Cirrus@Austlit

'In Hunters and Collectors (1996), his classic study of antiquarianism in Australia, Tom Griffiths captured something of the Victorian zeitgeist, especially its attitude to the first Australians. The book is populated with an extraordinary array of fanatical collectors, hellbent on acquiring every stone and bone they could lay their hands on. Some gathered artefacts by the cartload. The museums that would in time acquire many such collections were enriched by these labours. But Aboriginal people knew the violence of extracting patrimony from its place of belonging. The acquisition of material culture, nominally in the service of science, marked a tertiary phase in the process of colonisation.' (Introduction)