This monograph has been a long time coming, but it has benefited significantly from the intellectual distance Martin has been able to put between himself and the PhD dissertation on which the present volume is based. Thankfully he has also translated it from “thesis–ese”, which he may not have done so thoroughly had he rushed into print right after gaining his doctorate. The result of his rumination and editing is a scholarly but highly readable treatise on a fascinating aspect of colonial history.
Martin set himself a ambitious task when he began this project. After working through a variety of trials and tribulations of the sort familiar to many doctoral candidates, he focussed his attention on Cheyne Beach and what was a small but very nicely–formed shore whaling site nestled in the dunes about 50 km northeast of Albany in the far southwest of the continent. I visited the site while Martin and his crew were excavating, and was struck not only by the quality of the site and Martin’s work on it, but also the stark beauty of the wider location. The many tiger snakes that infested the place just made it all the more, um…interesting to be there. Although Cheyne Beach seems atypical in some ways, being associated with a domestic residence in a way other shore whaling stations weren’t, Martin’s careful attention to the global historical context of the Australian whaling industry and his detailed analysis of the varied artefacts he recovered has allowed him to fit the site firmly into the greater scheme of things at the time.
It is this last that I find most astonishing. Here was a place that was at the utter ends of the earth when it was in use, but which saw its occupants steadfastly maintaining their connections with the wider world, and Britain in particular, when we might have expected them to adapt much more to local conditions, given the effort it must have taken to “remain respectable”. Martin is not the first to reveal such behaviours on colonial frontiers, but his lucid exposition of this particular case adds usefully to our understanding of how ordinary people manage in the trying circumstances into which they can be thrust by the dynamics of world affairs. That the site of their labours and his is now largely gone is a poignant reminder of why we do what we do as archaeologists.
Prof. IAN LILLEY
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit
The University of Queensland