Conversations between disciplines: historical archaeology and oral history at Yarrawarra

Abstract

The practice of historical archaeology is often interdisciplinary, but the relationships between archaeology and other disciplines are not often explicitly analysed. A characteristic national strand of archaeology, which crosses the boundaries between historical and Aboriginal archaeology, is developing in Australia. So it is timely to consider specific ideas for relating Indigenous oral history and historical archaeology. In our research partnership with Yarrawarra Aboriginal Corporation, which was aimed at understanding Aboriginal place knowledges, we develop the concept of conversation for analysing the research process between archaeology and oral history. We define co-opting conversations as the most usual conversations engaged in between disciplines, research paradigms and between scientific and Indigenous knowledges. We then identify several more productive kinds of conversation that occurred between oral history and archaeology in our research: intersecting, parallel, complementary and contradictory. We found contradictory conversations, usually regarded as failures by other researchers, yielded the most productive analytic understandings. As a result of these different types of conversations we were able to produce a richer understanding of placeness (sensu Mayne and Lawrence 1998). The richest understandings of place at Yarrawarra develop only through such interdisciplinary conversations.