Ancestors, place and people: Social landscapes in Aboriginal Australia

Researchers working with Aboriginal Australians have always had to grapple with conceptions of place. This is because patterns of indigenous land use, as well as notions of personal identity, are closely linked to social constructions of the land. As Morphy (1995) points out, relationships between landscape and Aboriginal conceptions of the world have been a central theme of anthropological research since the first detailed ethnographic studies, such as those of Roth (1897), Spencer and Gillen (1899), Strehlow (1947), Warner (1969) and Kaberry (1939). This interest has been manifested in terms of territoriality and social space (e.g. Tindale 1974; Peterson 1976), trade (e.g. McBryde 1978, 1984; Turpin 1983), social networks (e.g. David and Cole 1990; McDonald in press), totemic geography (e.g. Strehlow 1970; cf. Berndt and Berndt 1989) and indigenous land rights (e.g. Coombs 1980; Tonkinson 1980; Rowse 1993).