Australian Aboriginal artifacts

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An emu caller. Emu caller.jpg
An emu caller.

Australian Aboriginal artifacts consist the boomerangs, spears, shields, dillybags and other things Aboriginals had to carry around. Broadly aboriginal artifacts can be categorised as weapons, every day items and ritual or secret sacred objects. Many artifacts were devised to address the harsh living conditions in the Australian environment.

Boomerang thrown weapon

A boomerang is a thrown tool, typically constructed as a flat airfoil, that is designed to spin about an axis perpendicular to the direction of its flight. A returning boomerang is designed to return to the thrower. It is well known as a weapon used by Indigenous Australians for hunting.

A hielaman or hielamon is an Australian Aboriginal shield. Traditionally such a shield was made from bark or wood, but in some parts of Australia such as Queensland a hielaman is any shield.

Dillybag

A dillybag or dilly bag is a traditional Australian Aboriginal bag, generally woven from the fibres of plant species of the Pandanus genus.. It is used for a variety of food transportation and preparation purposes.

Contents

Many aboriginal artifacts were multi purpose for example boomerangs could be used for:

Weapons

The main forms of Aboriginal weapons include shields, spears, spear throwers, boomerangs and clubs. Aboriginal people from different regions used different weapons. [5] Some tribes for example would fight with boomerangs and shields where in another region they would fight with clubs.

Shield item of armour carried to intercept attacks or projectiles

A shield is a piece of personal armour held in the hand, which may or may not be strapped to the wrist or forearm. Shields are used to intercept specific attacks, whether from close-ranged weaponry or projectiles such as arrows, by means of active blocks, as well as to provide passive protection by closing one or more lines of engagement during combat.

Spear-thrower tool to give more leverage when throwing a dart-like projectile

A spear-thrower, spear-throwing lever or atlatl is a tool that uses leverage to achieve greater velocity in dart-throwing, and includes a bearing surface which allows the user to store energy during the throw.

These weapons were of different styles in different areas. For example, a shield from Central Australia is very different from a shield from North Queensland. [6]

Every day items

Every Day items include digging sticks, stone axes, coolamon and dilly bags. These items were mainly used in food gathering but were sometimes also used on ceremonial occasions.

Sacred Items

Sometimes the challenge overwhelmed both the people and their tools, so they needed an input from supernatural sources. Art was the mediator of these forces, not l'art pour l'art, i.e. art for art's sake - but practical strengthening of one's faith into oneself and the tool. Aboriginal art saturated these artifacts with sorcery and magic.[ citation needed ]

The best known of these sacred items are carved boards called Churinga Other sacred items used at ceremony include bullroarers and didgeridoo.

Bullroarer ritual musical instrument used for communicating over great distances

The bullroarer, rhombus, or turndun, is an ancient ritual musical instrument and a device historically used for communicating over great distances. It dates to the Paleolithic period, being found in Ukraine dating from 18,000 BC. Anthropologist Michael Boyd, a bullroarer expert, documents a number found in Europe, Asia, the Indian sub-continent, Africa, the Americas, and Australia.

Didgeridoo wind instrument

The didgeridoo is a wind instrument. The didgeridoo was developed by indigenous peoples of northern Australia, likely within the last 1,500 years and is now in use around the world. It is a wooden trumpet "drone pipe" classified by musicologists as a brass aerophone.

Most aboriginal art is not considered to be an artifact but often the designs in aboriginal art were the same designs that were originally on sacred artifacts. [7] [8]

Even today, Aboriginal art is mostly sold as decoration on Aboriginal artifacts such as boomerangs, pottery, dillybags; on Aboriginal musical instruments: didgeridoos, emu callers, bullroarers and clapsticks.

See also

Related Research Articles

Indigenous Australian art art made by the indigenous peoples of Australia

Indigenous Australian art or Australian Aboriginal art is art made by the Indigenous peoples of Australia and in collaborations between Indigenous Australians and others. It includes works in a wide range of media including painting on leaves, wood carving, rock carving, sculpting, ceremonial clothing and sand painting. This article discusses works that pre-date European colonisation as well as contemporary Indigenous Australian art by Aboriginal Australians. These have been studied in recent years and have gained much international recognition.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye was an indigenous Australian artist from the Utopia community in the Northern Territory. She is one of the most prominent and successful artists in the history of contemporary indigenous Australian art.

Dorothy Napangardi was a Warlpiri speaking contemporary Indigenous Australian artist born in the Tanami Desert and who worked in Alice Springs.

Scarred tree

Scarred trees are trees which have had bark removed by indigenous Australians for the creation of bark canoes, shelters, shields and containers, such as coolamons. They are among the easiest-to-find archaeological sites in Australia.

Yirrkala is an indigenous community in East Arnhem Shire, Northern Territory of Australia. It is 18 km South-East from the large mining town of Nhulunbuy in Arnhem Land. In the 2016 census, Yirrkala had a population of 809 people.

Throwing stick throwing weapon

The throwing stick or throwing club is a wooden rod with either a pointed tip or a spearhead attached to one end, intended for use as a weapon. A throwing stick can be either straight or roughly boomerang-shaped, and is much shorter than the javelin. It became obsolete as slings and bows became more prevalent, except on the Australian continent, where the native people continued refining the basic design. Throwing sticks shaped like returning boomerangs are designed to fly straight to a target at long ranges, their surfaces acting as airfoils. When tuned correctly they do not exhibit curved flight, but rather they fly on an extended straight flight path. Straight flight ranges greater than 100 meters have been reported by historical sources as well as in recent research.

Papunya Tula, or Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, is an artist cooperative formed in 1972 that is owned and operated by Aboriginal people from the Western Desert of Australia. The group is known for its innovative work with the Western Desert Art Movement, popularly referred to as "dot painting". Credited with bringing Aboriginal art to world attention, its artists inspired many other Australian Aboriginal artists and styles. The company operates today out of Alice Springs and is widely regarded as the premier purveyor of Aboriginal art in Central Australia.

Australiana

Australiana includes the items, people, places, flora, fauna and events of Australian origins. Anything pertaining to Australian culture, society, geography and ecology can fall under the term Australiana, especially if it is endemic to Australia. Australiana often borrows from Australian Aboriginal culture, or the stereotypical Australian culture of the early 1900s.

Woomera (spear-thrower) Australian Aboriginal spear-throwing device

A woomera is a wooden Australian Aboriginal spear-throwing device. Similar to an atlatl, it serves as an extension of the human arm, enabling a spear to travel at a greater speed and force than possible with only the arm.

Aboriginal sites of New South Wales

Aboriginal sites of New South Wales consist of a large number of places in the Australian state of New South Wales where it is still possible to see visible signs of the activities and culture of the Australian Aboriginals who previously occupied these areas.

Nancy Kunoth Petyarre was an Australian Aboriginal artist who lived in Utopia, 170 miles north east of Alice Springs. The second eldest of the famous and prolific 'seven famous Petyarre sisters' of Utopia, she was not herself a prolific artist.

Valerie Lynch Napaltjarri is an Indigenous Australian artist from Papunya in Australia's Northern Territory. She is a painter and printmaker whose work has been collected by the National Gallery of Australia.

Ngoia Pollard Napaltjarri is a Walpiri-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. Ngoia Pollard married Jack Tjampitjinpa, who became an artist working with the Papunya Tula company, and they had five children.

Molly Jugadai Napaltjarri was a Pintupi- and Luritja-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. Her paintings are held in major collections including the National Gallery of Australia.

Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. Born near Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory, Turkey Tolson was a major figure in the Papunya Tula art movement, and the longest-serving chairman of the company formed to represent its artists.

Kimberley points are a type of Aboriginal stone tool made by pressure flaking both discarded glass and stone. Best known for the points made on glass, these artifacts are an example of adaptive reuse of Western technology by a non-western culture.

Josepha Petrick Kemarre is an Anmatyerre-speaking Indigenous Australian artist from Central Australia. Since first taking up painting around 1990, her works of contemporary Indigenous Australian art have been acquired by several major collections including Artbank and the National Gallery of Victoria. Her paintings portray bush plum "dreaming" and women’s ceremonies. One of her paintings sold at a charity auction for A$22,800. Josepha Petrick's works are strongly coloured and formalist in composition and regularly appear at commercial art auctions in Australia. Her art appears to have survived the huge contraction of the primary art market in Australia since 2008. There is no existing Catalogue raisonné of Josepha Petrick's artworks, to date, no fakes have been cited.

Margaret Scobie is an Australian Aboriginal artist from the Anmatyerre community, just north of Alice Springs.

Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayyi, c. 1920 - 1987 is a Pintupi man born at Walukuritji, south of Lake Macdonald, and is best known as an artist, and important member with Papunya Tula Artists.

References

  1. ↑ "Aboriginal Weapons". www.mbantua.com.au. Retrieved 1 April 2018.
  2. ↑ "Hunting Boomerang: a Weapon of Choice - Australian Museum". australianmuseum.net.au. Retrieved 1 April 2018.
  3. ↑ "Aboriginal Weapons". www.mbantua.com.au. Retrieved 1 April 2018.
  4. ↑ "Aboriginal Weapons and Tools". austhrutime.com. Retrieved 1 April 2018.
  5. ↑ Aboriginal Australia. Cooper, Carol., National Gallery of Victoria., Australian Gallery Directors' Council. Sydney: Australian Gallery Directors Council. 1981. ISBN   0642896895. OCLC   8487510.CS1 maint: others (link)
  6. ↑ "aboriginal weapons | Aborigines weapons | sell aboriginal weapons". Aboriginal Bark Paintings. 29 August 2017. Retrieved 25 July 2019.
  7. ↑ Bardon, Geoff, 1940- (2004). Papunya : a place made after the story : the beginnings of the Western Desert painting movement. Bardon, James. Carlton, Vic.: Miegunyah Press. ISBN   052285110X. OCLC   59098931.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. ↑ "Aboriginal Dot Art | sell Aboriginal Dot Art | meaning dots in Aboriginal Art". Aboriginal Bark Paintings. 28 November 2018. Retrieved 25 July 2019.
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