An Introduction to
Aboriginal Art and Culture
Rock Art in Arnhemland
Click on image for more & enlargements
Australian Aborigines—the original inhabitants of the continent—are
one of the best known and least understood people in the world. Since
the nineteenth century they have been singled out as the world's most
primitive culture and the living representatives of the ancestors of
mankind. Aborigines are therefore probably more familiar to the rest
of the world than are the white Australians who immigrated to the
continent from Britain and other European countries. In reality,
Aboriginal culture, as anthropological work over the last hundred years
has revealed, is a complex, subtle, and rich way of life. On our way
toward describing and understanding Aboriginal art, we need to look
briefly at this culture, what it was in the past and what it has become
today.
Aborigines have occupied Australia for at least forty thousand years.
They came originally from southeast Asia, entering the continent from
the north. (Present-day Australia, including Tasmania, was then one
continent with what is now New Guinea.) Although Aborigines are Homo
sapiens, biological isolation has meant that they are not racially closely
related to any other people. Because of their relative cultural isolation,
Aborigines were forced to develop their own solutions to the problems of
human adaptation in the unique and harsh Australian environment. The
result was a stable and efficient way of life. Probably because of its
effectiveness, the society was slow to change, especially technologically.
This gave to Aboriginal Australia the appearance of unchangingness.
Thearchaeological record reveals, however, a number of innovations, among
them the earliest known human cremations, some of the earliest rock art,
and certainly the first boomerangs, ground axes, and grindstones in the
world. The stereotype of Aborigines passively succumbing to the dictates of
their environment has also been recently questioned. We now know that
they altered the landscape in significant ways, using what has been
called "firestick farming" to control underbrush growth and to
facilitate hunting. Aborigines also altered species occurrence of
flora and fauna by resource management and possibly assisted in the
extinction of prehistoric animals.
The notion of pristine natives with a "pure" culture was an artificial
one: many Aborigines had considerable contact with Melanesians and
Indonesians long before the European colonists arrived in Australia.
Aboriginal groups also influenced each other. Waves of change swept
the entire continent—changes in tools and implements, in social
organisation, and in ceremonial practices and mythological concepts.
Aboriginal culture was dynamic, not static. The Aboriginal culture of
the last two hundred years, the period after the arrival of the
colonists, has also been dynamic. This is why it is difficult to speak
of a hard and fast dichotomy between Aborigines "before" and "after"
contact with the Europeans. Nevertheless, it is useful to look at
Aboriginal culture at the point of first contact and as it is today.
Aboriginal Society at the Instant of Contact.
The population of Australia at the time of the arrival of the whites
in 1788 was probably between 250,000 and 500,000. The pattern of
Aboriginal settlement was like that for present-day Australians,
except in the tropical north, with most of the population living
along the coasts and rivers. Densities varied from one person for
every thirty-five square miles in the arid regions to five to ten
persons for every one square mile on the eastern coast. Residential
groups ranged in size from ten to fifty people, with some temporary
ceremonial gatherings reaching up to five hundred.
Most people tend to think of Aborigines as a unified, homogeneous
group. Yet the Aborigines never used one collective term to describe
themselves. No one individual Aborigine, in the precolonial past,
would have known of the existence of many of the other Aboriginal
peoples and regions of the vast continent of Australia, which covers
nearly three million square miles—almost the area of the United States.
To the Aborigines, the differences between individual groups were
important and were continually emphasised. There was no concept of
a pan-Australian identity. Even the idea of Aboriginal "tribes" is
problematic. Smaller local groups were the basic units of Aboriginal
society. These groups shared cultural traits and had economic and
ceremonial dealings with other groups, but they did not form large
confederacies for such purposes as warfare or conquest. In many regions
an individual, by virtue of birth, belonged to a clan that was closely
associated with—"owned," in a certain sense—particular areas of land.
Through other kinship ties and through marriage, an individual might
have acquired rights in several areas of land. These relationships,
along with residence and travel for economic reasons, produced a complex
pattern of land affiliation and identification with local areas. The
result was that all parts of Australia, while not always wholly occupied
at any one point in time, were claimed by Aboriginal individuals and
groups under a customary system of land-tenure law.
Scene from Central Australia
The primary structures of Aboriginal society were based on kinship.
Every known person was considered to be kin, either by blood ties or
fictively. Terms of reference for others were almost always those of
kinship—a "kind of mother," a "kind of brother," and so on. With these
relationships came rights, obligations, and appropriate ways of behaving.
This is not to say that Aborigines blindly followed timeless rules, but
rather that kinship provided a baseline from which to operate in the
society. People doubtless bent and broke rules, creating new ones over
time, as with law and custom in any society.
One cultural trait normally shared by several local groups was that
of language. Here again we encounter a Western stereotype of
Aborigines. Aboriginal people did not speak "primitive languages"
based on imitations of so-called natural sounds. Aboriginal languages
were fully developed systems of communication that allowed the
expression of concepts as sophisticated as those in any language.
Prior to I788, there were in Australia about two hundred distinct
languages, further divided into many hundreds of dialects. In some
parts of the country—the Western Desert region of Central Australia,
for example—people over an area of thousands of miles spoke virtually
the same language; in others, such as Western Cape York Peninsula,
members of a local group spoke several different languages.
Multilingualism was the norm rather than the exception throughout
Australia.
Scene from Arnhemland
Diversity in Aboriginal culture was also a product of the wide range
of physical environments that Aborigines occupied: from the snow areas
of the high country in the southeast to the beaches and rain forests
of the tropical north, from the rich lands of the major river systems
to the desert regions of the center. Adaptation to these environments
led to the development of different economic systems, involving a
variety of tools, technology, and living and work patterns.
For all Aborigines, though, life was sustained by hunting and
gathering, rather than by cultivating crops. This nomadic life
provided the Aboriginal people with a healthy diet, and in some
areas, such as coastal Arnhem Land, subsistence required the
equivalent of only three day's work a week. To varying degrees,
Australian Aboriginal economies were predicated on mobility and
a corresponding absence of concern with accumulation of goods and
property. Material culture was kept to a minimum and was simple,
ingenious, and multifunctional. Movements about the country were
not random or aimless wanderings in search of food. People undertook
regular seasonal moves over particular areas to exploit certain
resources and to participate in ceremonial gatherings with other
groups. These movements were territorially restricted by Aboriginal
law: no one person, before colonisation, could move at will across
Australia.
Dot Painting
Economic specialisation in traditional Aboriginal communities was
minimal. Most adults were able to perform any of the subsistence
tasks done by others in the group. Division of labor was primarily
based on gender: men hunted large game; women gathered small ground
reptiles and other animals as well as vegetables. In coastal and
riverine areas both men and women fished and gathered shellfish.
For technological reasons, extensive food storage was not possible,
which meant that most food, once obtained, had to be consumed
immediately. Because of this and because of the nature of Aboriginal
kinship obligations, sharing was a major and defining ethos of the
culture. To be human was to share.
Government in precontact Aboriginal Australia was not located in an
external body set up to implement rules independently or on a
representative basis. Law and order was maintained through the
infusion of religious ideology into everyday actions and through
enforcement by senior men and women, with serious infringement
sometimes resulting in death. Personal autonomy was high, however,
and it was sustained by an appropriate ideological underpinning.
Ceremonial body paint design
The attainment of religious knowledge began with initiation during
adolescence and became a lifelong quest. Both men and women had
specific religious ceremonies and held specific aspects or segments
of mythical information. Some of these ceremonies were secret and
restricted, others public.
Many of these "classical" features of precontact Aboriginal society
are still part of Aboriginal life in some areas of Australia. It is
in these areas—the Northern Territory, far northern Queensland, and
parts of Western Australia and South Australia—that we speak of
tradition-oriented Aborigines and the survival of the classical
culture. Although they have been affected by and participate in the
broader, dominating system of Australia, these Aborigines maintain
beliefs, social practices, and a worldview that are oriented more
toward an Aboriginal world and history than a European one. To
understand Aborigines in contemporary society, however, we must
consider the impact of the European colonists on Aboriginal society,
and Aboriginal responses to the colonists.
David Gupulul & wife in Arnhemland
Snake will take you Home
