The ideal and the real: cultural and personal transformations of archaeological research on Groote Eylandt, northern Australia

Since the early 1970s indigenous people have provided a challenging and often confronting cultural and political critique of some of the long-held givens of archaeological research. Archaeologists engaged in research about Australia’s indigenous archaeological record, whether it is the distant past of the Pleistocene or the more immediate past of colonial conquest, have had to rethink some of the fundamental aspects of their practice. In the last ten years one important initiative has been the development of community-based approaches to archaeology. The paper is presented in two parts. The Žrst part provides a brief background to the development of community archaeology in Australia, setting out the main elements of this approach. The second part presents three contexts from Groote Eylandt in northern Australia where I am able to identify the experiences that were pivotal in my shift in practice to a community-based archaeology.