This open access collection explores the many ways in which Indigenous and descent communities in Africa, Australia, and the Pacific form connections with the deep past by engaging with their material heritage.

Featuring nine chapters and six responses by leading and emerging international archaeologists, historians, museum researchers, and museum practitioners, all of which are designed or co-designed in collaboration with Indigenous activists and knowledge holders, the book makes space for different concepts of time and history, as well as for diverse ways of talking about and using the past in the present. Together, these reflections speak to how the actions and legacies of collectors and researchers have affected and continue to affect Indigenous relationships with the deep past,. Ultimately, it points to how such work can better shape opportunities for people today to engage with the material traces of their ancestors.

For its timely interventions into the key concerns in museums and heritage theory and practice, this is a go-to resources for researchers, postgraduates, and practitioners interested in Indigenous studies, heritage studies, and postcolonial studies.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Australian National University.

Mike Jones is Postdoctoral Fellow in Indigenous and Colonial Histories at the University of Tasmania, Australia. He is an archivist and historian interested in improved methods for making historical materials accessible to communities and institutions in support of cultural renewal. He is the author of Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum (2022).

Paul Lane is Partner at the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre and Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer Professor of the Deep History and Archaeology of Africa at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is an archaeologist of Africa with research interests in heritage, the politics of the past and the applied value of archaeological knowledge for planning more sustainable and resilient futures on the African continent. He is co-editor with Peter Mitchell of The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology (2013).

Ben Silverstein is Lecturer in Indigenous Studies at the Australian National University, Australia, on Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country. He researches colonial and Indigenous histories. He is the author of Governing Natives: Indirect Rule and Settler Colonialism in Australia's North (2019) and is a co-editor of the journal Aboriginal History.