Bequest a lifeline to archeologists (TheAustralian Article)

[Ulm, Sean]

TheAustralian

Bequest a lifeline to archeologists

From: TheAustralian
Wed Jun 29 00:00:00 EST 2011
THE University of Sydney has scored another fundraising coup, a $6.9 million bequest from Tom Austen Brown, a solicitor and part-time archeologist who died in 2009.

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[IainS]

Hopefully a Chair of Australian Archaeology means someone researching
archaeology in Australia - maritime, historical, Industrialist and/or
Aboriginal rather than someone living in Australia doing archaeology
overseas like many of the academics at the Uni of Sid do. It would be
a great loss if Australia's past is not studied in favour of say the
Greeks or Romans which are well served by numerous researchers and
chairs..

Iain Stuart

[vale...@uni.sydney.edu.au]

About bloody time.

Vanessa Alexander BA (Hons) University of Sydney
Archaeologist

P. (02) 97995549
M. 0402054468
W. www.vanessamcalexander.com

________________________________________
From: oza...@googlegroups.com [oza...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of IainS [ia...@jcis.net.au]
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 6:31 PM
To: OzArch
Subject: {OzArch} Re: Bequest a lifeline to archeologists (TheAustralian Article)

Iain Stuart

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[Oliver Brown]

The bequest specifies that the money be spent "in the discipline of Prehistory in such manner as the Senate ... may determine" (http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newscategoryid=8&newsstoryid=7202). USyd pages indicate the money will create the "Tom Austen Brown Chair of Australian Archaeology" and the "Tom Austen Brown Grants Program for Prehistory" - the donor, Tom Austen Brown, was apparently specifically interested in Aboriginal archaeology. So I would suggest that historical, maritime and industrial Australian archaeology ought not actually be funded through the bequest any more than classical, Near Eastern or Asian archaeology. Given the deserved strength of many of these at Sydney, it is actually very good that the regrettable decline in Aboriginal archaeology there might be reversed in a way that should benefit all rather than take away from any others.

I'd not heard of him before, but thank you to Tom Austen Brown.

Oliver Brown
BA (Hons), MAACAI
Consultant Archaeologist
1/1 Park Street Clovelly NSW 2031
0427 414 226
o...@obca.com.au

[Shaun Canning]

Yes, but many other parts of world archaeology are covered under the banner of ‘prehistory’.

--

[IainS]

So long as it is spent on Australian archaeology in Australia as I
agree with Ollie that there has been a regrettable decline in the Uni
of Sid's research in prehistory. Hopefully the Chair will allow a
refocusing of activity although they will probably fill it with some
blow hard Oxbridge type who will spend 30 years theorising about
discourse with artefacts rather than somebody who might actually do
something of benefit to the understanding of Australia's complex
past.

Iain

[Michael Westaway]

What a wonderful thing to do, a chair in Australian Prehistory at the University of Sydney. There are good solicitors afterall! 

[Gary Vines]

On Jul 1, 4:21 pm, Michael Westaway <michaelwesta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What a wonderful thing to do, a chair in Australian Prehistory...

Considerable credit is owed to Richard Wright, who, I have read, in
the 1960s, enthused Brown in the importance of studying the
Aboriginal material that he had collected in its archaeological
context, so that he subsequently completed an honors degree in
prehistory in Sydney.

see http://sophinews.wordpress.com/2011/06/

-now for a rich benefactor in Victoria?


Gary Vines