Emeritus Professor David Frankel, archaeologist from La Trobe University, supports Mr Pascoe's Theory - or does he?
Mr Pascoe claim that, just outside Melbourne in the Sunbury region, Aboriginal people were practicing ‘terracing agriculture’ in their ‘cultivation’ of the myrnong (Daisy yam) (Dark Emu, 2018 reprint, p22-23).
Mr Pascoe uses his literary technique to beguile the reader into imagining the Aborigine’s of Victoria were cultivating their yams in ‘terracing agriculture’, which we, as modern readers, understand to look like the left-hand photograph below.
The reality we contend, is more like what was captured by the eye-witness and sketcher, Andrew (William) Todd in 1835, who’s sketch below right, shows Aboriginal women using their digging sticks to harvest wild, ‘uncultivated’ Tam bourn Roots (Daisy yam). Todd shows no sign of man-made ‘gardens’ or ‘terracing agriculture’, as we would understand it today.
To support his claims, Mr Pascoe cites the work of “Archaeologist and Emeritus Professor David Frankel”. But when we review a major 2017 publication on the Victorian Aborigines and their society by Professor Frankel, we are not convinced that Mr Pascoe can fairly claim Professor Frankel’s work as supporting evidence that Victorian Aborigines were agriculturalists.
In fact, all Professor Frankel has done in his work, is to quote from the observations of an early settler’s diary, that of Issac Batey, (Unpublished manuscript, Royal Historical Society of Victoria, Melbourne). Batey merely claims that there were,
"…numerous mounds with short spaces between each…” and because, “…all these [spaces] are at right angles to the ridge’s slope, it is conclusive evidence that they are the work of human hands extending over a long series of years.”
To us, this just means that, in that particular location of Sunbury, myrnong grew reliably such that the Aboriginal women could return to gatherer the roots each season over many years, during which time they, as Batey says,
“…uproot[ed] the soil…” in what was at best described as “…accidental gardening…”
Thus it was was not planned agriculture involving laying out of terraces, selecting and planting myrnong seeds, tending, weeding and watering the crop, and then harvesting and keep seed stock for next season.
Indeed, if we look at the Professor Frankel’s comprehensive publication in 2017, Victorian Aboriginal life and customs through early European eyes. Selected and edited by David Frankel and Janine Major, we find no support for Mr Pascoe’s Fantasy History that Victorian Aboriginal people were builders of ‘stone houses’, ‘did sow, irrigate and till the land’ and ‘did construct a system of pan-continental government that generated peace and prosperity’ (Dark Emu, dustcover blurb).
Despite Professor Frankel’s admission that his and his colleague’s publication is based on -
“…[a] selection of observations of Aboriginal life in nineteenth century Victoria…by European invaders…”;
“…photographs and drawings, artefacts in museum collections, archaeological evidence and the traditions and knowledge retained by Aboriginal people today.”;
“…[a[ focus on descriptions of traditional practices which give glimpses of a rich and complex world. In doing so we have preferred straightforward accounts to those where opinions, analyses and explanation intruded into the author’s descriptions and narratives.”, and
“…extracts…taken from a wide variety of sources. Some are official documents prepared for government reports, others are personal diaries written at the time or reminiscences compiled long after events took place. Some are casual descriptions, others more considered discussions contributing to anthropological debates of the time. The writers were explorers, government officials, missionaries and settlers whose abilities and interests differed and whose observations vary in reliability.”,
- at no time does the Professor suggest that the Victorian Aboriginal people were anything other than members of a hunter-gatherer society.
A word search of the Professor’s work reveals over 100 instances of the use of the words, ‘hunting’ and ‘gathering’, or their derivations, whereas the word ‘agriculture’ is only used once, and that is in reference to Mr Pascoe’s book, Dark Emu Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? Magabala Books, 2014, which is listed as a General Reference in the Bibliography!
Some may think that, in the current politically correct environment, in may have been wise for Professor Frankel (or his publisher?) to include Mr Pascoe’s Dark Emu in the Bibliography. We do note however, that in the 278 pages of Professor Frankel’s work, he does not refer to Mr Pascoe, or cite his book Dark Emu, even once.
As far as we can see there is nothing in Professor Frankel’s work that suggests he really supports, or even believes, Mr Pascoe’s ‘Aboriginal Agricultural Industry Theory’.
“Often what people don't say or leave out, tells the real story.” ― Shannon L. Alder
But let our readers be the judge after reading Professor Frankel’s publication, Victorian Aboriginal life and customs through early European eyes.
We respond (with our notation) to a reader’s comment (P.Allen 12/5/2020), who writes :
‘Spurious reasoning at best. Because the "terracing" claims (1) do not resemble those in South East Asian countries (as depicted), with the vastly different soul types and, most importantly, amount of rainfall, thus "terracing" couldn't (2) have occurred? As for the absence of references to "agriculture" being significant, I suppose the absence of the term "evolution" before Darwin published his book discounts his theory as well. (3) This is just a he said/we say hatchet job designed to tear down someone else's work. Maybe counter these claims with your own research and substantiate your own claims. (4) That's the only way to progress our understanding of pre-colonial Australia. Not character assassination of an author you disagree with. (5)
(1) - Nowhere does the settler Mr Pascoe is quoting, Issac Batey, or Professor Frankel, use the word ‘terracing’. Instead they use the perfectly adequate terms, ‘mounds’ and ‘hillocks’ to describe where the myrnong gathering was occurring- see Professor Frankel’s original 1982 paper on this topic, which Mr Pascoe references. Our argument is that Mr Pascoe uses the non-colonial word, ‘terracing’, for political reasons and to give his readership an image that the Aborigines were ‘sophisticated farmers’, not hunter -gatherers.
(2) - we are not saying ‘terrace farming’ couldn’t have occurred - we are just saying it didn’t occur to cultivate myrnong (Daisy yam) in Sunbury in pre-colonial times. There is no evidence that shows that ‘terrace farming’ as we understand it, and how Mr Pascoe wants us to believe the Aborigines practiced it, ever occurred in Sunbury. Indeed, it can occur in Australia as evidenced by Australian farmers who regularly make use of ‘terracing’, for growing crops such as the traditional Aboriginal food, the macadamia nut in Queensland.
Modern ‘terraced’ macadamia nut farm in Queensland - this is what proper ‘terraces’ look like, not just ‘mounds’ or ‘hillocks’. This is ‘terracing’ using European and American knowhow, not ‘Aboriginal farming techniques’.
(3) - Not sure what your point is here? Mr Pascoe published his book in 2014, three years before Professor Frankel published his work on the Victorian Aborigines. So Prof. Frankel was free to refer to the Aboriginal ‘agriculture’ ‘discovered’ by Mr Pascoe if he wanted to. Prof. Frankel mentions as ‘further reading’, Mr Pascoe’s, Dark Emu in his work, but does not cite one example from Dark Emu, and does not use the word ‘agriculture’ in the text of his work at all. All his references to Aboriginal economy are in relation to hunting and gathering only and not ‘farming’.
(4) - We are just ‘amateurs’, but even we can see when a writer is trying to pull the wool over our eyes! All we can do is actually cite Professors Frankel’s paper on the myrnong ‘mounds’ and ‘hillocks’ of Sunbury as evidence that it wasn’t, as Mr Pascoe implies, ‘terraced farming’ or, in his words from Dark Emu :
“In Sunbury, Victoria, in 1836,… Isaac Batey…observed that people had worked their gardens [Batey does not say they had ‘gardens’] so well and for so long that large earthen mounds [ Frankel says they were small insubstantial] had been created during the process — but so little consideration was given to this land management [powerful, modern Eurocentric term] that, only a few years later, Europeans couldn’t say who or what had created these prominent terraces. [Batey revisited 40yrs later and could still say the mounds or hillocks (not ‘prominent terraces’) were made by the Aboriginal women. What is the mystery?] This last observation is evidence of a deliberate farming technique [here is Mr Pascoe extrapolating again - several Aboriginal women laboriously digging yams with a stick becomes a ‘deliberate farming technique, when really it is just a ‘deliberate yam gathering technique’], one which any modern farmer would recognise as good soil management. The fact that explorers and settlers report seeing such activity in so many different parts of the country is an indication that it wasn’t an isolated technique. Cultivation was a feature of Aboriginal land use.” [Batey called it ‘accidental farming’ - that is, in the process of digging for yams the soil was turned, which was a by-product of the gathering process. It was not a conscience decision to invest effort to cultivate the soil to make the yams grow, but rather in the main process of digging and gathering yams for food, the soil received some secondary benefits.]
(5) - Our main aim is to de-bunk Mr Pascoe’s wild and silly claims as he tries to re-write Australia’s colonial history. If Mr Pascoe’s reputation and character has been tarnished that is because of the claims he is making, and not due to us.
