for such an analysis, and there have also been other detailed studies of some kinds of artifacts. Michael Pearson has contributed thorough research on a number of areas, including ships’ tanks (Pearson 1992) and whaling tools (Pearson 1983). Robert Varman (1979, 1980) has undertaken to work on building materials while Marjorie Graham (1979) has produced several general overviews of Australian pottery. James Boow’s (1992) work on the Australian glass industry is an excellent resource, and Mark Staniforth and Mike Nash (1998) have published an exhaustive study of Chinese export porcelain from the 1791 wreck of the Sydney Cove.

The first, and so far only, broad synthesis of research in Australian historical archaeology appeared in 1988. The Archaeology of Australia’s History (Connah 1988) provides a comprehensive guide to the scope and nature of work done up to that time. The establishment of a regular journal in 1983 provided scholars with a forum in which to present their work and stimulated the beginnings of theoretical awareness in the field. One reason for the slow development of this area of research was the narrow academic base (until 1987 historical archaeology was taught regularly at only two universities) and the recent establishment of teaching programs. However, during the 1980s, the maturation of the first generation of students trained in historical archaeology was the occasion for more-thoughtful reflection on the nature of the discipline, its achievements to date, and its aims and potential. The discussion was inaugurated in the first volume of the Australian Journal of Historical Archaeology and rapidly came to focus on questions at the heart of historical archaeology’s place in the humanities as scholars sought to determine which of history, anthropology, and archaeology was the most appropriate source of methodological and theoretical approaches.

Graham Connah (1983) and Vincent Megaw (1984) pointed to the need for greater problem orientation in research if the field were to contribute to the understanding of the human past, but they stopped short of advocating specific kinds of problems. In 1983, Birmingham and Denis Jeans (1983) took problem orientation one step further by proposing a model that attempted to explain various aspects of the archaeology of Australian colonization within the same integrative framework. Damaris Bairstow (1984a, 1984b) accepted the need to contribute to a greater understanding of the human past but rejected the hypothetico-deductive methods of “the new archaeology” that had so far been proposed and instead argued for inductive reasoning based on the particularities of individual sites and circumstances—a more “historical” approach. Tim Murray (1985) and Murray and Allen (1986) in turn responded by asserting the embeddedness of historical archaeological theory within archaeological theory building as a whole and the need to look to theoretical developments in anthropology, sociology, and history.

The 1980s also saw the entrenchment of cultural heritage management (CHM) as the major impetus behind work on historical sites. In addition to providing employment for historical archaeologists, this type of management also stimulated the growth of new areas of research. In particular, it shifted attention from the bush, where rural sites and industries were accessible to academic researchers with limited budgets, to the cities, where rapid urban development exposed a plethora of sites that required mitigation work. Rescue work was most established in Sydney, although such work also took place in the other capital cities.

Foremost among the early Sydney sites was that of First Government House, ruins of which were uncovered during development work in 1983 (Proudfoot, Bickford, et al. 1991). Another important venue was the harborside neighborhood of the Rocks, home to the convict settlers of the First Fleet. The Rocks grew into a vibrant inner-city working-class area before being condemned as a slum at the turn of the twentieth century. Flagged for redevelopment in the 1970s, a coalition of community groups was instrumental in preserving the area as a distinct heritage precinct, one in which numerous archaeological studies have subsequently been carried out (Gojak 1995; Gojak and Iacono 1993; Lydon 1993).

Urban archaeology became an important forum for theoretical and methodological development (Bairstow 1991; Birmingham 1990). Grace