While this book can be described as John Mulvaney's autobiography, it is much more than that. Along with descriptions of Mulvaney's own fieldwork trips and publications, and his Australian and overseas travels for a variety of professional purposes – usually accompanied by his wife Jean and their five children – it also describes a history of archaeology and heritage protection in Australia. As an Australian archaeologist, and part of the discipline in Australia since the early to mid-1970s, I followed Mulvaney's chapters with much interest as they brought back many memories of past events that happened in my lifetime, as well as providing the earlier backdrop to many of those events. My first introduction to John Mulvaney was as a student in the Anthropology Department of Sydney University, where required reading for the archaeology courses included his 1969 edition of The Prehistory of Australia (the only such text then existing) and his 1965 Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society publication of the Kenniff Cave excavations in Queensland with Bernard Joyce. Kenniff Cave was one of only a handful of Australian excavations published in detail at the time. This was the first site to demonstrate a Pleistocene Aboriginal presence in Australia – uncalibrated 16,000 years bp – albeit terminal Pleistocene at that time.
There was limited knowledge or expectations for a distant past to Aboriginal occupation in Australia when Mulvaney began his university education, and there was thus a lack of courses or training available for investigating an Aboriginal prehistory through archaeological work. At Melbourne University his initial university studies and academic appointments were in British and ancient history. His training in archaeology came during his degree at Cambridge between 1951 and 1953 (pp 73–89). It was after his return to Australia in 1954 that he began investigating archaeological fieldwork opportunities in Australia, but at the same time he was still teaching Greek and Roman history at Melbourne University (p 96).
Mulvaney's predecessors in excavating stratified sites and proposing stadial views for changes in Australian stone artefact assemblages were Frederick McCarthy and Joseph Tindale. However, like Mulvaney's later hafted/non-hafted stages (p 145), and the subsequent two-phase Core Tool and Scraper Tradition/Small Tool Tradition, these descriptions of the changes that occurred over time in stone artefact assemblages and attempts to produce sequences of distinct cultural stages have not stood the test of time, though they are still matters of debate (Hiscock and Attenbrow Reference Hiscock and Attenbrow2005, 1). While Mulvaney obviously does not see either McCarthy or Tindale as archaeologists, I have no qualms about calling them such from the nature of the archaeological work with which they were involved. Both were museum professionals (the Australian Museum in Sydney and the South Australian Museum respectively), and McCarthy had trained with Dutch archaeologists in Indonesia and south-east Asia.
Although Mulvaney began introducing lectures on Australian archaeology before British colonization into his courses at Melbourne University, it was not until after his appointment as chair of a new undergraduate teaching department at ANU (Australian National University) in the 1970s that courses in Australian Aboriginal archaeology/prehistory began to be taught.
As one of the earliest academic archaeologists in Australia, Mulvaney participated in and/or witnessed the beginnings of many institutions such as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (initially AIAS), the prehistory/anthropology teaching and research departments at ANU, the Australian Heritage Commission and the more recently established National Museum of Australia. His appointment to ANU in Canberra also meant that he was invited to be a member of, and contribute to, many Federal government committees. Digging up a Past provides interesting insights into the lengthy processes, deliberations and debates that preceded establishment of these important institutions. It also describes many campaigns to preserve Australia's heritage sites, such as First Government House in Sydney CBD, Kutakina (Frasers) Cave on the Franklin River in south-western Tasmania and Lake Mungo in the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area, campaigns in which Mulvaney was involved.
In writing Digging up a Past Mulvaney uses words economically (cf p 103). No flamboyant embellishing adjectives are to be found in the prose of this book – but it has a straightforward and easy-to-read style. Sixteen pages of black-and-white photographs show Mulvaney in a variety of contexts throughout his life. But there is much more of interest than I have been able to comment on in this review. While Digging up a Past will be of interest to John Mulvaney's colleagues, students and family, for anyone interested in the history of archaeology and heritage protection in Australia, this book is a must-read.
