Dating the Dreaming? Creation of Myths and Rituals for Mounds along the Northern Australian Coastline

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6044653
AutoresPeter Hiscock (0000-0002-8893-4742, Australian National University, autor correspondente), Patrick Faulkner (0000-0002-1876-6915, Australian National University)
Ano2006
Volume16
Fascículo2
Páginas209-222
Data de publicação2006-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCambridge Archaeological Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0959-7743 • E-ISSN: 1474-0540
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0959774306000126
OpenAlexW2064960111
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas20

Shell mounds ceased to be built in many parts of coastal northern Australia about 800–600 years ago. They are the subject of stories told by Aboriginal people and some have been incorporated in ritual and political activities during the last 150 years. These understandings emerged only after termination of the economic and environmental system that created them, 800–600 years ago, in a number of widely separated coastal regions. Modern stories and treatments of these mounds by Aboriginal people concern modern or near-modern practices. Modern views of the mounds, their mythological and ritual associations, may be explained by reference to the socioeconomic transitions seen in the archaeological record; but the recent cultural, social and symbolic statements about these places cannot inform us of the process or ideology concerned with the formation of the mounds. Many Aboriginal communities over the last half a millennium actively formed understandings of new landscapes and systems of land use. Attempts to impose historic ideologies and cosmologies on earlier times fail to acknowledge the magnitude and rate of economic and ideological change on the tropical coastline of Australia

Archaeology · Ethnology · Geography · Ideology · Mythology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Classics · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · History · Law · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies