How did one archaeologist's combative pursuit of free inquiry transform our understanding of Australia's deep past and the peopling of the Pacific?

This essay very briefly surveys the complex history of thinking about the human history of the continent that evolved from the very late 18 th century though to the foundation of Australia in 1901.This 'long' 19 th century saw the rise of the new disciplines of anthropology, ethnology, physical anthropology, geology, palaeontology and archaeology that either, in whole or in part, provided the framework for an inquiry into the origins of the Australians.It also saw the transformation of Australia from a collection of colonies into a single nation.

Abstract This chapter discusses the broad outcomes of over twenty years of research into the archaeology of two key sites in Sydney and Melbourne. It outlines the development of the theory and the method that was used to unlock the material histories of areas that had been widely regarded as slums and the lairs of the disadvantaged, and sketches the consequences of a reconsideration of life at the margins of two major colonial cities during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sites discussed in the chapter include a range of places in Sydney and Melbourne’s Little Lon, also known as the Commonwealth Block. The chapter also describes the process of developing documentary and archaeological datasets.

"‘Advancing the historical archaeology of Aboriginal Australia’: Comment on Tutchener and Claudie ‘Beyond ‘contact’ and shared landscapes in Australian archaeology’." Australian Archaeology, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2

In this chapter we examine the historical context of the backfilling of decommissioned cesspits and privies with domestic waste. This is a practice known throughout the modern world in metropolitan cities throughout the Anglophone world. Like many aspects of urbanisation, it was one subject to increasing regulation in the Victorian era as population densities increased and politicians, councillors, engineers and entrepreneurs worked to solve the many problems linked to the management of services and waste.