Australian Archaeologist: Isabel McBryde Mother of Archaeology

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is being recorded today. I pay my respects to the elders and knowledge holders past, present and emerging.

Often when people think of archaeology, they think of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Rome. But I live in Australia which has the longest continuing culture in the world with the First Nations People. And one archaeologist who played an integral part in championing for Australian archaeology is Isabel McBryde.

Isabel McBryde was born in Western Australia in 1934, which means that as I record this podcast, she is in her late 80s. When she was young, her family moved to Melbourne, where she began to study Latin and Ancient History- in particular she studied Ancient Rome. She really wanted to become an archaeologist, but there was a bit of a problem. At that time in Australia, there were no universities that offered the study of archaeology, so if she wanted to study archaeology, she was going to have to travel overseas. And that she did. She was accepted into one of the fanciest universities in England, Cambridge. And do you know what was a very rare sight in archaeology university courses in the 1950s? Women.

In 1960, Isabel returned to Australia and started a job teaching history and pre-history at the University of New England. Just to distinguish the difference, pre-history means the time before there were written records and that is why archaeology is such an important field when studying ancient pre-history societies, because archaeology is the study of the physical remains rather than the written records. When she returned to Australia, she got a teaching job at uni. This job made Isabel McBryde the first ever female lecturer in a history department in an Australian University. Before Isabel left Australia, there was nowhere to study archaeology, but she began to create courses in archaeology at university.

Another important deed she did was that she recognised the need for Australian archaeologists to study their own ancient past, rather than just focusing in Europe and Egypt. She wanted to study the ancient past of the First Nations peoples. But instead of barging on to their traditional lands and digging up sacred sites, which was the method of most archaeologists at the time, Isabel McBryde thought it was incredibly important establish relationships with the local Aboriginal people of an area and work alongside communities to give them agency in the archaeological processes. It is just these kinds of actions—establishing archaeological courses in Australia and including First Nations communities in the decision making—that has helped her to become regarded as the mother of archaeology in Australia.

In fact, you can ask almost any Australian archaeologist and they will sing her praises. And that is exactly what I did for this episode. I got in contact with some archaeologists to see how they felt about Isabel McBryde. Melissa Riley described her as one of her personal heroes, and said that she was instrumental in, “forging respectful, caring and meaningful relationships with the Aboriginal communities in which she worked.”

Professor Lynley Wallis, who you may have heard me refer to before for her incredible project called Archaeology on the Frontier, which catalogued her findings on the Queensland Native Mounted Police, had equally glowing things to say about Isabel. She explained, “A quiet but fiercely intellectual scholar who championed Aboriginal people as being central to interpreting the archaeological record. Professor Isabel McBryde is a trailblazer in the discipline of Australian archaeology. No matter what type of archaeology you engage in, or where in Australia you work, you will almost always find that Professor McBryde has written an influential work of relevance.”

Dr Aedeen Cremin another trailblazing Australian archaeologist said of her, “Isabel was the first Australian archaeologist to insist that Aboriginal people should be involved in archaeological work and that Australians should respect and seek to understand their values.”

One of Isabel McBryde’s early achievements was being given a grant of ￡500 pounds in 1964 to study pre-historic cultures in northern New South Wales. That converts to about $15 000 in today’s money. She had actually started the work in 1960, but it was not until 4 years into the project that she was granted this money. That just goes to show the dedication that she had to the idea of recognising Aboriginal history as important archaeological work. After this project, in 1966, she became the first person to ever be awarded a PhD or Doctorate in Philosophy in Australian archaeological fieldwork.

Then in 1968 she was the first woman in Australia to win a Dominion travelling scholarship and to work on the cultural archaeological collections of Australian materials in British museums.

But she wasn’t just interested in the artefacts that she unearthed or the ancient landscapes that she was working on. She was committed to building strong relationships to people in First Nation’s communities and helping Australia to develop laws that protected the cultural heritage in Australia.

In 1983, she was part of a symposium– which is a conference of experts- that looked at ethical issues around who exactly owns the past. Questions they pondered were; What should be done with historical artefacts? How can we best preserve the past? And where should cultural artefacts be kept?

Another role Isabel McBryde had was on the UNESCO advisory committee. UNESCO stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and they are the ones that decide which places in the world should be protected as World Heritage Sites. Through her relationship with First Nations communities, she came to understand the concept of ‘country’ and she convinced UNESCO that instead of just individual sites, that there needed to be a category for ‘cultural landscapes’ and that First Nation’s people had spiritual connections to their landscapes.

Another fabulous achievement of Isabel is that she was appointed to be the Commissioner to the Australian Heritage Commission. A commissioner is a person who is a very important government official in charge of a particular area, and in this case that is preserving Australia’s heritage and history.

You may have heard of Mungo Man, but there was another ancient Aboriginal skeleton that was found at lake Mungo, known as Mungo Lady. After archaeologists excavated her remains, they were kept in a university for decades. Isabel McBryde recognised this injustice and was instrumental in encouraging the women of the community to petition to get Mungo Lady returned back to country in 1992.

Isabel also valued the importance of education and she thought it was incredibly important to train Aboriginal Australians in the field of archaeology. She was instrumental in helping many Aboriginal students to become archaeologists.

Because of all of these incredible achievements, Isabel McBryde won the Rhys Jones medal for outstanding contribution to Australian Archaeology. Then in 1990, she was awarded the Order of Australia for her work in reconstructing the cultural events of pre-European Australia.