Recalibrating meaning and building context for collections of distantiated stone tools

Abstract

Stone tool and other lithic material produced by Australian Aboriginal people has been collected as evidence to support a range of theoretical and practical constructions, including the development of European societies, and Aboriginal occupation and land use. In the middle of the twentieth century, Dr Leonhard Adam built a relatively small collection of lithic material at the University of Melbourne, sourced as gifts or sales from local collectors, and which traded internationally in the development of the University’s ethnographic collection. Focusing on the archives associated with this collection, this paper examines how material was collected, documented and traded. This in turn highlig..