Griffiths does many things in this book. He brings us up to date on the evidence of Indigenous occupation of Australia – 65,000 years, as revealed by Madjedbebe in Arnhem Land – and what it reveals about changes and developments during those 65,000 years. He explores the political and environmental implications of archaeological discoveries through case studies, none more gripping than the story of Kutikina Cave and the Franklin River Campaign. Although we know the outcome of the campaign, it is salutary to be reminded how close the dam came to proceeding, flooding not only the Tasmanian wilderness, but a unique Indigenous legacy. In a region considered too inaccessible for human settlement, Kutikina Cave provided evidence of Ice Age occupation in a treeless tundra landscape, unintentionally contradicting the environmental claims for the antiquity of the south-west forests. Kutikina also came to encapsulate the tensions between scientists and the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, which demanded control of its heritage. The emerging agency of contemporary Indigenous people, and the ways in which this has transformed the profession, provides a counterpoint world view to that of the archaeological community.

Archaeology is a profession with as many women as men in the field, and Griffiths dedicates several chapters to ‘that intrepid yet often shadowy, even invisible band of women archaeologists’. The author of those words, Isabel McBryde, was the second professionally trained archaeologist to work in Australia, the first being John Mulvaney. While the latter excavated stratified sites that pushed back the dates of human occupation, overturning the assumption that Australia was the last continent to be colonised, McBryde developed a field practice that was spatial as well as stratigraphic, mapping sites across the New England landscape and developing relationships with the Indigenous people of the region. She emerges as a seminal figure in embedding archaeological material in the physical and social environments that produced it. Her process uncovered the network of trade routes that configure the landscape as a web of social and ceremonial connections. McBryde and other early women in the field established methodologies that were the precursors of contemporary fieldwork models, inclusive of Indigenous people, making room for beliefs antithetical to scientific priorities.

Billy Griffiths is not a revisionist historian. Although he brings the nuances of post-colonial interrogation to the project, he honours the unflagging commitment of Mulvaney, the ‘father of Australian archaeology’, and the chutzpah and enthusiasm of the charismatic, brilliant, and controversial Rhys Jones, nicknamed ‘Wombat’ because he was short, stout, and liked to dig. There is a hilariously graphic description of the bearded, unwashed, all-male team, led by Jones, descending on the northern coast of Tasmania in 1964 and being pulled over by the local police, who suspected them of having stolen the expedition’s Land Rover.

Lake Mungo retains its central status as the site that brought Australian prehistory to national and international notice, and Jim Bowler’s attempt to find a language to express his conviction that Mungo Man represents a bridge between the past and the present frames the unstable conundrum between scientific and Aboriginal world views. The methodical and rigorous scientific practices that have extended Australian deep history from 5,000 years to 65,000 years, challenging the accepted timeline of human migrations out of Africa, are counterbalanced by the Indigenous perspective that human remains should be treated as individual ancestors and that Aboriginal people have always been here.

As the physical process of archaeology becomes less invasive, the cultural terrain becomes more volatile. Indigenous agency has drawn up the rules of engagement. To excavate human remains is no longer a given – it is just as likely to shut down a site permanently. Western science has its place, having established evidence of human presence in Australia many thousands of years earlier than in Europe and the Americas, and discovered technologies that rewrite the story of cultural evolution. But long-inhabited sites contain the spiritual presence of ancestors. They remain charged with meaning, inhabited by restless ghosts. Whether those ghosts are 10,000 or 60,000 years old is immaterial to the modern custodians of the sites.

The observations of Anbarra man Frank Gurrmanamana, paraphrased by Jones, on visiting Canberra in 1974, provide a telling glimpse into the fault line between our different perceptions of order and meaning.

Here was a land empty of religious affiliations; there were no wells, no names of the totemic ancestors, no immutable links between land, people and the rest of the natural and supernatural worlds. Here was just a vast tabula rasa, cauterised of meaning … Viewed from this perspective, the Canberra of the geometric streets, and the paddocks of six-wire fences were places not of domesticated order, but rather a wilderness of primordial chaos.

‘Who owns the past?’ This question, posed by McBryde, continues to resonate through Australian Aboriginal archaeology, and Griffiths brings to the question a forensic thoroughness worthy of the archaeologists whose lives, ideas, and discoveries he excavates. Beautifully written, with a cast of compelling characters both ancient and modern, and a storyline that traces one of humanity’s great narratives, this is a book that will captivate both the general reader and the scholar.

Deep Time Dreaming brings the past alive in the present, through the passion and imagination of the people who have sought to unearth the material evidence of the past, and through the complex sensitivities of the people whose ancestors left that evidence. It is a book for our time, a deep history that allows us to imagine our way into the future.