The Australian aboriginal

There are not many places left in the world where the man of the Stone Age can still be seen roaming the wilds of his inherited possessions. Even in Australia, although there remain one or two areas where comparatively little havoc has been wrought among the primitive institutions of the indigenous man, yet the influence of civilization is slowly, but very surely, encroaching indirectly upon his ancient cults by such means as inter-tribal barter, if not actually by the hand of the white intruder. Especially do these remarks apply to the manufacture and utilization of stone implements; it is, of course, only to be expected that the superiority of the metal blades of the white man’s implements would appeal to the native who formerly had to spend hours making a crude cutting edge which only too often broke when applied to the test for the first time. We shall, however, treat the subject regardless of the alterations which have been brought about by our appearance upon the scene, and without attempting to draw up a hard and fast scheme of classification.

At the present time, whilst there are not only some of the primitive men alive still, but also a limited number of observers who have had the good fortune of seeing them at work, it is of vastly greater importance to record the living facts than to write exhaustively, nay, even speculatively, upon the comparative shapes and embodied techniques of artefacts whose stony composition will ensure their keeping, even fossilized, long after the men who made them, and the scientists who lived among them, have passed into oblivion.

The Australian aboriginal makes adequate use of any suitably shaped pieces of stone he happens to find whilst in pursuit of game; both in the Musgrave Ranges and the northern Kimberleys stones are used in their natural shape for hurling into a flying flock of birds, for shying at a bounding wallaby, for bringing down nuts of the boabab, and for precipitating fledgelings out of a nest.

Other stones, usually oblong and rounded pebbles gathered in a river bed, are used for pounding and cracking purposes. At any camping ground these pebbles can be picked up in great numbers, showing one or two places, usually the points, at which the percussions have worn the stone away; pounding stones and hammers of this description are equally plentiful in the sandhills on the plains of Adelaide, all over central Australia, and along the north coast. They are used for pounding seeds and foliage (the latter of which is to serve for corrobboree decorations), for pulverizing ochre, for cracking nuts and hollow bones containing marrow. Vide Plate LIV, 1.

The underlying surface consists either of a level portion of an outcrop or another, but larger, stone, which takes the place of an anvil. Some of the coastal tribes of eastern Australia used to shape their heavier pounding stones by chipping away material at one side until a stout, cylindrical handle was formed, the whole resembling a pestle; dumb-bell shaped pounders were also made, but were rare.

We have already learnt that natural pebbles or rock fragments are also used, together with a wooden rod, for knocking out teeth during initiation ceremonies.

When cooking game, many tribes, both in central and northern Australia, select a number of large, irregular slabs, which they place into a shallow hole they burn a fire in. After the oven stones have been thoroughly heated, the fire is removed and the meat cooked on the hot stones. The Worora at times cut the carcase open and place a number of heated pebbles inside.

River-worn pebbles, measuring four or five inches in diameter, are also extensively used by all central tribes, such as the Dieri, Aluridja, Wongkanguru, Ngameni, Arunndta, Wongapitcha, and Kukata, in conjunction with a large flat slab, as a hand-mill. The slabs or nether stones, which are generally known as “nardoo stones,” are longish-oval in shape, and up to two feet in length.

The Wongapitcha use slabs of no particular shape, which they call “tchewa.” The upper surface is flat or concavely worn through constant use. It is the gin’s lot to work the mill. She kneels in front of the slab, with its longer axis pointing towards her, and places some of the seed she wants to grind upon it; then she starts working the pebble forwards and backwards with her hands, rocking it gently in the same direction as she does so. When ground to a sufficient degree of fineness, the flour is scraped by hand into a bark food-carrier, and more seed placed upon the slab. On account of the rocking motion, the hand-piece, which the Wongapitcha call “miri,” eventually acquires a bevelled or convex grinding surface. Fine-grained sandstones or quartzites are most commonly found in use, but occasionally diorites and other igneous rocks might be favoured. The women usually carry the hand-stone around with them when on the march, but the basal slabs are kept at the regular camping places.

Along the Darling River, and in the west-central districts of New South Wales, the nether stones consist of large sandstone pebbles, in the two less convex surfaces of which perfectly circular and convex husking holes have been made in consequence of the daily use they are put to.

Haphazard rock fragments, usually of sandstone, with at least one broken surface, are extensively made use of for rasping and smoothing down the sides and edges of boomerangs, and of other wooden articles during the course of their construction.

Any suitable, flattish-oblong pebbles of hard quartzite, diorite, dolerite, and other igneous rock of homogeneous and finely crystalline texture, which have been symmetrically worn by the weather, are collected by the natives during their excursions and subsequently worked up into hatchet heads. This is done by obliquely chipping or grinding that of the smaller sides which is considered the more suitable, on one or both faces, until a straight or convex cutting edge results. The chipping is done with another fragment of hard rock, the grinding against an outcrop or slab of sufficiently hard stone which happens to be handy. The shape of the pebble is in most cases improved by chipping it before the cutting edge is ground, according to whether it is going to be ovate, triangular, or elongate-oblong when completed. Some patterns, such as those of Victoria, New South Wales, and the eastern-central region of South Australia (Strzelecki Creek), have a transverse groove cut right around the piece, at about two-thirds the whole length from the cutting edge, which is designed to hold the wooden haft when the implement is in use.

In many of the tribal districts igneous rocks do not occur naturally, but they are nevertheless obtained by barter from adjoining friendly tribes. The Dieri, Wongkanguru, Ngameni, and other Cooper Creek tribes obtain all their stone axe heads from New South Wales; the south-eastern tribes of South Australia used to receive their supplies from the hills tribes of what is now Victoria; and the Aluridja, Kuyanni, Arrabonna, and Kukata were regularly supplied from the MacDonnell Ranges and from Queensland through Arunndta agency. The fortunate tribes who owned outcrops of suitable stone carried on a regular trade with the surrounding districts and opened up quarries to meet the demand. The supplies were, however, not tribe-owned, but usually the property of a limited number of men who came to them by hereditary influence. Similar conditions are met with on the north coast; Sunday Island, consisting essentially of coarse-grained granitic rock, the natives have to import most of the material they use for making their stone implements from the mainland opposite; in consequence, they are loth to part with their weapons.

The stone axe head is fixed to a wooden handle after the following fashion. A long, flat piece of split wood or wiry bark is bent upon itself and tied together at its ends. The stone is thickly covered at its blunt end with hot porcupine grass resin and inserted into the loop of the haft, which is firmly pressed into the resin against the stone and tied together with human hair-string as near to the stone as possible. The free ends of the handle are then also tied together; after which the resin is worked with the fingers to fill up any gaps which may remain between the handle and the stone. The handle, and often the axe head as well, is decorated with punctate and banded ochre designs.

The size of the stone axes varies considerably; as two extremes, a large Arunndta specimen from the Finke River measures nearly eight and a half inches in length, by three in breadth, and weighs three and three-quarter pounds, whilst one from King Sound, in the north of Western Australia, measures three and a half inches by two and a half, and weighs only six ounces, the handle of the latter being only six and three-quarter inches long.

The flakes and splinters which fly from the pebble during the making of an axe head are not all discarded as useless by the native; among them he often finds one or two pieces which have a strong sharp edge with a butt opposite, suitable for holding between two or more fingers. Flakes of this type make useful scrapers with which he can work the surfaces of his wooden weapons and implements.

The same flaking and chipping process is purposely applied to rocks of a particularly hard and brittle nature, such as a fine-grained, porcelainized quartzite or chert, to obtain flakes for cutting, scraping, and holing purposes. Many of the best operating “knives,” with which initiation mutilations are performed, are derived in this simple way; as might be imagined, some of these implements are as sharp as a razor.

One frequently finds a fair-sized block of suitable stone among the paraphernalia of a native in camp, from which he chips pieces as he requires them. These blocks have been termed “cores” or “nuclei”; they are six inches or more cube in the beginning, but by the time a goodly number of flakes have been removed, the parent piece becomes much smaller and gradually assumes the shape of a truncated cone whose surface shows many faces from which flakes have been knocked off.

When deciding upon a place for removing a flake, a native always selects a corner, in order that the detached piece might be triangular in transverse section, and, therefore, without exception, lanceolate in shape. Thus the simple flakes are obtained which make stone knives and spear heads. To serve as a knife, the flake is fitted with a handle in one the following ways. It may be attached by means of porcupine grass resin in the bend of a folded haft of wood, as described of the axe above, or its thick end may be held in a cleft, made at the top of a stick, and secured by a good quantity of resin. The simplest form, however, is one common throughout the central and northern regions; it consists of a blade of quartzite embedded at its blunt end in a round mass of resin. The largest stone knives come from the tribes immediately north of the MacDonnell Ranges. The Kaitidji make quartzite blades up to seven inches long and two and a half inches wide, which they embed in a ball of resin and attach to the top of a short, thin, and flat slab of wood. The blades of these knives are protected by keeping them in sheaths of bark when not in use.

The coastal tribes of the Northern Territory, such as the Wogait, Mulluk-Mulluk, Ponga-Ponga, and Sherait, break similar flakes of quartzite from a core, which they insert into the split end of a reed spear and make secure with a mass of resin or wild bees’ wax.

A narrow, oblong fragment, with the two long edges bevelled on the same surface, such as would be obtained by removing two flakes from the same spot, and keeping the lower, finds considerable application in the sense of a spokeshave. The implement is specially prized when it is slightly curved. Much of the trimming, smoothing, and rounding of wooden surfaces is accomplished with this tool. The native sits with his legs straight in front of him and holds the object he is shaping (like for instance the boomerang shown in Plate LV, 2) tightly between his heels. He seizes the stone flake with the fingers of both hands, leaving a clear space of about an inch in the centre, and laying the cutting edge against the wood, pushes it forwards at an angle. This process planes down the surface very effectively, and the ground soon becomes covered with the thin shavings produced.

In former days the River Murray and south-eastern tribes used pointed splinters of stone for making holes through the skins of animals they made up into rugs. Nowadays the northern tribes make awls out of bones which they sharpen at one end; they are used principally for holing the edges of their bark implements prior to stitching them together with strips of cane.

By additional chipping, the main flake, whether obtained from a nucleus or otherwise, is often altered considerably in appearance, without necessarily improving its effectiveness as an implement or its deadliness as a weapon.

The south-eastern natives, as, for instance, those of the Victorian Lakes district, as well as those of central Australia, used to select a flat fragment of hard rock, into one straight side of which they chipped a shallow concavity; this instrument answered the purpose of a rasp when finishing off such articles as spears, waddies, and clubs which had cylindrical, convex, or curved contours to bring into shape.

The old Adelaide plains tribe were in possession of scrapers which they constructed out of thin slabs of clay-slate. The implement was more or less semi-circular, but had a concave surface on the inner side; occasionally its corners were rounded off, producing a reniform shape. On an average the diameter was something like four or five inches. This implement was used exclusively to scrape skins of animals, after the following fashion: The convex surface was pressed against the palm of the right hand and securely held between the body of the thumb and the four fingers. The skin was laid around a cylindrical rod and held firmly against it with the opposite hand, while the implement was placed over the skin with its concave surface so adjusted as to fit over the convexity of the rod. In this position, the scraper was worked downwards, or towards the native, with its concave surface running ahead of the hand and shaving the skin. Thus the skins were thoroughly cleaned, and all adherent pieces of fat and flesh removed. Slate scrapers of this type are still to be found in large number in the drift sands along the shores of St. Vincent’s Gulf, especially in the neighbourhood of Normanville. Vide Plate XLIII, 3.

Most types of spear-thrower carry a scraper embedded in a mass of resin or wax at the handle end. The scraper most favoured is either of quartzite or of flint, about an inch or slightly more square, and chipped on one or both sides of the cutting edge. It is almost wholly embedded, with perhaps only the chipped portion showing below the binding mass which helps to form the handle.

Similar stones are fixed at both ends of a curved or straight piece of wood, of circular section, which is then used as a scraping or chopping tool commonly referred to as an adze. Used as a scraper, the wooden handle is gripped at about one-quarter its length from the bottom, both hands being at the same level, with their fingers overlapping and the thumbs lying against the wood on the opposite side; but when used as a chopper the hands are held one over the other, each clenching the handle separately. Occasionally one hand only is used to direct the tool, while the other holds the object to be worked (Plate LV, 1).

The small, sharp flakes which are chipped from a bigger piece during the construction of a scraper are carefully examined and the most shapely of them are collected for the purpose of sticking them lengthwise, one behind the other, to the two edges of a bladed, wooden spear head. This type of spear was common along the lower reaches of the Murray River and Lake Alexandrina.

In Western Australia a special type of knife called “dabba” is constructed in a like way, but the flakes are larger, three-quarters of an inch long, and embedded in resin along one side only of the stick. The implement measures about two feet in length.

The long, single flakes, obtained from a quartzite core, may be further chipped along the edges to sharpen them. This process is seen typically along the coastal districts of the Northern Territory, the Daly and Victoria River districts in particular.

But where the manufacture of stone spear heads is seen to perfection is in the northern Kimberleys of Western Australia. The north-western tribes are expert at making lanceolate spear heads with serrated edges and beautifully facetted sides; some of the specimens are up to six inches long and are delicately chipped all over. People who have not had the opportunity of witnessing the method employed in making them are perplexed to understand how it is possible to accomplish such delicate work without breaking the object; the point in particular of these spear heads is often nearly as fine as that of a needle.

The way it is done is briefly as follows. A rough flake or fragment is broken from a core, or rock in situ, by holding a bone chisel or stone adze in much the same way as one clasps a pen or pencil, and stabbing the block near the sharp edge, or by striking it with another rock fragment. The size of the flake thus detached will depend largely upon the purpose to which it is to be put; the fractured surface is always plane. The fragment is now taken in the left hand, its flat surfaces lying full length between the thumb and fingers, and its edges chipped by striking them from above with a sharp stone hammer held securely in the right hand. The flake is frequently changed about, so that what is now the bottom surface later becomes the top. The edge is always struck nearly at right angles to the flat surface whilst the chips break away into the hand underneath. The Yampi Sound natives call the rough primary flake “munna,” and the small chips resulting from the trimming of its edge “aroap.”

The original shaping aims at obtaining a roughly symmetrical leaf-form, truncated at the base where it is subsequently to be embedded or held at the end of a spear or haft. The flake is left thick at its base and made to taper towards its point.

At first the chipping is done by fairly strong, but well-directed blows from above; later by quicker and lighter taps. Occasionally the edges are rasped with a flat slab of sandstone at right angles to the plane of the flake—a process which breaks away small chips from either side of the edge which is being rubbed. The flake at this stage is called “ardelgulla” by the Yampi natives, and “arolonnyenna” by the Sunday Islanders.

When the preliminary shaping has been completed in the way described, the native first strives to obtain a perfect point, then to trim the sides. The former item is a very delicate operation which requires much patience and skill; the latter takes many hours to complete.

The method adopted for this finer secondary chipping process is after the following principle. A block of stone, about a foot cube, is used as a working table or anvil, which the Worora call “muna,” and upon this they lay a cushion consisting of two or three layers of paper-bark, called “ngali.” The native sits with the stone in front of him, and in his left hand grips the unfinished spear head (“ardegulla”) with one of its flat surfaces lying upon the cushion at the near, left-hand corner of the anvil stone. His thumb, index, and middle fingers hold the flake, the thumb being on top, the index finger against the edge, and the middle finger beneath; the two remaining fingers press against the edge of the block below to steady the flake upon the cushion. In his right hand he seizes a short rod of bone, which is sharpened at one end, and is known as “onumongul,” in such a way that the unsharpened end is securely gripped between the thumb and index finger, whilst the principal portion of the rod is pressed with the remaining fingers against the palm of the hand immediately below the body of the thumb. The sharpened point of the bone thus points towards the native’s body. Holding the implement in this position, he rests the small-finger side of his hand near the further right-hand corner of the basal block of stone, and, after carefully adjusting the point of the bone against the edge of the flake, he presses it down with the body of his thumb and skilfully snaps off a chip. The process is repeated again, and time after time, the position of the bone being constantly changed as he works along the edge towards the point. Then the flake is turned on its other side and the same method applied. As the native works, the whole of his attention is absorbed. He bites his lips together, and, when he applies leverage with the bone against the flake, he stiffens his body from the hips upwards, his eyes being rivetted to the spot from which the chip is to be removed. He frequently sharpens the point of his instrument upon the basal block of stone. Vide Plate LIV, 2.

The most delicate final chipping of both the point and margins is executed with a thinner and more finely pointed bone, which is usually made out of the radius of a kangaroo. In districts coming under the influence of European settlement, the bone is often substituted by a piece of iron, and the stone by bottle glass or porcelain.

During the operation the native often cuts his fingers on the flake or razor-sharp splinters; the blood which follows he removes by passing his fingers through his hair. Even at this stage, when the flake is assuming a symmetrical, lanceolate shape, and goes by the name of “tanbellena,” its edge might occasionally be very carefully rubbed on the basal stone; but the final retouche is invariably given to it with the bone implement.

At no time during the making of the spear head does the native use his wrist, the whole of the pressure or movement coming from his elbow or even from his waist, while his body is kept in the rigid position referred to above. The finished spear head is called “ngongu nerbai” or “kolldürr.”

The process described is of such a delicate kind that the point not infrequently breaks just when the spear head is practically ready for use; this necessitates not only the construction of a new point, but the margins on both sides of it have to be chipped back in order that the point may be a projecting one.

One has to admire the industry of these men, when it is realized that the spear head in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred will be good for only one throw, the brittle stone shattering immediately it comes into contact with a solid body such as the bone of the prey or the ground.