The Archaeology of Agrarian Australia

The arrival of Europeans in Australia heralded the establishment of new forms of farming reliant on a range of foreign domesticated plants and animals. More than any other colonial industry, farming transformed the continent’s environments, ecosystems, and Indigenous cultures. This chapter considers the history of the archaeology of agrarian Australia, and in particular the ways that Aboriginal people provided labour and knowledge. At the same time farming relied on Aboriginal peoples’ Country. Recent research highlights both the social and environmental dimensions of this history. Other work highlights how Aboriginal people managed landscapes in their own right, a fact also reported by some colonial observers. This management has the potential to highlight Aboriginal peoples’ agency and to offer ways to reconsider contemporary land management in an era increasingly concerned with the challenges of the Anthropocene.