Australian Laureate Fellowships - Grant ID: FL140100218
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$2,429,568.00
Summary
The collective biography of archaeology in the Pacific: a hidden history. The collective biography of archaeology in the Pacific: a hidden history. The project aims to establish the history of Pacific archaeology as a new sub-discipline within world archaeology, covering the period from the speculations of early explorers to the present. The often-forgotten role of Australian and New Zealand scholars will be highlighted. Pacific archaeologists, stewards of a third of the World's archaeology, hav ....The collective biography of archaeology in the Pacific: a hidden history. The collective biography of archaeology in the Pacific: a hidden history. The project aims to establish the history of Pacific archaeology as a new sub-discipline within world archaeology, covering the period from the speculations of early explorers to the present. The often-forgotten role of Australian and New Zealand scholars will be highlighted. Pacific archaeologists, stewards of a third of the World's archaeology, have forgotten so much of that history that the discipline is in a serious conceptual crisis, with current theories about the origins of Pacific peoples mired in outmoded and often racialised assumptions. At the same time, our ideas about the Pacific past are becoming internalised among indigenous Pacific Islanders. There is a need for understanding the disciplinary history in order to move theory forward.Read moreRead less