Australian Plants As Aboriginal Tools

Product Description

In Australia the flora has had a broad impact on the lives of Aboriginal hunter-gatherers having provided them with the essential materials for making their food medicine narcotics & stimulants. Plants were also ecologically important for maintaining the populations of terrestrial fauna that hunter-gatherers once foraged upon for their subsistence. The flora has helped shape Aboriginal cultures over the millennia since their Ancestors first occupied the Australian continent. This book describes the species that were essential as the means for manufacturing Aboriginal weapons tools shelter watercraft ceremonial objects clothing ornaments & paint. The book demonstrates how hunter-gatherers lived by making objects from plants & investigates similarities & differences of plant uses across Aboriginal Australia as well as their distinctiveness in relation to practices from other parts of the world. An overview of the changing relationship that Aboriginal people have with the flora is given along with a description of current trends. The present work is jointly concerned with the ethnobotany & economic botany of Aboriginal Australia.