations was the notion that notwithstanding the fact that the thesis gained me a doctorate, a ‘licence to practise’, I have continued to carry a sense that the thesis did not work – that it failed to demonstrate the success or utility of attempting to integrate archaeological and documentary evidence in a situation like Port Essington where the documents were so extensive. Of course the thesis had its own justifications – it was a first attempt in the Australian field, it was a test case, it was exploring methodological issues in archaeology – but the ultimate question was (and perhaps still is) whether historical archaeology is sufficiently robust intellectually to survive as an academic discipline, rather than a tool to classify monuments or implement ‘heritage’ management. This introduction revisits some of these issues.

My acquiescence to Susan’s request had less to do with overcoming these qualms and much more to do with guilt. Like others, when teaching graduate students I have emphasised the need to publish the data; as Roger Green says, the only 20-year-old papers of his that get cited these days are the data papers. Here are the data.

There had to be some ground rules. The first was recognising that the primary purpose was publishing what, for good or ill, is now an historical document. This meant that nothing substantive in the thesis would alter and that nothing, including the references, would be brought up to date. At the same time the thesis had been produced under the tyranny of the typewriter; then, unless gross errors demanded the retyping of a complete page, a blind eye was turned to the odd typo and the prolix excesses of student prose. Here, while trying to avoid improving on history, I have chosen to write out obscurities, modify convolutions of style and otherwise do a general sub-edit. A large part of this modification has been converting the footnote referencing system universally favoured by historians in the 1960s to the Harvard system. While this saved space, it meant that many publication details not required in the footnote system had to be pursued. While most were located, some gaps remain in the bibliography. As well, in trying to minimise in text disruptions by long correspondence references, I have employed a system of abbreviations that are listed before the text. Very occasionally there are in text references to published sources that were published after the thesis and that were originally referred to as theses or manuscripts. Mostly both references are now given. Most of the original illustrations have been retained and a few new ones added. Finally, the original title Archaeology, and the History of Port Essington was succinct but grammatically challenged. Since the text has been altered here, so has the title been replaced.

In 1966 I moved to Canberra and the Australian National University intent on working prehistoric sites in Papua New Guinea for my doctorate. A plan to examine the northern edge of the Torres Strait Pleistocene land bridge for evidence of its use as an initial human entry point into Australia, an idea that held currency then and later (e.g. Flood 1983:79-80), fell through. Casting about for an alternative, John Mulvaney raised the possibility of Port Essington, pointing out that my formal training in classical archaeology at the University of Sydney suited me to the task, and that Campbell Macknight was about to begin a doctorate on the Macassans, so that the two subjects were related in time and space. Afew weeks later, after working the libraries for the most readily available sources, John and I visited the site, carried out preliminary testing and the die was cast.

At my viva (viva voce – oral examination, now frequently thesis defence where it still exists) one examiner (a historian) thought such lengthy archaeological analysis interrupted the narrative. Another (a prehistorian) thought more could have been done with the Aboriginal material. Taken together, these comments reflected my own disquiet about the integration of the two data sources. Academic history, especially in the 1960s, had prescribed themes and prescribed ways of dealing with them. I recall attending a seminar by Sir Keith Hancock at the ANU where he discussed his current history project. When published, the fly leaf of Discovering Monaro (Hancock 1972) referred to it as a ‘local history’. In fact it is an elegant, opinioned and entertaining social history of the Monaro that bounces from Plato to the CSIRO, taking its sources from a swell of natural and unnatural sciences (including archaeology). At the seminar, in question time, another eminent historian berated Hancock for wasting his time and skills on a ‘municipal history’.

What sort of history does historical archaeology produce? Should it produce history that is recognisable in conventional terms at all? My view, initially expressed in this thesis, has not changed very much. It is not sufficient merely to do historical archaeology behind the cover of heritage management. After all, what is the significance of another drain or another footing or another descriptive catalogue of finds? The clear answer to this is in the context that the footing is found and this in turn means both its archaeological context and its historical context. This seems to me to offer a way forward. Over the years my students got sick of hearing me say ‘The question is what is the question?’ But by considering what we are trying to find out we can more clearly determine the ways in which we might contextualise the data to produce results that isolate us from thinking of archaeological and historical data as separate entities that merely confirm or deny each other. Archaeological data of any sort do not readily lend themselves to the seamless narrative. Archaeological and historical evidence operate within different frames and scales of reference.

I was, and remain, dissatisfied at my attempts to integrate the two data sets in this thesis which to me lacked sufficient mid-range theory to link data to behaviour. Like Murray and Mayne (2001:92) at ‘Little Lon’ I attempted to match site-units at Port Essington with the historical records for those buildings, but also like Mayne and Murray, making those interconnections in order to transform the data into a new understanding of past behaviour was never easy. Some attempts, as with the analysis of the married quarters and their round chimneys, came closer to success than others. But this might have been because the archaeology had more to reveal. xiiiLarger scale and more abstract integrations sometimes required greater imagination that was founded on less persuasive data.

In part some of the limits to overcoming this problem had to do with the practicalities of finishing a thesis within time constraints and not having the space to see the wood for the trees. But even being laid aside for a time brought little reconciliation between my thesis and me. Instead I excised the archaeology and published the history in a history journal (Allen 1972) and then retackled the archaeology in a more synthetic fashion (Allen 1973). This paper focussed on a more explicit theme, the archaeology of British imperialism, and came closer to demonstrating the utility of historical archaeology at Port Essington than anything else I wrote.

I note in passing that such a thematic approach has taken on a life of its own in more recent historical archaeology. By aiming enquiries at historical themes that archaeological data reflect, even indirectly (slavery, urban landscapes, communication, nineteenth century imperialism), historical archaeology is carving out its patch and staking claims to a sociological or humanistic past that it certainly is uniquely placed to investigate, at least on occasion, and utilising not only documentary data but also the data from whatever other disciplines are relevant to any particular project. At least superficially such themes appear to offer an entrée to the mid-range theory that this thesis lacked.

So if I was re-writing it now, would I organise the thesis so that it addressed such themes more directly? An archaeology of contact chapter might better satisfy my prehistorian examiner; the archaeology of isolation might better exemplify the exigencies of frontier life controlled by a disinterested bureaucracy on the other side of the world; the archaeology of failure could address the economics of the settlement and the inroads of termites and malaria. The whole could be presented as the archaeology of tropical colonisation. Why does this prospect leave me uneasy? I think perhaps because themes frequently remain a well disguised substitute for theory rather than a focus for investigating and developing better thoughtout and expressed theoretical positions. A confident discipline doesn’t need bling.

I have much less to say on the methodology produced here. As I recount, I had few examples to follow, although in North America the papers of the newly formed Conference on Historic Site Archaeology were beginning to be published. These contained many seminal papers that influenced and clarified my own views. Re-reading the data chapters, they now strike me as clumsy and I wonder if I was up with the subject how I might approach it today. I watch with envy as the Time Team expert glances at the Willow Pattern sherd and says ‘1828 to 1830’. Yeah, right.

Within a few weeks of submitting this thesis I had begun teaching and researching prehistoric archaeology at the University of Papua New Guinea. But for another 17 years I flirted with historical archaeology. In 1971 Roger Green coaxed me into excavating the sixteenth century Mendaña site in the eastern Solomon Islands (Green and Allen 1972; Allen 1976) and I published a smattering of papers on Port Essington (Allen 1970, 1972, 1973, 1980) that added to the two published during my doctoral research (Allen 1967a, 1967b). Back in Canberra I was the chair of the Project Co-ordinating Committee on Historical Archaeology for the Australian Heritage Commission between 1975 and 1978 and a member of Tasmanian Research Advisory Committee set up to advise the Tasmanian National Parks and Wildlife Service on the management of Tasmanian historic sites in 1976 and 1977. In 1975 I reported on a conference on historical archaeology and the National Estate (Allen 1975) and with Tim Murray (Murray and Allen 1986) I made my last foray into historical archaeology prior to this comeback. Additionally, Tim likes to portray his appointment at La Trobe as my soft spot for historical archaeology (Murray 2000:145) but he was really brought in to add the theoretical warp to the very practical weave of a research-active department. His historical archaeology was a bonus, but one that suited the catholic reach of La Trobe archaeology’s curriculum.

Meanwhile, my ‘mainstream’ career, first in Papua New Guinea and subsequently in Australia gradually took me back from near contact prehistoric sites to the Pleistocene. As I conclude this monograph I am about to return to an article on a Pleistocene site in Victoria. I feel like Janus.

In the late 1960s Port Essington was a flora and fauna reserve, superintended by Dave Lindner, an Animal Industries Branch ranger living at Black Point with his wife and baby boy. At that time access to the settlement was extremely difficult. Today, with a permit, Black Point can be reached by road, air or sea with little fuss.

The area is now known as Gurig Ganuk Barlu National Park. It lies within the clan estates of the Iwaidja speaking peoples of western Arnhem Land. Custodianship is shared between five Aboriginal clan groups, the Agalda, Ngaindjagar, Madjunbalmi, Minaga and Muran. The park is managed jointly by the traditional land owners and the Parks and Wildlife Service and is administered by the Cobourg Peninsula Sanctuary and Marine Park Board. There is a caravan park and holiday cottages. Across the harbour is an exclusive resort. A large Ranger station is maintained, still at Black Point. Where Lindner’s aluminium office and caravan once stood there is now a public telephone.

There is also a cultural centre there that has Aboriginal, Macassan and historical displays including a number of artefacts originally excavated at the Victoria settlement during this project. In 1995 my wife Jill and I visited the Northern Territory Museum and Art Gallery to inspect the tiny display case that encapsulated my three years of doctoral research. I had seen it a year or two earlier while at a conference in Darwin, but neither it nor any other Northern Territory history was now on display, except for an interactive exhibit about Cyclone Tracy that was more suited to Luna Park. A new directorial broom had swept clean. We flew to Port Essington and I was delighted to be re-united with parts of the collection in the cultural centre. But documentation was thin and nowadays I get occasional requests about the gunflints or the bottle seals and their present whereabouts that I cannot answer. The collection has become a classic C-transform in Schiffer’s (1972) terms.

Whatever this dispersal of the collection says about the value of historical archaeology in Australia, it is one of the reasons that prompted me to publish this work. Even so, I might still not have been sufficiently motivated had not John Mulvaney raised the issue of publication with me every time we have met since 1969. It is for this reason that it gives me pleasure to dedicate this monograph to him. I need also to thank various additional people who helped this time around: Martin Gibbs, Susan Lawrence, Wei Ming, Mary Casey, Natalie Cleary, Jill Allen, Trish Scanlan, Peter Corris, Christophe Sand and finally Tim Murray for his generous introduction. I have benefited from the efficient assistance of staff at the National Library of Australia and the Mitchell Library in Sydney and here publish historical drawings from the archives of both establishments with their permission. In particular, having access to the resources of the Department of Archaeology at La Trobe University made this all possible, and the staff of Sydney University Press brought it to fruition. xiv

I am particularly grateful to the Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology for undertaking this publication and giving me an opportunity to revisit my past at such a distance. It is an indulgence bestowed on few of us.

JIM ALLEN
Mossy Point June 2007

ORIGINALACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Since this piece of work was begun in March 1966 I have had the pleasure of meeting many people who with their knowledge, experience, interest and humanity have made this journey into the past also a journey into the future. I offer my thanks to them all. In particular 1 would thank the following, and apologise to any whose names may have been inadvertently omitted.

Northern Territory

Mr and Mrs D. Lindner, the Animal Industries Branch Ranger at Port Essington and his wife. Both David and Marjory assisted me beyond any official capacity and often to their own inconvenience. Without this assistance the project would not have been possible.

Mr E.P. Milliken, Mr G.A. Letts, Mr V. O’Brien, Mr N. Wilson, Mr J. Long, Mr P. Spillett, Mr G. Stocker, Mr G. Patterson, Mr and Mrs I. Walker, Mr and Mrs G. Kirby, Mr J. Morris.

Sydney

Mr J.V.S. Megaw, Mr D. Moore, Mr R. Wright, Dr D. McMichael, Mr A. Thorne, Dr C. White, Dr J.P. White, Mr and Mrs J. Clegg, Mr P. Davidson, and the staffs of the Mitchell Library, the Australian Museum, and the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.

Canberra

Mr J. Golson, Mr C.A. Key, Mr R. Jones, Mr C.C. Macknight, Mrs B. Hiatt, Mr I. Glover, Mr C. Smart, Mr J. Specht, Miss E. Crosby, Miss A. Bickford, Mr B. Egloff, Mrs L. White, Mrs L. Beattie, Mrs N. Phillips, Mr J.H. Calaby, Mr W. Bateman, Mr F.D. McCarthy, Miss C. Kiss, Dr N. Barnard, Dr D. Shineberg, Dr F.B. Smith, Mr and Mrs J. Edmonds, Mr P. Corris, Mr and Mrs A.C. Minson, Miss L. Ryan, Mr R.J. Lampert, and Miss .M. Slater, Mr T. McMahon and the staff of the Visual Aids Unit. Also the staffs of the Menzies Library and the National Library of Australia.

In particular 1 would like to thank Mrs S. Wilkie, Mr W. Ambrose and Miss W. Mumford, who carried the burden of producing the plates and drawings.

In addition I would like to thank Mr R. Edwards, Mrs E. Watkin-Jones and Dr I. McBryde.

Overseas

My thanks are due to the staffs of the various universities, libraries and museums with whom I corresponded and visited. In particular 1 would like to thank Mrs M. Hughes, Captain I. Donald, Professor and Mrs A.C. Thomas, Miss S. Davis, Professor G.S. Graham, Mr and Mrs M.A. Hudson, Miss M. Mountain, Mr K. Hudson, Professor A. Steensberg, Mr and Mrs L. Bobb, Dr N.F. Barka, Mr I Noel-Hume, Professor F. Quimby and Mr I.C. Walker.

Finally my especial thanks is given to my supervisor, Mr D.J. Mulvaney for his encouragement, guidance and assistance at all times.