Author Description

The urge to preserve, to search for the past in order to package and present it, is a powerful impulse. This act of making history is not only the domain of academic historians and professional myth-makers. Thousands of amateur enthusiasts, driven by curiosity and local knowledge have explored documentary, oral and environmental sources to shape their own histories and perceptions of the land and its people, black and white. This book explores the historical imagination of these antiquarians, naturalists, ethnologists, archaeologists and collectors. In doing so, it searches for the roots of historical consciousness and environmental sensibilities in European Australia.. Partly a collective biography of amateur scientists and humanists forgotten by history, Hunters and Collectors looks at how these people influenced popular perceptions of nature and the past. It shows how they distanced themselves from Aboriginal people and their culture, but were haunted by them. It also considers the rise of professional history; anthropology and archaeology in the universities, which ignored the efforts of the amateurs. This nineteenth century search for an Australian past prefigures much current historical consciousness. In this context the book looks at contemporary issues such as the rise of the heritage movement, debates about restoration of Aboriginal sites and artefacts in post-Mabo Australia, the changing role of museums and environmental conflicts.