ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the history of archaeology in the State of Tasmania. Because of the very public nature of the conflicts that have occurred in this State the history of Tasmanian archaeology, and challenges to it by Aboriginal people, provides a good example of the changing relationship between archaeology, Aboriginal people and government, and changes to State heritage strategies. This example is particularly significant, as it had profound consequences for archaeological practice and ethical debates in the rest of Australia (Colley 2002; du Cros 2002). This chapter argues that Tasmanian archaeological knowledge and research was, during the 1970s, mobilized as a technology of government by Tasmanian State institutions, and by the Federal government during its 1983 intervention in the Franklin Dam heritage conflict. However, as Aboriginal political agitation continued during the 1980s and 1990s, the post-Franklin Dam era of interactions has resulted in significant changes in the relationship between archaeologists, Indigenous people and heritage bureaucracies. As policy makers gave Aboriginal political interests more legitimacy, the degree to which archaeology as a technology of government was implemented, and the nature of that implementation, changed.
