AUSTRALIANA ABORIGINAL –

A landmark work documenting in detail the pre-history of the Australian Alps. ‘Dr Flood essays a total picture of Aboriginal communities and their use of and impact on terrain through time. ‘Pure’ archaeology is not enough. Archaeology plus the environmental sciences is not enough. Ethnohistory is not enough – for it is a view from the wrong side of the frontier. Only from an amalgam of archaeology, landscape sciences and documentary studies can a living portrait be moulded of any part of Australia and its people.’ So wrote Sylvia Hallam in the journal, Aboriginal History in 1982 in her review of The Moth Hunters. She concludes by stating the book to be ‘a most impressive and important piece of work.’ And so it has proven to be, over forty years from its first publication in 1980.

Full contents:

• Ch. 1: Archaeological background
• Ch. 2: Geographical setting
• Ch. 3: Ethnohistorical evidence
• Ch. 4: Demography
• Ch. 5: Material culture
• Ch. 6: Of moths & men
• Ch. 7: Economy
• Ch. 8: Tribal territories, relations, trade, customs, beliefs, organisation & languages
• Ch. 9: rock art & ceremonial grounds of the Southern Uplands
• Ch. 10: Settlement patterns in the Canberra region
• Ch. 11: Settlement patterns in the Alps
• Ch. 12: Artifact types in the Southern Uplands
• Ch. 13: Stone assemblages of open campsites
• Ch. 14: The recent period: nine excavated rock-shelters of the Small Tool Tradition
• Ch. 15: Southern approaches: environmental & cultural evidence from the Pleistocene deposit of Cloggs Cave
• Ch. 16: Prehistory of the Southern Uplands.

Notes:

• Originally published in 1980 by Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
• Published as part of the Untapped project.
• Includes bibliographical references.

• vii, 467 pages : illustrations, maps ; 21 cm. #260325