Agricultural hunter-gatherers: food-getting, domestication and farming in pre-colonial Australia

[Extract] Elkin (1974: 51) asserted, "We apparently agree with the Aborigines that Australia was in their time only suitable for a food-gathering and hunting economy... The food-gathering life is parasitical; the Aborigines are absolutely dependent on what nature produces without any practical assistance on their part." Statements such as these are highly subjective and unlikely to lead to any in-depth investigations of Aboriginal plant uses and management styles. This paper will show that his position was and is preposterous. It unfortunately led to many years of serious neglect of what actually happened in pre-colonial Australia both in anthropology and archaeology. The few who managed to get close to some of what really happened include Tindale (1974, 1977) and Lourandos (1980, 1983, 1985, 1997, 2008), among others