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In this guest editor's introduction to this thematic volume on the historical archaeology of Queensland, Australia, I briefly discuss some of the history and archaeology of Queensland in light of some of the major themes currently being investigated. The papers presented in this volume are also introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on remote nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Indigenous missions in northern and central Australia point to their often tenuous existence and the complex nature of engagements between Christian Missionaries and Indigenous people. This paper explores the contribution and significance of Indigenous production of wild foods in the context of one such settlement located at Weipa on Cape York Peninsula, north eastern Australia. It is premised on the assertion that investigation of the economies of these often remote settlements has the potential to reveal much about the character of cross-cultural engagements within the context of early mission settlements. Many remote missions had a far from secure economic basis and were sometimes unable to produce the consistent food supplies that were central to their proselytizing efforts. In this paper it is suggested that Indigenous-produced wild foods were of significant importance to the mission on a day-to-day basis in terms of their dietary contribution (particularly in terms of protein sources) and were also important to Indigenous people from a social and cultural perspective. We develop this argument through the case study of culturally modified trees that resulted from the collection of wild honey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an historical archaeological examination of the socioeconomic relations of the Chinese and European communities of Cooktown in north Queensland during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It looks at the social landscape and production, exchange and consumption of material culture to show that the Chinese were not a disengaged group, as depicted in conventional understandings of colonial life, but integral to the town's socioeconomic fabric. This close relationship arose out of a process of negotiation between Chinese and Europeans which responded to the strengths, weaknesses and resources of their individual business networks, and the particular conditions of Cooktown's frontier environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mount Shamrock township was one of the earliest gold mining towns in the Upper Burnett district of Queensland, Australia. A study of the township and associated industrial area demonstrates the integration of town and mine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper examines the relative permanence of the mining settlement and reveals a multifaceted landscape influenced not only by miners but by the women, children and other non-mining residents operating within distinct social and administrative frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mornington Island Mission in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia, was a site of historical engagement between Aboriginal people and missionaries. In this paper, we apply the theoretical concepts of “domains” and the “intercultural” to the investigation of this engagement between 1914 and 1942, when the mission was overseen by the Reverend Robert Wilson. Through the examination of the removal of Aboriginal children, the establishment of a mission compound and Aboriginal camp and the inclusion of Aboriginal adults into the mission compound through production and economy, we show how mutually constituted domains operated. At the same time, the interaction between Aboriginal adults and children with missionaries within these domains was increasingly intercultural in nature. Thus, both “domains” and the “intercultural” are shown to have relevance to the historical case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability of historical archaeology to make a significant contribution to our understanding of Queensland's recent past is hindered by factors including few practitioners, limited publications about historical archaeological research and a need to establish its relevance beyond the archaeological community. There exists great opportunities in Queensland for researchers to explore a diverse range of research topics of which only some are beginning to be investigated through historical archaeological enquiry. This paper investigates the current state of the discipline in Queensland, the challenges practitioners face today and into the future, and the avenues down which historical archaeologists may make significant contributions to our understanding of Queensland's recent past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preliminary historical archaeological research on Lizard Island in far north Queensland is enabling the Queensland Government to develop more effective management strategies for on-site interpretation of the historical precinct of Watsons Bay. Although popularly associated with the north Queensland colonial heroine Mary Watson, the Bay can now be understood as a large multilayered cultural landscape with meaning to a wide variety of groups. The common aspects of the three known beche-de-mer operations that occupied the Bay between 1860 and 1881 and the nature of the emerging archaeological record afford many opportunities for scaled archaeological research. It further highlights aspects of historical archaeological theory and the relationship between the discipline and the historical record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]