Aboriginal astronomical sites, landscapes and paintings (original) (raw)
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The Aboriginal Australian Cosmic Landscape. Part 1: The Ethnobotany of the Skyworld
Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage
In Aboriginal Australia, the corpus of cosmological beliefs was united by the centrality of the Skyworld, which was considered to be the upper part of a total landscape that possessed topography linked with that of Earth and the Underworld. Early historical accounts of classical Australian hunter-gatherer beliefs described the heavens as inhabited by human and spiritual ancestors who interacted with the same species of plants and animals as they had below. This paper is the first of two that describes Indigenous perceptions of the Skyworld flora and draws out major ethnobotanical themes from the corpus of ethnoastronomical records garnered from a diverse range of Australian Aboriginal cultures. It investigates how Indigenous perceptions of the flora are interwoven with Aboriginal traditions concerning the heavens, and provides examples of how the study of ethnoastronomy can provide insights into the Indigenous use and perception of plants.
In Aboriginal Australia, the corpus of cosmological beliefs was united by the centrality of the Skyworld, which was considered to be the upper part of a total landscape that possessed topography linked with that of Earth and the Underworld. Early historical accounts of classical Australian hunter-gatherer beliefs described the heavens as inhabited by human and spiritual ancestors who interacted with the same species of plants and animals as they had below. This paper is the first of two that describes Indigenous perceptions of the Skyworld flora and draws out major ethnobotanical themes from the corpus of ethnoastronomical records garnered from a diverse range of Australian Aboriginal cultures. It investigates how Indigenous perceptions of the flora are interwoven with Aboriginal traditions concerning the heavens, and provides examples of how the study of ethnoastronomy can provide insights into the Indigenous use and perception of plants.
Harmonising the Land and Sky in Aboriginal Dreamings
The Harmony Debates, 2020
This chapter explores the ways in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples see the realms of Earth, sea and sky as aspects of a unified ‘cosmoscape’ – in which the skyworld is every bit as real as Earth, complete with rivers and forests inhabited by fish, birds, animals and ancestral beings. Certain important stars and asterisms were seen as the skyworld counterpart of terrestrial animals and their annual appearance and movement through the night sky informed people of the seasonal migrations, lifecycles, abundance and food resource availability of the animals they represented. The examples I deal with here are only a handful of the many Dreamings which harmonise the celestial cycles of the animal constellations in the sky with the lifecycles of their terrestrial counterparts and serve to demonstrate the keen-eyed observations of the natural world by the Indigenous First Australians.
CREATION MYTH -MYSTIQ IN AUSTRALIAN ABORGINAL STORIES
Australian Aboriginals, who at one time were regarded as so primitive in their outlook and culture as the earliest tales of stoneage. The large number of books describing the life, customs, arts, and skills of the Aboriginals is ample proof of this renewal of interest. The white Australians appreciate the wealth of imagination displayed in Aboriginal legend. It is part of the literature of Australia. As Eleanor Dark puts: "The Australian Aboriginal had great virutes; in a fairly extensive reading I have been able to discover no vices save those which they learned from the white invaders of their land."(9) Aboriginals are primitive, clever and imaginative people who had to fight to gain their nourishment from the mother earth. It is remarkable that in an environment of desert wastes and infertile soil, as well as in wellwatered country, the imagination of the Aboriginals produce tales that are both beautiful and amusing , and that they find human characteristics and poetry in bird and beast, in the sky above them, in sun, moon, and stars, and even in reptiles and insects. They lived close to the soil, and children of nature. They were dependent on her for sustenance, and in the teeming animal life and in the barren places alike they found evidence of the work of a Creator Spirit, and promise of Bullima, the afterlife. The legends have been gathered from many different sources. It is natural that there should be inconsistencies and contradictory elements. This is particularly in the case of Creation Myths. The animals and insects were brought to life at the touch of Yhi, the Sun Goddess, and that man, the final creation, was made in the bodily and mental from of Baiame, the Great Siprit. Other widespread legends say that all living things first took the form of men, and gradually achieved individual characteristics as animals. This is a reasonable explanation of the origin of totemism, which exercised a considerable influence on Aboriginal life. The presentation of myths and legends in a form which is acceptable to the present day must necessarily depart from the spirit of the Eternal Dreamtime in many respects. As professor A.P.Elkin remarked. Mythology is not just a matter of words and records, but of action and life, for the cult societies, the totemic lodges, do not spend their time at meeting reciting and chanting only: they also reenact myths, and do so because the heroes and ancestors were, in their belief, actual persons and totemic beings; what they did in the course of their labours, must now be done in ritual and the
A Journey into the Dreaming: exploring Aboriginal Metaphysics
This little book endeavours to explore the metaphysical nature of the Dreaming, and what it means to the Aborigines of Australia. It comes out of a journey I did with Two Bob Tjungarri backing the 90s. I visited his sacred site of Winbaraku, and together we travelled north in the footsteps of Jarapiri, the Great Snake. On the journey Two Bob revealed his Dreaming stories, and the songs associated with various sites. The book attempts to make the Dreaming Journey into an act of meditation on the part of those who make it.
On the Astronomical Knowledge and Traditions of Aboriginal Australians
Doctor of Philosophy Thesis, Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University, 2012
Historian of science David Pingree defines science in a broad context as the process of systematically explaining perceived or imaginary phenomena. Although Westerners tend to think of science being restricted to Western culture, I argue in this thesis that astronomical scientific knowledge is found in Aboriginal traditions. Although research into the astronomical traditions of Aboriginal Australians stretches back for more than 150 years, it is relatively scant in the literature. We do know that the sun, moon, and night sky have been an important and inseparable component of the landscape to hundreds of Australian Aboriginal groups for thousands (perhaps tens-of-thousands) of years. The literature reveals that astronomical knowledge was used for time keeping, denoting seasonal change and the availability of food sources, navigation, and tidal prediction. It was also important for rituals and ceremonies, birth totems, marriage systems, cultural mnemonics, and folklore. Despite this, the field remains relatively unresearched considering the diversity of Aboriginal cultures and the length of time people have inhabited Australia (well over 40,000 years). Additionally, very little research investigating the nature and role of transient celestial phenomena has been conducted, leaving our understanding of Indigenous astronomical knowledge grossly incomplete. This thesis is an attempt to overcome this deficiency, with a specific focus on transient celestial phenomena. My research, situated in the field of cultural astronomy, draws from the sub-disciplines of archaeoastronomy, ethnoastronomy, historical astronomy, and geomythology. This approach incorporates the methodologies and theories of disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. This thesis, by publication, makes use of archaeological, ethnographic, and historical records, astronomical software packages, and geographic programs to better understand the ages of astronomical traditions and the role and nature of eclipses, comets, meteors, impact events, and certain variable stars. I also test the hypothesis that certain types of stone arrangements have preferred orientations that probably relate to astronomical phenomena. This research shows that Aboriginal astronomical traditions explain the motions of celestial bodies and the relationship between events in the sky and events on Earth. I explore how Aboriginal people perceived and made use of particular astronomical phenomena, such as meteors and comets, and show that Aboriginal people made careful observations of the motions of celestial bodies. I provide evidence that Aboriginal people noticed the change in brightness of particular stars, described the kinematics of eclipses, explained how lunar phases are related to ocean tides, and acknowledged the relationship between meteors, meteorites, impact events, and impact craters. I then show that linear stone arrangements in New South Wales have a preferred orientation to the cardinal points and explore astronomical reasons for this. In the Appendix, I include biographical details of William Edward Stanbridge, one of the first people to write in depth about Aboriginal astronomical traditions, which were compiled from historic records.
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