Australian Aborigines

1
Australian Aborigines

• Continuous survival 45-60,000 years
• Cultural ecology ? maintain carrying capacity
• Ritual technology
• Diversity
• ecological
• ethnic
• linguistic
• Material life
• Tools and knowledge
• Active management of resources
• Social organization - bands
• Mobile
• flexible
• Trading and kinship networks

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Hunting and gathering ecology

• Hunting-and-gathering
• a form of subsistence involving the harvest of
  wild plant and animal resources
• Also referred to as foraging thought to be the
  subsistence strategy in use for 99 of human
  history.
• Key to survival extensive knowledge of the
  environment and flexibility

3
Significant markers

• Typically live in small groups of closely related
  families
• ii. Population densities of 0.01-1.00 per square
  mile dependent on quality and availability of
  resources
• iii. Mostly nomadic (depends on resource
  availability) but each group controls a
  territory, the boundaries of which are recognized
  by other groups (differ in degree to control over
  this territory is exclusive)

4
Gendered division of labor

• Misconception of Man the Hunter and Woman the
  gatherer.
• The varied roles of men, women and children.

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Aborigines Ritual Technology

• The Dreaming stories, The Law
• Explanation of origins of landscape and beings
• Charter orients people to land and other groups
• Sacred/secret knowledge
• Totems ancestral and conception
• Performances
• Story-telling
• Rituals and ritual objects
• Songlines mental map
• Art painting, dance

7
Aborigines and Conflict

• Conflict reducing customs
• Use rights to resources
• Overlapping claims to land range
  (gathering/hunting) vs. estate (sacred territory)
• Band exogamy
• Concepts of moeity (groups divided in ½) ?
  complementary opposition
• Conflict at individual level

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Egalitarian society?

• Hunter-gatherers socially stratified and
  hierarchical. Examples of the Kwakiutl)
• 2. Effective management of access to resources
• 3. Reciprocity the systematic sharing and
  redistribution of resources incredibly important
  (even in more stratified communities) central to
  survival insures steady food supply