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Artefacts and collectors in the tropics of North Queensland
Author(s) -
Erckenbrecht Corinna,
Fuary Maureen,
Greer Shelley,
Henry Rosita,
McGregor Russell,
Wood Michael
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1757-6547.2010.00101.x
Subject(s) - tropics , work (physics) , focus (optics) , history , property (philosophy) , scale (ratio) , geography , world heritage , environmental ethics , ethnology , archaeology , engineering , cartography , epistemology , ecology , philosophy , tourism , mechanical engineering , physics , optics , biology
This paper outlines some of the ways early artefact collecting contributed to the definition of the Australian region now known and marketed as the ‘World Heritage Wet Tropics’. While others have collected in this region, we focus on the collecting activities of Hermann Klaatsch and the work of Norman Tindale to explore some factors that contributed to their claims that certain artefacts represent a region and its history. We argue that these understandings of region and the past, along with the now widely dispersed artefacts, maintain a lively, albeit transformed, presence in current debates about Aboriginal regional culture, linking assertions of rights to lost and stolen cultural property with notions of large‐scale environmental management within the ‘Wet Tropics’.