Prehistory To Politics

John Mulvaney, The Humanities and the Public Intellectual

By: Tim Bonyhady, Tom Griffiths

Write A Review

Paperback | 8 August 2025 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
300 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.23 x 14.61 x 2.54

Paperback

$49.49

or 4 interest-free payments of $12.37 with

Ships in 5 to 7 business days

Explores the role of the public intellectual by examining the life and work of John Mulvaney, one of Australia's foremost prehistorians.

Who are public intellectuals? Why do they matter? What is the difference between an academic and an intellectual?

Prehistory to Politics explores these issues by examining the life and work of John Mulvaney, one of Australia's foremost prehistorians, who has both changed our understanding of the past and made a major contribution to public debate and public policy about world heritage, archaeological and conservation practice, the function and operation of museums and the relevance of the humanities.

A major campaigner for preservation of the Franklin River in the early 1980s, Mulvaney has also been an influential member of the Australian Heritage Commission and one of the most important advocates of the National Museum of Australia. He played a significant role in the campaign to preserve the site of First Government House in Sydney. Perhaps most controversially, he has been outspoken in his views about the return of skeletal remains by Australian Museums to Aboriginal people.

In exploring these many facets of Mulvaney's work, Prehistory to Politics not only has much to say about the changing nature of Australian universities and the opportunities and obligations of academics but also casts new light on a wide set of archaeological, anthropological and environmental issues. It is both a history of ideas and a book about their implementation.

Shipping

	Standard Shipping	Express Shipping
Metro postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Regional postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Rural postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95

Orders over $79.00 qualify for free shipping.

How to return your order

At Booktopia, we offer hassle-free returns in accordance with our returns policy. If you wish to return an item, please get in touch with Booktopia Customer Care.

Additional postage charges may be applicable.

Defective items

If there is a problem with any of the items received for your order then the Booktopia Customer Care team is ready to assist you.

For more info please visit our Help Centre.

Acknowledgements
Contributors
The Making of a Public Intellectual	p. 1
John Mulvaney's Universities	p. 20
In Search of Australian Antiquity	p. 42
Past and Present Indivisible? Archaeology and Society, Archaeology in Society	p. 63
The History in Things and Places	p. 85
Making History: Imagining Aborigines and Australia	p. 98
Encounters in Places	p. 117
A Fireside Chat	p. 134
The Stuff of Heritage	p. 144
Empiricism to Metaphysics: In Defence of the Concept of the Dreamtime	p. 163
Rupture and the Ethics of Care in Colonized Space	p. 190
Professions of Power	p. 216
Notes	p. 241
Index	p. 266
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Prehistory To Politics

John Mulvaney, The Humanities and the Public Intellectual

At a Glance

Paperback

Explores the role of the public intellectual by examining the life and work of John Mulvaney, one of Australia's foremost prehistorians.

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

More in Science in General

Liars, cheats and copycats

Trickery and deception in nature

Alchemy

An Illustrated History of Elixirs, Experiments, and the Birth of Modern Science

Death by Comfort

How modern life is killing us and what we can do about it

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

The First Astronomers

How Indigenous Elders read the stars

The Knowledge Gene

The incredible story of the supergene that gives us human creativity

Excel Year 9 Science Revision Workbook Year 9

Excel Essential Skills Ser.

The Burning Earth

An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years

How Emotions Are Made

The Secret Life of the Brain

A Little History of the Earth

Little Histories

Dingo

The true story of Australia's most maligned native animal

The Body A-Z

A fun, fascinating and family-friendly manual for the most important thing you own

A Periodic Tale: the bestselling life-long story of Australia's favourite science champion Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, shortlisted for the ABIA Biography of the Year 2025

My Sciencey Memoir

The New Age of Sexism

How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny

How To Change Your Mind

New Science of Psychedelics

Lifespan

Why We Age - and Why We Don't Have To

A Field Guide to Reptiles of Queensland

Third edition

100 Australian Birds

(Be)wilder

Journeys in Nature

God, the Science, the Evidence

The Best Australian Science Writing 2025

The Best Australian Science

Finding the Mother Tree

Uncovering the Wisdom and Intelligence of the Forest

Super Body

A 3-Week Program to Harness the New Science of Body Composition and Restore Your Youthful Contours

Immune

The bestselling book from YouTube's KURZGESAGT IN A NUTSHELL

This product is categorised by