Yes but I enjoy the crunching sound as he keeps driving into the stone wall.

SR
Would you be interested in evidence for Indonesian influence of language and culture in southern Aust. ?

Hi Steele,

'Every hoe' ? So those nine miles of kangaroo grass were cultivated by hand-hoeing ? At twenty acres a year as a sort of limit to hand-hoeing (and disregarding that the bloody stuff is everywhere, and its seeds of little nutritional value), that might need a work-force of many hundreds of Aboriginal hoers flat-out, year-round. Meanwhile the women keep gathering kangaroo grass seed (did they actually gather kangaroo grass seed ? It's pretty useless) outside the 'cultivated areas', laughing at the dumb-arses trying to grow it ? As hunter-gatherers always did historically, preferring daily returns rather than spending months cultivating, preparing, seeding, tending, fencing, harvesting ?

And I suppose there were kangaroo grass ceremonies in areas where it was scarce ? Even though kangaroo grass had little value, and was everywhere, were there groups with kangaroo grass as one of their totems ? Did other groups have to ask permission to harvest kangaroo grass ? Were (are) there harvesting dances ? Legends about cultivating and harvesting kangaroo grass ? Growing techniques passed down from generation to generation ?

So all you've got is an L-shaped stick ? Like a throwing stick ? or a boomerang ? Wow. So conclusive. So definitive.

So why are you so concerned to deny that Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers ? For which there is actually some evidence ? In journals, in countless anthropologists' and missionaries' reports and in countless Museums ? Millions of artefacts all around the world ?

How's that stone wall looking ? Getting a bit closer ? No ? God, the power of Narrative.

Joe

spear : for hunting
hoe: for hoeing
coolamon : for gathering
3 skills, 3 time periods : hunting, hoeing, gathering.
In spare time and on holidays : eating.

Dear Loudmouth,

Why is this fixation on kangaroo grass. I didn't say the hoes were for cultivating this species but they were certainly used in Aboriginal agriculture.

You say the lack of fences prove no fields were cultivated but these were societies with strict tribal lands, where access was only granted through invitation.

You are viewing all this through european eyes and allied with an almost pathological desire not to give an inch on anything that deviates from the 'primitive' label attached to Aboriginal Australians.

My early education told me that Aboriginals were entirely nomadic, prone to walkabout at the drop of a hat and who were strictly hunter gatherers.

But early explorers do talk about permanent habitations, of buildings capable of containing 40 or 50 people inside, of settled villages, of grain harvesting and storage, of strict tribal boundaries and of the wonderful, healthy and abundant lifestyles of Aboriginal Australians. The more I learn the more I realise how extensive the effort to delegitimise any sense of land ownership through this portrayal.

You are determined to shore up the edifice despite the evidence that it is rubbish.

As an aside what tool was employed to harvest kangaroo grass into miles and miles of hay rickets?

Good try, Steele: no, I've never written that " .... the lack of fences prove no fields were cultivated". But now that you bring it up, I suppose I would have been thinking about fences to keep hungry animals out of valuable, precious, hard-won crop-land.

My understanding is that Mitchell was supposed to have observed a field of kangaroo grass looking like it was 'stooped', or stooked, i.e. cut and stacked, prior (one presumes) to winnowing. Hence my constant reference to kangaroo grass.

I suppose, as a sort of residual Marxist, I'm aware that Marx and Engels would easily make the jump in status from cultivated (worked, guarded, hard-won) land to private property. From memory, that was, in their view, the primary feature of how and why land became privately owned. So a community evolved into a complex network of individual farmers, working their own individual patch of land. Of course, if an entire clan worked the land, it still belonged to the entire clan, as in much of Africa today.

So, are there any clans across Australia with stories - since stories are so important these days - about how their ancestors were cultivators, diggers, who worked the land and did correspondingly less hunting and gathering. [I should point out that, even in advanced farming societies, people still did a bit of hunting, fishing, gathering, wild harvesting, etc.]. The two modes of production are not mutually exclusive: in some hunting and gathering societies, such as in Brazil or S-E Asia, people might still carve out a bit of scrub for a patch of cropping, for a time, then move on. Pity there's no evidence of that here, though :(

You seem to have a lot more respect for early explorers than I do, Steele. I'd prefer to take the accounts of long-term observers such as anthropologists and missionaries, people who knew what to look for and did it over years, not fly-by.

Oh, you have some ? Stories ? Anthropological accounts ? Missionaries' journals ? Evidence piled up in museums ?

Joe