ABSTRACT
Archaeologists in settler societies live in interesting times. Thinking of those in Australia, most are politically supportive of colonized Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander minorities despite broader community skepticism regarding assertions of Indigenous identity and claims to land, resources and cultural property. While most have close working relationships with particular Indigenous groups and individuals, as a group they continue to be confronted by skeptical if not hostile Indigenous reactions to their work on a more abstract, political level. This state of affairs has prompted sometimes radical efforts to decolonize archaeological theory and practice by encompassing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander interests and outlooks and their complex and often subtle interplay with those of the colonizers ( Byrne 2003a , 2003b; Clark and Frederick 2005; David and McNiven 2004). Such initiatives have unquestionably made progress, but if the Australian situation is any guide, the circumstances in which settler archaeologists find themselves can still occasion a great deal of personal and professional angst. This state of affairs would be easier to cope with intellectually, ethically and emotionally if practitioners had a better theoretical grasp of the phenomena they are trying to accommodate. To that end I propose that with certain provisos they might usefully be approached as the products of a single social condition—diaspora—in a manifestation that is unique to settler societies because it positions both the colonizer and the colonized as diasporic.
