Many historians are currently experimenting with inter-disciplinary frameworks that place conventional chronologies within deeper, more cohesive narratives of the human species, the earth, and the universe. This has had a unique impact in Australia, a settler-colony with an extensive human antiquity and vibrant fields of environmental and Indigenous scholarship. Most historians argue that this antiquity was not ‘discovered’ or broadly understood until the radiocarbon-infused boom in archaeology of the 1950s and 1960s. And yet, a scientific consensus on human ancientness was reached in Europe as early as 1859, a development which made its way keenly through the web of colonial science to Australia.

So what happened to the notion of antiquity in the century between this consensus and the radiocarbon revolution? This paper is part of a broader study that seeks to trace a deeper history of Australian antiquity and challenge the idea of its recency. Where did interest in Australian antiquity begin? How was it discussed, negotiated and mobilised? In what ways did these concepts of antiquity shape discourses surrounding Indigenous Australians? And, most importantly, how can this study inform a contemporary context so actively engaged with the deep past?