ABSTRACT
Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Western discipline of archaeology has come under continuous and explicit criticism by Indigenous peoples from around the world. This criticism has been particularly pointed and public in countries such as the USA and Australia. As many archaeological commentators on this conflict have noted, this criticism developed both within, and was integral to, the new and public political movements for civil rights, sovereignty and land (for instance, McGuire 1992, 1998; Zimmerman 1997, 1998a). The demands by Indigenous peoples that they control how, or if, their heritage will be studied and understood by archaeologists are more than assertions or expressions of religious or cultural relativity. These assertions were, and continue to be, part of wider negotiations with governments and their policy makers about the political and cultural legitimacy of Indigenous claims to specific rights, not least of which are rights to land.
