In Tasmania, the evidence of the First Tasmanians’ presence is often evidenced by the existence of middens containing the remnants of millennia of the people’s occupation, their cultural realities and their PLACEscaping – their hunting and gathering, their husbandry, their relationships with places etc. Possibly there is more still to be revealed as new technologies, and changing sensibilities, make new investigations possible.
Similarly, middens provide evidence of the island’s colonial histories and European colonialism’s exploitation plus missed and unimagined opportunities. For example, shell middens provided an early and easy access to lime for mortar used in the building of the early brick and stone buildings. Middens have been lost to this exploitation. Conceivably, European farming activities have disturbed or destroyed middens.
Nonetheless, it seems there are stories of ‘lost middens’ or middens found in apparently unlikely places.
Citizen exploration has the potential to collect information hitherto not found or even sought and on some occasions dismissed – destroyed even. There are DEEPhistories plus ORALhistories involved in all this along with opportunities for CITIZENscience.
As Leonard Cohen told us in a poem, "there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."
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