Encounters with the Deep Past: 65,000 years of Indigenous History

Description

Author Billy Griffiths talks about his book Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia.Billy Griffiths joined his first archaeological dig as camp manager and cook. It was not long before he began to grapple with the mind-bendingly deep history of the Australian continent, and the extraordinary stories of the archaeologists who have helped transform white Australia’s understanding of the land beneath their feet.  Billy Griffiths is a writer, historian and research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, and Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia is the passionate product of that first archaeological journey. It investigates a twin revolution: the reassertion of Aboriginal identity in the second half of the twentieth century, and the uncovering of the traces of ancient Australia.

The book explores what it means to live in a place of great antiquity, with its complex questions of ownership and belonging. It is about a slow shift in national consciousness: the deep time dreaming that has changed the way many Australians relate to the continent and its enduring, dynamic human history.