Before the Field: Colonial Anthropology Reassessed Helen Gardner and Robert Kenny Deakin University ABSTRACT The introduction to this special issue argues for a reappraisal of colonial anthropology in the broader historiography of British anthropology. It challenges the continuation of the centre–periphery model that has positioned colonial ethnographers and their Indigenous authorities as awkward, peripheral figures in the history of the discipline, and posits that, while the evolutionist tomes of the 19th century are now of purely historical value, the colonial texts, permeated as they are with Indigenous presence, remain relevant for Aboriginal people and current anthropology. In particular the introduction sug- gests that the impetus for British scholars to set out for ‘the field’, subsequently defined as the proper site of anthropological endeavour, came from the challenges to evolutionism by colonial ethnogra- phers and Indigenous authorities working in situ and in close contact. Keywords: colonial, anthropology, historiography, Metropolitan, Indigenous presence. This special issue was born from a two day seminar at Deakin University in 2013 titled ‘Before the Field’. It brought together a number of historians working in Australia on colo- nial anthropology prior to the Federation of the Australian colonies in 1901 and, in most instances, prior to the foundation of anthropology as a university based discipline. Therefore our research was based before ‘field-work’ and the affiliated journeying of the specialised researcher to ‘the field’ became the principal form of anthropological endeavour. Through this periodisation and lens we sought to understand both the specificity of colonial ethnogra- phy and its place in the historiography of British anthropology. We examined the traffic in queries, evidence and ideas between Britain and its colonies and the problems of the centre- periphery model of science that had been applied to these histories, rendering Britain the dominant partner and the peripheral colonies therefore subservient to the parent state, the metropole – an issue first identified in relation to Australian anthropology by Howard Mor- phy (1998: 26–27). We heard how theories from Britain were tested, ignored, expanded on, or found wanting in the colonies, and how field practices developed in colonial sites were largely ignored in the metropole. We explored how claims of authenticity and authority from colonial practitioners, based on their experience of Aboriginal people in various condi- tions of contact with explorers, settlers, missionaries and government agents, were sent as challenges to both British theorists and colonial competitors. Finally, we historicised the very notion of ‘the field’ in the history of British anthropology and explored the power rela- tions of site and centre in British theorising. Throughout the seminar, paper after paper claimed colonial anthropology challenged and disrupted British theories of Indigenous This special issue is dedicated to the memory of John Mulvaney, a remarkable and pioneering scholar in the history of anthropology in Australia whose work has inspired each of the following contributors. © 2016 Oceania Publications Oceania, Vol. 86, Issue 3 (2016): 218–224 DOI:10.1002/ocea.5139