History & Archaeology Books

Between the Murray and the Sea: Aboriginal Archaeology in South-eastern Australia explores theIndigenous archaeology of Victoria, focusing on areas south and east of the Murray River.Looking at multiple sites from the region, David Frankel considers what...

The natural resources of New Guinea and nearby islands have attracted outsiders for at least 5000 years: spices, aromatic woods and barks, resins, plumes, sea slugs, shells and pearls all brought traders from distant markets. Among the most sought-after...

The iconic minaret of Jm stands in a remote mountain valley in central Afghanistan, the finest surviving monument of the enigmatic 12th-century Ghrid dynasty. The rediscovery of the minaret half a century ago prompted renewed interest in the Ghrids, and...

Though there exist many biographical dictionaries of the achievements of Chinese people throughout history, few women feature. Since the mid-1980s, researchers from the University of Sydney's Department of Chinese Studies have been collecting the life...

Over the course of the 19th century a remarkable array of types appeared in Australian literature: the swagman, the larrikin, the colonial detective, the bushranger, the "currency lass", the squatter, and more. Some had a powerful influence on the...

Whether on the ground or in the mind gardens carry meaning. They reflect social and aesthetic values and may express hope, anticipation or grief. Throughout history they have provided a means of physical survival. In creating and maintaining gardens...

Christina Stead set five of her novels in the United States, capturing and critiquing American life with uncanny sharpness. Yet her relationship with place and nation remains difficult to pin down: she resisted the label 'expatriate' and her books defy...

Zooarchaeology is a powerful way of reconstructing the lives of past societies. Through the analysis of animal bones found on a site, zooarchaeologists can uncover important information on the economy, trade, industry, diet, and other fascinating facts...

Throughout the 19th century, animals were integrated into staged scenarios of confrontation, ranging from lion acts in small cages to large-scale re-enactments of war. Initially presenting a handful of exotic animals, travelling menageries grew to...

Anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner is perhaps most well known for coining the phrase the 'great Australian silence', addressing the culture of denial or 'conscious forgetting' regarding the history Australia since European arrival.This reprint of On...

The essays in Australia and the Wider World bring together a lasting contribution to the story of Australia and the history of ideas in this country.Since the 1960s Neville Meaney has been asking probing questions about social change and the rise of...

'The studies range from the 19th century romantic getaways of picking flowers and picnicking to 21st century extreme sports such as canyoning and abseiling. Indigenous perspectives are included ... Helpfully many of the references are to unpublished...

Australia and the World celebrates the pioneering role of Neville Meaney in the formation and development of foreign relations history in Australia and his profound influence on its study, teaching and application. The contributors to the...

At the time of European colonisation of Australia, veterinary medicine was a young profession, and there was little money or time for it. Even by 1910, when the University of Sydney enrolled its first veterinary science undergraduates, there were only...

The Murujuga: Dynamics of the Dreaming Project (LP140100393) was an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project between Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation (MAC), Rio Tinto and the Centre for Rock Art Research and Management (CRAR+M) at the University...

Winner of the 2010 Human Rights Award for Literature (non-fiction) and the 2010 Margaret Medcalf Award.This is a history commissioned by SWALSC to present as evidence at the Single Noongar Native Title Claim over metropolitan Perth and South-West WA. The...

In 1826 the British set up a garrison on the edges of an Aboriginal world at King George's Sound, the site of present day Albany, Western Australia, with the aim of deterring the French from occupying the area. The British newcomers and the area's...

In A Story to Tell, artist Laurel Nannup brings to life her childhood in a large Aboriginal family.While her stories include a time spent at the Wandering Mission, their main focus is on memories of family life: picnics, roaming through the bush, sharing...

The book provides a pre-settlement historical account of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island in their Indian Ocean context. The project began as a search for clues to locations of two 18th century Dutch shipwrecks, and was expanded into a...

'Bessy Flowers is a hero of mine, and I'm very glad she's at the centre of a book that features her images and writing, along with the remarkable journey to situate her in family and Country' Kim ScottKia Kia, Noogiting Wirren, Minang...

Entrepreneur, aviator, publisher, publicist, propagandist, playwright, songwriter, motorist, land developer, dreamer: for five brief years it seemed like there was nothing Clement John DeGaris couldn't do. He'd inveigle your life...

The internment camp on Rottnest Island, established for enemy aliens from Germany and Austria-Hungary during World War I, can be considered a historical oddity, not least because Indigenous prisoners were also held captive there by Australian soldiers...

'Mowed them down wholesale!'With these words, a judge summed up the last great punitive massacre of Aboriginal people in Australia.Coniston, Central Australia, 1928: the murder of an itinerant prospector at this isolated station by local Warlpiri...

The Shipwrecks of the Roaring 40s project was funded by the Australian Research Council to investigate some of the earliest and most important shipwrecks in Western Australia, including the four Dutch East Indiamen wrecked in the 17th and 18th centuries...

Before the colonisation of Australia, Aboriginal Australians lived on a wonderful larder of fresh fruit,vegetables and lean meat, in a land largely free from disease, with more exercise, less stress andsupportive communities. Today, in Aboriginal...

That Was My Home explores the hidden histories of the Noongar camps aroundFremantle, Swanbourne and Shenton Park in the suburbs of Perth along the SwanRiver. The focus is the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, a time when many Noongarpeople lived with their...

'David Walker's Stranded Nation is a recommended read for anyone, politicians and students alike, seeking to know the history of Australia's agonising over Asia; how it began, how it evolved and the passionate and colourful characters involved. Stranded...

This is a book about memorials - specifically about a new type of memorial that commemorates experiences of survivors. These new memorials acknowledge loss and trauma that people have lived through, rather than died because of. It is also a book about...

A groundbreaking presentation, in a revised edition, of Indigenous Australian storytelling as it actually sounds; these stories provide a fascinating picture of the life of the people of the west Kimberley after colonisation. Paddy Roe was a legendary...

Told in the artist's own words via a series of interviews, this revealing biography of Helen Grey-Smith examines the dignified artist's fascinating life. In this book author Gwen Phillips gives us the rare opportunity to listen to an artist speaking...

In Every Mother's Son is Guilty, Chris Owen provides a compelling account of policing in the Kimberley district from 1882, when police were established in the district, until 1905 when Dr. Walter Roth's controversial Royal Commission into the treatment...

This is a pivotal story long overdue for the telling: how Aboriginal and European people interacted with each other following the British territorial invasion of 1826 for the next hundred years.There has always been a wealth of documentary and oral...

Warren Braedon, named by his adoptive parents Louis St John Johnson, was taken from his mother in Alice Springs at just three months old. Told he had been abandoned, Louis's adoptive parents, Bill and Pauline Johnson raised him in a loving family in...

To imagine that we confront Asia for the first time in the twenty-first century is to deny our history and the self-awareness that comes from understanding that we have been here before. Asia appears throughout modern Australian history as a source of...

In New Guinea’s jungles, a fierce battle turned the tide of the Pacific War—the first major land defeat for the unstoppable Japanese forces.By mid-August 1942, Imperial Japanese forces dominated the Southeast Asian and Pacific theatres, seemingly...

These women are twice convicted, and among them are no doubt some of the most depraved of their sex. -- James Backhouse.Hannah Rigby was a poor Liverpool seamstress, a prisoner and a serial thief. Exiled from her homeland, oppressed by poverty and rigid...

"From the skies over war-torn Europe to the opulent halls of English nobility, Edward Bagot's journey is a riveting testament to courage, heritage, and unwavering faith." Edward Bagot’s memoir offers a unique personal perspective on World War II,...

Wing Commander Vic Hodgkinson DFC served as a pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force throughout WWII. Starting in 1939, he was a founding member of 10 Squadron RAAF, operating Short Sunderland flying boats. Loaned to the RAF in early 1940, the squadron...

With the Australian troops crossing of the Kumusi River in mid-November 1942, after pushing the Japanese back along the Kokoda Track to the north coast of Papua New Guinea, the time had come to face the entrenched Japanese at their beachhead at Gona,...

Forgotten men and women from Australia in a forgotten war – Burma 1942-1945.If you didn’t know that Australians were involved in the longest campaign of WWII, in Burma, in what was called ‘a forgotten war’, this book illuminates the lost stories of their...

This fiercely funny memoir is set in Melbourne during the 1940s. The entrenched Protestant–Catholic divide of those times informs the narrative. Juxtaposed is the gulf between Melburnians and the thousands of Yanks stationed in their city following Pearl...

On 22nd April 1995, more than 4,000 Rwandans were massacred and thousands more injured in a place called Kibeho. Terry Pickard, a seasoned soldier and medic, was one of a 32-strong force of Australian UN peacekeepers present on that terrible Saturday...

Between 1946 and 1966 large numbers of displaced persons (DPs) came to Australia to escape the horrors of war-torn Europe. Peter Brune’s latest work had its genesis in more than 40 interviews he conducted with DPs in the period 2001—2022. He spoke to...

With the Australian troops crossing of the Kumusi River in mid-November 1942, after pushing the Japanese back along the Kokoda Track to the north coast of Papua New Guinea, the time had come to face the entrenched Japanese at their beachheads at Gona,...

The inaugural Royal Australian Air Force Oral Histories series publication, First Nations Aviators, will introduce you to a number of First Nations People who have proudly served the Air Force, in various capacities, from the Second World War through to...

The August Offensive or ‘Anzac Breakout’ at Gallipoli was an attempt to break the stalemate of the campaign. It saw some of the bloodiest fighting since the landing as Commonwealth and Turkish troops fought desperate battles at Lone Pine, German...

Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Battles in New Guinea David W. Cameron one of Australia's leading military historians new Kokoda Campaign series will take you from the Battle for Isurava to Port Morseby and finally the retaking of Kokoda. ...