Towards an archaeology of Country

Country goes to the heart of First Nations Australians’ identity and spiritual connection to ancestral lands. It is much more than a geographical place, it is spiritually alive, animate, and sentient (Bradley with Yanyuwa Families 2022; Rose 1996). Being ‘on-Country’, a phrase often said by First Nations Australians, is about spiritual connection, vitalism, and regeneration, and acknowledging the spiritual agency, intentionality, and sentience of place. It’s also about acknowledging and feeling the place, presence, and agency of the Old People, the Ancestors, and understanding and taking on the ancestrally ordained responsibility to what is referred to formally as ‘Caring for Country’. People look after Country and Country looks after people because of consubstantiation; that is, they are co-constituted as kin. Country is family. Every leaf, animal, grain of sand is Country; there are no ‘culturally sterile’ sediments at the base of excavations as archaeologists are so fond of saying. The Old People watch over current generations and must be engaged and given respect when out-and-about on-Country, especially when activities on-Country concern cultural activities, including archaeology. Country itself thus engages with people and has a morality that ensures that inappropriate cultural practices and transgressions of cultural law can result in punishment expressed in myriad ways, including bad luck and sickness. Although Country is integral to religious tenets of the Dreaming and associated songlines and Law, it is equally about philosophy, ontology, and epistemology.

Respect for the Old People, Country, and cultural protocol are major concerns for First Nations people when they work with archaeologists. As archaeologists we are trained to enter the field with myriad thoughts in our heads about where and how to survey and record sites, and in the case of excavations, where best to place pits, sieving stations, and so on. These are technical concerns fundamental to the scientific integrity of archaeology. Yet as archaeologists have ever increasingly worked more closely and collaboratively in partnership with First Nations communities over recent decades, a blurring of cultural and scientific protocols has occurred such that most archaeologists in Australia who work on Indigenous cultural sites and heritage are cognisant of and sensitive to Indigenous cultural concerns. As archaeologists we are guests on-Country and our First Nations hosts (and the Old People and Country itself) expect us to act accordingly (McNiven and Russell 2005). As guests, archaeologists must respect that First Nations people see ‘archaeological’ sites and objects as living agentive expressions and embodiments of the Old People and Country itself.

The interlaced issues of respect, cultural sensitivity, and ancestral agency are dimensions of fieldwork practice and community engagement rarely discussed in publications by archaeologists. Indeed, few archaeologists speak of the multidimensional aspects of community engagement that involve current Indigenous peoples and the Old People (the living and the dead). Yet I know of a number of archaeologists who in one-on-one conversations have spoken of ‘odd’ and inexplicable events, including those seemingly of a spiritual nature, that have happened during fieldwork. Perhaps we should be more open about these dimensions of Indigenous archaeology and admit to our ontological plurality.

It is standard practice for Monash University archaeologists working in western and central Torres Strait to engage local cultural protocols and sing out ‘kapu goeyga’/‘kapu migi batynga’ (good morning) (Kala Lagaw Ya) or ‘Gud morning’/‘morning’ (creole) when we arrive at an excavation site each day, and ‘yawol’ (goodbye) and ‘eso’ (thank you)/‘koeyma eso’ (thank you very much) (Kala Lagaw Ya) when departing. Personal reasons for such actions are complex and are not limited to whether we believe in Ancestral spirits and sentient landscapes. In my case, these verbalisations are also an explicit acknowledgment that the remote places where we undertake our collaborative research have never been colonised ontologically or secularised by the West. We have entered into the world and place of another culture. To negate Indigenous spiritual and ontological sovereignty by not enacting cultural protocols can be construed as acts of colonial arrogance and unethical practice. If you agree, do these sentiments also encompass the types of archaeological research we undertake?

Looking ahead, can an archaeology of Country extend beyond fieldwork methods and community collaboration and personal engagement practices into archaeological theory and the very stories we tell of the past? Can an archaeology of Country change the approach of Australian Indigenous archaeology and the types of histories/stories we tell of the past? Although great strides have taken place in recent decades, we can work harder to make Australian Indigenous archaeology resonate better with First Nations communities’ social, cultural, and political aspirations for greater understandings of their past in the present. We also should aspire to investigate ontologies of Country that centre non-human agency and historicise cultural practices linked directly and indirectly with the material expressions and management of animate and sentient land- and seascapes. In many cases, but certainly not all, these cultural practices will be of a ceremonial/ritual nature (McNiven 2016) and relate to looking after Country in terms of use, management, and enhancement of plant, animal, and water resources (e.g. Bradley 2006; Gammage and Pascoe 2021; McNiven et al. 2023; Sutton and Walshe 2021:Chapter 2).

An archaeology of Country provides an opportunity to engage with the broader non-Cartesian ontological turn in archaeology (Alberti 2016; see also Holbraad and Pedersen 2017), focusing on relational ontologies (Watts 2013) linked to new conceptions of animistic ontologies (e.g. Descola 2013; Harvey 2006), and most recently, a denouncing of human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism with ‘flat ontologies’ such as Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) (e.g. Harman 2018). Such ontological awakenings help give us the eyes and conceptual tools to better understand and represent the cultures and associated worldviews of Indigenous peoples (past and present) by exploring issues of the agency of objects, the existence of non-human persons, and sentient ecologies. Far from an exercise in philosophical dilettantism, ontological awakenings allow archaeologists trained in the Western (Enlightenment) scientific canon to better understand their own ontological positioning and cultural biases to better see and understand the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of Country. Comprehending, appreciating, and discussing ontological plurality and relativism is also part of the decolonising process in archaeology.

Australian Indigenous archaeology can make innovative theoretical contributions to world archaeology given the rich ethnographies and oral traditions that infuse our collaborative research praxis. Over the past 20 years I have attempted to do justice to the ethnographic blessings of anthropology and community intellectuals who have generously (re)educated me as I elaborated concepts of sentient seas and seascapes as spiritscapes through archaeologies of dugong hunting rituals (see McNiven 2023 for a detailed overview). Similar ontological issues are being explored across Aboriginal Australia (e.g. Ash et al. 2022; David 2011; li-Wirdiwalangu et al. 2023; Motta et al. 2021; Porr 2018). How do we move forward in this regard? Does Australian Indigenous archaeology need a reboot or even a restart? Should it be reframed as a dimension of new ways of engaging with and looking after Country? The extraordinary diversity of First Nations communities and cultures across Australia coupled with tenets of co-designed, collaborative, partnership research preclude me from being prescriptive. Yet I suggest the sky is the limit if archaeologists sit down with community leaders and see where conversations and work and research practices take us if we ask the basic question: ‘What would an archaeology of Country look like to you and your mob?’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).