This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Harrison, R. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Archaeology and the colonial encounter

Kimberley spearpoints, cultural identity and masculinity in the north of Australia

NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, Sydney, Australia, rodney.harrison{at}npws.nsw.gov.au

This article examines the ways in which material objects are invoked and constantly recontextualized as part of the process of cross-cultural colonial encounter with reference to a case study from the northwest of Australia. The study examines the various contexts within which bifacially flaked ‘Kimberley points’ were manufactured, traded and consumed in post-invasion Australia, and implications for understanding the role of material objects in colonial encounters. Many studies of cross-cultural material exchange note the ways in which objects are given different meanings in different cultural contexts. In contrast, this article considers parallels between the role that points played in developing notions of social identity among antiquarian collectors and Aboriginal people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly their role in evoking and expressing hybrid masculinities. The manufacture of glass Kimberley points by men who had been dislocated from their traditional country implies connections between the practice of point manufacture and the creation of new, hybrid social identities. The article attempts an ‘archaeology of encounter’ using these particular objects as a text to be read for both the discourses and forced silences that this colonial encounter created.

Key Words: colonialism • cross-cultural encounter • identity • Kimberley points • masculinity • material culture • northern Australia

Journal of Social Archaeology, Vol. 2, No. 3, 352-377 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/146960530200200304


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				R. Harrison 'The Magical Virtue of These Sharp Things': Colonialism, Mimesis and Knapped Bottle Glass Artefacts in Australia Journal of Material Culture, November 1, 2003; 8(3): 311 - 336. [Abstract] [PDF]