Burke, Heather and Wallis, Lynley A. and Barker, Bryce ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6008-6411 and Tutty, Megan and Cole, Noelene and Davidson, Iain and Hatte, Elizabeth and Lowe, Kelsey
(2017)
The homestead as fortress: fact or folklore?
Aboriginal History, 41.
pp. 1-27.
ISSN 0314-8769
Abstract
Houses are quintessential statements of identity, encoding elements of personal
and social attitudes, aspirations and realities. As functional containers for human
life, they reflect the exigencies of their construction and occupation, as well as the
alterations that ensued as contexts, occupants and uses changed. As older houses
endure into subsequent social contexts, they become drawn into later symbolic
landscapes, connoting both past and present social relationships simultaneously
and connecting the two via the many ways they are understood and represented
in the present. As historical archaeologist Anne Yentsch has argued: ‘Many cultural
values, including ideas about power relationships and social inequality, are expressed
within the context of the stories surrounding houses’.
This paper is one attempt to
investigate the stories surrounding a ruined pastoral homestead in central northern
Queensland in light of relationships between non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal people
on the frontier.
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