Publication Date: Oct 2015
RRP: $24.95
ISBN: 9781922235749
Format: Paperback
Size: 135mm x 210mm
Pages: 176
Category: Australian History

The Australian Archaeologist’s Book of Quotations

Mike Smith and Billy Griffiths


Australian archaeology has been involved in a great enterprise over the last sixty years, uncovering the deep past of a desert continent and the history of its first people. This book is a guide to the catchphrases of the discipline. It is a meditation on science and place, culture and politics, deep time and the Dreaming – and it is steeped in an appreciation of good writing and a well-turned phrase. Woven in amongst these quotations is the story of how, as a nation, we are coming to terms with ancient Australia.

The entries are drawn from letters and journals, histories and poems, newspapers and novels. Each has been chosen because it is a pithy summation of an issue. Combined, they map the development of the field and encourage a dialogue between science and the humanities.


Mike Smith

Dr Mike Smith is a pioneering desert field archaeologist. For several decades he has worked across the Australian arid zone attempting to piece together a picture of its human and environmental histories. He was awarded an Order of Australia for...
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Billy Griffiths

Billy Griffiths works at the University of Sydney as an historian of Australian and American foreign relations and as a tutor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History. His current research interests include the Whitlam era in foreign affairs, the...
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