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Local Group Composition Among the Australian Aborigines: A Critique of the Evidence From Fieldwork Conducted Since 1930

TitleLocal Group Composition Among the Australian Aborigines: A Critique of the Evidence From Fieldwork Conducted Since 1930
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication1970
AuthorsBirdsell, J. B.
JournalCurrent Anthropology
Volume11
Issue2
Pagination115-142
Date PublishedApr.
AbstractThere has been a strong tendency among the younger members of the Sydney school of anthropology to rewrite the anthropology of the Australian Aborigines. Whereas most workers in Australia have contributed progressively toward the understanding of regularities within Aboriginal society, the Sydney workers have focused their attention upon apparent exceptions to the previously accepted uniformities. Particular stress has been placed upon the local group, whose importance and stable composition have been denied by both Meggitt and Hiatt. These authors have insisted that the local group is essentially formless, transitory, and today undefinable in character. They advocate that Aboriginal societies consisted of large communities, numbering several hundreds of individuals. Hiatt has brought forward as evidence for this view, in addition to his own fieldwork, the writings of other professional anthropologists since 1930. This paper is designed to re-examine the evidence presented by Hiatt together with several other papers not included in his summary. When the data are controlled by examining the demographic characteristics against the time when the group was studied, it becomes clear that most of Hiatt's data is inadmissible. He and a number of other Australian workers have ignored the impact of postcontact changes upon the people studied and so introduced systematic error and bias into their studies. The evidence, in summary, reasserts the validity of the Australian Aboriginal local group as the primary landowning unit and as the chief mechanism for distributing people in ecologically optimum terms in the difficult continent of Australia.
URLhttp://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0011-3204%28197004%2911%3A2%3C115%3ALGCATA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0