Foreword

I warmly welcome the publication of Port Essington: the historical archaeology of a north Australian nineteenth century military outpost and congratulate Jim Allen for having the intellectual interest (and the courage) to return to work undertaken some forty years ago. I also congratulate ASHA for having the wisdom to bring this important unpublished work into wider circulation. Its been said more than once, but its worth saying again, that to really grow and prosper, historical archaeology in Australia needs to develop a strong sense of its history. Improving access to foundational work such as Port Essington can only help this process.

Historians love foundation and origin narratives, and Port Essington provides a splendid opportunity to indulge in a little reflection about why this dissertation was (and is) so important. Any review of the history of historical archaeology in Australia (see for example Egloff 1994; Lawrence 2001; Murray 2000, 2002a; Murray and Allen 1986) identifies the critical origin points. Port Essington was the first doctoral dissertation on historical archaeology in Australia, and the first to actively explore what might now be seen as the themes of ‘imperial archaeology’, ‘military archaeology’ and ‘contact archaeology’ in Australia.

Jim’s excavation of the site of Port Essington and Judy Birmingham’s work at Irrawang (begun in 1967) mark the beginning of a whole new kind of archaeology on the continent of Australia – one that dealt with the recent past, with European colonisation and settlement, and with contact between the settlers and local indigenous people. As in North America, the archaeology of Australia’s recent past provided alternative social and local histories to those written by mainstream historians, demonstrating the value of this perspective to younger nations whose European past may have been short, but whose need to understand and value it was just as strong as it was with older nations. Both projects also clearly demonstrated that from the very first historical archaeology in Australia derived strong theoretical and methodological influence from North America, while at the same time engaging in the discussion of issues that were firmly global (or as we might now say transnational). This was (and is) entirely appropriate. But Jim was never a slavish follower of North American fashion, and Port Essington resonates with a strong sense of the local and of grappling with issues that were to become so significant in Australia over the coming decades. Understanding the history of places such as Port Essington required an understanding of matters as grand as British imperial policy. It also demanded an appreciation of how and why European settlements failed in tropical Australia, the consequences of contact with local indigenous communities, and of course of the ways in which material culture derived from archaeological excavation could enhance a reading of a rich documentary archive.

I have long used Port Essington as an exemplar of how to do historical archaeology – in particular how to properly analyse and report the analysis of excavated assemblages, and how to sensitively and imaginatively integrate these data with written documents to enhance understanding. Port Essington aptly demonstrates how the historical archaeological sum can be greater than either of its historical or archaeological parts. The fact that it reads so freshly today is testimony to the quality of what Jim achieved. It is also a testimony to the enduring nature of the issues that lay at its heart.

In celebrating Jim’s achievement and extolling the many virtues of Port Essington we are reminded of several important matters. Perhaps foremost among these is that Jim undertook his research around the same time as Australian society really began to address the nature of its relationships with indigenous Australia. In Port Essington indigenous people are not silent, disempowered observers, but neither are they ‘colonised’ or ‘pacified’. Creating an understanding of the historical archaeology of indigenous Australia has proved to be a significant challenge to Australian archaeologists (see for example Murray 2002b, 2004), but I, for one, have always been struck by the subtle sense of indigenous presence in Port Essington.

Some years ago I discussed Jim’s departure from historical archaeology to prehistoric archaeology (Murray 2000), and reflected on his views that the former lacked the intellectual challenge of the latter. In that context I sought to demonstrate that Jim’s departure from the field was never total – indeed he published his Port Essington work very widely while at the same time doing important work in the development of heritage policy (see for example Allen 1967a, 1967b, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1980). Nonetheless it was difficult to demonstrate that historical archaeology in Australia for much of the next 20 or so years had managed to live up to the great promise he had demonstrated in Port Essington. Indeed it is probably closer to the truth that, with a few notable exceptions, the field did not regain intellectual momentum until the mid 1980s. Jim’s important role in that revival has also been documented, notwithstanding his protestations to the contrary (see Murray 2000)!

The currently strong state of historical archaeology provides real justification for the publication of Port Essington. The issues Jim first addressed are well and truly on the research agenda and a new generation of historical archaeologists are there to build on his achievements.

TIM MURRAY
Archaeology, La Trobe University