Into the Heart of Tasmania

A Search For Human Antiquity

Rebe Taylor

• Publisher: Melbourne University Press Digital
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780522867961
• eBook ISBN:
  9780522867978
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Australian & Oceanian History
• Index: History

In 1908 English gentleman, Ernest Westlake, packed a tent, a bicycle and forty tins of food and sailed to Tasmania. On mountains, beaches and in sheep paddocks he collected over 13, 000 Aboriginal stone tools. Westlake believed he had found the remnants of an extinct race whose culture was akin to the most ancient Stone Age Europeans. But in the remotest corners of the island Westlake encountered living Indigenous communities. Into the Heart of Tasmania tells a story of discovery and realisation. One man's ambition to rewrite the history of human culture inspires an exploration of the controversy stirred by Tasmanian Aboriginal history. It brings to life how Australian and British national identities have been fashioned by shame and triumph over the supposed destruction of an entire race. To reveal the beating heart of Aboriginal Tasmania is to be confronted with a history that has never ended.

Index

1917 Club, Westlake joins 154

A Modern Utopia 160

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission 203

Aboriginal Information Centre see Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre

Aboriginal tools see stone tools

Aborigines see mainland Aborigines; Tasmanian Aborigines

Aborigines of Tasmania, see The Aborigines of Tasmania

‘About Snakes’ 158–159

Adventure Bay, Westlake explores 70

Adventurer’s Handbook, The 154

Allen, Jack 139

Allison, William R 130

Amabel, Florence 36

anatomy 76 see also physical anthropology

Ancestor’s Tale, The 202–203

Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives 167

Anthropological Institute see Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland

anthropology see also evolutionary theory

‘armchair’ 24

Boas’s approach to 25

by correspondence 25, 78

early Australian 51–52, 78

emergent discipline 19, 53, 62

extinction and 53, 77, 90

in the field 25, 174

physical see also anatomy 63, 76, 94, 124

Roth’s approach to 75, 78

Spencer’s approach to 25, 50–51

Tylor’s influence to 22, 62–63

Westlake’s approach to see Westlake

‘antieolithisme’ 48

antiquity see human antiquity

Aranda people 53–54

archaeology see also Jones; Mulvaney

Australian ‘decades of discovery’ 176, 179

Cambridge connection with Australia 179, 201

early Australian 52, 180

emergent discipline 19–20

feminism and 198

global perspective 205

Pleistocene 198

Tasmanian 12, 176

Archer family 85–86

Armstrong, Harry and Victoria 129–130

Arthur, Lieutenant-Governor George, proclaims martia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Author note
• Prologue: The gift
• The decision
• The collector
• Leaving home
• The same science
• Collecting stones
• Collecting memories
• Fanny Smith
• The Islanders
• Photographing stones
• Such sweepings
• Going home
• A new order
• In his wake
• Below the surface
• ‘On our land’
• Epilogue: The return
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index