After Captain Cook: The Archaeology of the Recent Indigenous Past in Australia.(Book review)

After Captain Cook: The Archaeology of the Recent Indigenous Past in Australia. R. Harrison and C. Williamson, eds. Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 2004. 231 pp. + xx. 54 b/w illustrations; 4 tables; index. $32.95 softcover. ISBN 0759106576.

This volume is the international edition of a published session at the Australian Archaeological Association (AAA) conference in 2000. It was originally issued under the same title through the University of Sydney in 2002. It was selected as one of the first volumes in a new World Archaeological Congress (WAC) Indigenous Archaeology series, which, in the words of the series editors' foreword, "is committed to ... the empowerment of Indigenous peoples." Aside from this foreword and some administrivia in the front papers--and an attractive new cover--the two volumes are identical. Before saying anything more, I should declare that I am WAC secretary but play no role in the publication of this series.

Following the volume editors' scene-setting introduction, "Too Many Captain Cooks?" there are ten chapters and an epilogue organized into three major groups reflecting areas of research concentration. The first group comprises chapters by Ferrier on contact-period material culture, Harrison investigating the archaeology of the pastoral industry (ranching), Lydon analyzing settler photography at an Aboriginal reserve, and Williamson discussing contact-period archaeology in Tasmania. The second group, on indigenous land rights, includes only two papers, one by Riches and the other by Veth and McDonald. The former is about how archaeology might help remedy shortfalls of Native Title legislation, the latter about archaeology and "exclusive possession" (i.e., defining group boundaries and cultural continuity through space and time). The final major section deals with ways in which heritage …