‘Casey did very good work for Wheeler and you are lucky to have him’: Dermot Casey’s under-appreciated importance in Australian archaeology
Matthew Spriggs
A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A School of Archaeology and Anthropology, College of Arts and Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Acton, Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia. Email: matthew.spriggs@anu.edu.au
This article is part of a forthcoming virtual issue to be titled ‘Histories of archaeology in Australasia and the Pacific’, an initiative of the ARC Laureate Fellowship project ‘The collective biography of archaeology in the Pacific: a hidden history’, based at the Australian National University under the direction of Matthew Spriggs.
Historical Records of Australian Science 32(1) 1-14 https://doi.org/10.1071/HR20009
Published: 4 August 2020
Abstract
Dermot Casey (1897–1977) is known in Australian archaeology, if he is remembered at all, for being someone who assisted the premier prehistorian of Australia, John Mulvaney, in his excavations of the late 1950s and 1960s and whose collaboration Mulvaney greatly valued. But when Casey began his collaboration with Mulvaney he was already 58 years old and had had a continuing and significant archaeological career, involving work in England and South Asia with Mortimer Wheeler, as well as in Australia. He had been a key figure both before and after World War 2 in the development of Australian archaeology. His role is virtually unknown, however, not least because he was a man of independent means who did not need to work for a living. His selflessness was partly because that privilege gave him a keen sense of service to society, seen in both world wars and in his archaeological practice.
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