ABORIGINAL MATERIAL CULTURE IN THE HERBERT/BURDEKIN DISTRICT: A CULTURAL CROSSROADS?

This lecture is based on current research into Aboriginal material culture, and inasmuch as the research is still incomplete, any conclusions offered must be regarded as only tentative. For the purpose of the lecture the term 'material culture ' includes all equipment manufactured by the Aborigines, such as clothing, dwellings, domestic utensils, hunting and fishing gear, canoes and weapons. The 'Herbert/Burdekin district ' includes the area between the Tully River and Mackay on the coast, and inland to the Dividing Range. The sources of evidence consulted in this attempt to establish the nature of Aboriginal material culture in the Herbert/Burdekin fall into several categories. These include the ethnohistorical literature, con-sisting of explorers * journals and contemporary reports of early settlers and officials who came into contact with traditional Aboriginal society; museimi and privately-held collections of Aboriginal artefacts from the area; research in allied fields, such as linguistics; and the land itself, the environment within the Herbert/Burdekin district. A fifth potential source of evidence, which in this research has as yet only been utilized indirectly, is Aboriginal informants who have some knowledge of traditional life. From the above it can be seen that the sources of evidence available to this kind of research are more varied and in some ways less precise than those available to historians, and an attempt has been made to use the variety to overcome the lack of precision. In this case the procedure has been to take one of these sources of evidence and look for a pattern in it, then use this pattern as a model with which to test the other sources of evidence independently. If the pattern does not fit, it may have to be adjusted or the evidence reexamined; if it does fit it will provide a model for understanding other data for the area, although it may not be applicable to other areas