Introduction
The Aboriginal cultural traditions of Australia, their histories, philosophies and characteristics, have been a key subject of interest for European observers and scholars for a very long time. However, for an equally long time, the respective engagements and the resulting publications and representations have been hampered by the difficulties of interpreting difference and intercultural prejudices. From the very first contact, Europeans saw Australian, Tasmanian and Torres Strait Islands Indigenous people as deficient, primitive and at a lower stage of humanity's evolutionary or historical development. This understanding was fuelled by European eighteenth- and nineteenth-century notions of race, ideas about human universality, diversity, origins and nature that were in turn shaped by the colonial experience (e.g. Anderson Reference Anderson2007; Reference Anderson2014; Anderson & Perrin Reference Anderson and Perrin2007; McNiven & Russell Reference McNiven and Russell2005). In 1697, William Dampier described the Indigenous Australians he encountered as ‘the miserablest people in the world’. This assessment was based foremost on the observation that ‘unlike “the great variety of savages” he had encountered before, the Australian Aborigines had “no Houses and skin Garments, Sheep, poultry and Fruits of the Earth”’ (Anderson & Perrin Reference Anderson and Perrin2007, 19). In the following centuries, the Aborigines’ apparent inability to cultivate and their failure to improve the land remained one of the most important themes in Western academic and public discourses.
Since the development of Enlightenment philosophies in the eighteenth century, humanity's essence was regarded to reside in the ability to rise above, exploit and improve nature. ‘Culture’ was assumed to be a trait that was shared by all humans. Culture was foremost understood in opposition to nature and reflective of humanity's power over nature. Consequently, a society's success was viewed in technological terms, reflected in the extent and efficiency of resource exploitation, the production of artefacts and goods, and consumption practices. Not surprisingly, contemporary European economies provided the relative standard against which success was measured (Anderson Reference Anderson2007, 95). The persistence of Indigenous Australians with their seemingly simple technologies remained puzzling, and they remained ‘in some perplexing sense, a human anomaly’ because they had failed to ‘adequately [realize] their own humanity “as human”’ (Anderson Reference Anderson2007, 150).
These views are not just a product of the specific history and conditions of the Australian colonial experience and they cannot easily be contained within the depths of Western intellectual history. As I have argued elsewhere (Porr Reference Porr, Dennell and Porr2014; Porr & Matthews Reference Porr and Matthews2017), as reflections of deep structures of Western thought they have an astonishing longevity and continue to influence archaeological arguments and interpretations. While it is not possible to discuss these aspects in greater detail here, it is certainly the case that cultural and technological simplicity, or long-term continuities, are mostly regarded as historical anomalies. The ‘normal’ course of human history is characterized by progressive increase in technological complexity and sophistication that ultimately leads to the development of agriculture and complex societies (Trigger Reference Trigger1984; Reference Trigger1989). Consequently, the evidence from Australia is invariably understood as anomalous and either dismissed or itself in need of explanation. It is until today most often studied in comparative contexts because of its supposed technological simplicity (Brumm & Moore Reference Brumm and Moore2005; Dennell & Porr Reference Dennell and Porr2014; Porr Reference Porr2010; Taylor Reference Taylor2014). The reasons for this situation are varied and complex and entangled in the colonial history of European imaginations of Aboriginal Australians and the resulting erasure and/or appropriation of Indigenous cultures. They are also directly related to the historical legacies of archaeology as a product of Western modernity (Thomas Reference Thomas2004). As such, whenever the wider implications of evidence from Australia's deep past are concerned, it is important to resist the mechanisms and logic of ‘origins discourses’. There is a constant danger in studying so-called simpler societies only to explain the origins of aspects of supposedly more complex/advanced and/or more recent societies (Gamble Reference Gamble2007; Gamble & Gittins Reference Gamble, Gittins, Meskell and Preucel2004).
This paper is consequently also an attempt to counter these historical legacies and arguments, and the perception of Australian Aboriginal societies and people as in any way deficient and impoverished. I want to argue that an engagement with Indigenous Australian people and cultures can enrich and inspire the reading of archaeological evidence elsewhere. This enrichment, however, has nothing to do with any intrinsic features of the Australian historical situation as particularly rich or impoverished. Rather, it is the potential that exists in every reflective inter-cultural encounter and comparison. Elsewhere, I already made some suggestions in this direction (Porr Reference Porr, Coward, Hosfield, Pope and Wenban-Smith2015; Porr & Bell Reference Porr and Bell2012). Here, I want to explore some implications of the Australian Aboriginal enactment of landscape with a focus on the themes of Indigenous rock art, relational knowledge and the understanding of Country in the Kimberley region, Western Australia. I want to stress that this paper does not provide a detailed discussion and exposition of the character of the art and other forms of material or archaeological evidence (see, e.g., Blundell Reference Blundell, Trigger and Griffiths2003; Blundell & Woolagoodja Reference Blundell and Woolagoodja2005; Blundell et al. Reference Blundell, Doohan, Vachon, Allbrock, Jebb and Bornman2017a; Crawford Reference Crawford1968; Doring Reference Doring2000; Mowaljarlai & Malnic, Reference Mowaljarlai and Malnic1993, for further information). This would not be possible within the framework of this paper. It will rather concentrate on the logic of socio-cultural production and engagements, and the related consequences for the epistemology of archaeology. The respective insights have important consequences for the conceptualization of a range of interrelated key themes in archaeological contexts, particularly ‘space and place’, ‘story and narrative’ and ‘knowledge and representation’. Thus, the paper calls for the development of variable forms of intellectual engagement as well as collaborative and creative responses, which should also include new forms of expression in academic contexts that themselves reflexively engage with the limitations of writing and representation.
Time, art and Country in Indigenous Australia
One of the most well-known notions in Australian social anthropology has been The Dreaming. It was prominently elaborated by W.E.H. Stanner in a seminal essay that was originally published in 1953 (Stanner Reference Stanner, Lessa and Vogt1965). It was based on B. Spencer and F. Gillen's (Reference Spencer and Gillen1899) notion of ‘dream time’ or ‘dream times’, but Stanner makes the case for the use of ‘The Dreaming’ or ‘Dreaming’. The key reason for the use of the latter terms is that Dreaming is used in a wide range of complex meanings. The term can describe a ‘sacred, heroic time of the indefinitely remote past’, but also a totem, a birthplace or the origin of a particular custom (Stanner Reference Stanner, Lessa and Vogt1965, 270). He also wrote that ‘one cannot “fix” The Dreaming in time: it was, and is, everywhen’ (Stanner Reference Stanner, Lessa and Vogt1965, 270; emphasis original) and consequently argues for a specifically Australian Aboriginal philosophical understanding of the dynamics of existence in which temporal and spatial dimensions become interchangeable. Time is not external to the material world. Humans and other beings do not exist in time. Rather, time is constructed as a dimension of the dynamics of social relationships (between human as well as non-human actors) and not as an external and independently advancing temporality. The idea of being has consequently a complex spatial-temporal quality and its ‘metaphysical heart’ encapsulates a oneness of ‘body, spirit, ghost, shadow, name, spirit-site, and totem’ (Stanner Reference Stanner, Lessa and Vogt1965, 271). In this understanding, human identity and agency is not fixed in time and place. It is fundamentally distributed and relational (James Reference James, McGrath and Jebb2015, 40).
In recent decades, the concept of Dreaming has been expanded and deepened in the available literature that is based on long-term anthropological research, many encounters and conversations in all parts of Australia. It is no longer understood as a unified concept, but reflective of the dialectic between Aboriginal philosophies and lifeways. It is an expression of an ontology that understands the world as an on-going creation in which everything is dynamic and in processes of becoming (Holbraad & Pedersen Reference Holbraad and Pedersen2017). This view is fundamentally entangled with being-in-the-world and therefore Australian Aboriginal philosophy cannot be divorced from the experience and understanding of landscape, from the engagement with Country. This latter term is the other key notion in the context of this paper and it also has central significance in Indigenous Australian philosophies. ‘Country, ideally, is synonymous with life’ (Rose Reference Rose1996, 10), but, crucially, it has a personal and interconnected quality that cannot be broken up and divided into independent components:
People talk about country in the same way that they would talk about a person: they speak to country, sing to country, visit country, worry about country, feel sorry for country, and long for country. People say that country knows, hears, smells, takes notice, takes care, is sorry or happy. Country is not a generalised or undifferentiated type of place, such as one might indicate with terms like ‘spending a day in the country’ or ‘going up the country’. Rather, country is a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and a will toward life. (Rose Reference Rose1996, 7)
Within this framework of understanding, everything is fundamentally constituted by and only acquires meaning and significance because of its spatial-temporal relationships.
Each whole country is surrounded by other unique and inviolable whole countries, and the relationships between the countries ensure that no country is isolated, that together they make up some larger whole, clusters of alliance networks, Dreaming tracks and ceremonies, trade networks, tracks of winds and movements of animals. In this way a working system can be known to exist way beyond one's own countries, but no one ever knows the full extent of it all because knowledge is of necessity local. The fact of localised knowledge is itself Law. (Rose Reference Rose1996, 12–13)
It is crucial to acknowledge that, within this framework of understanding, knowledge is always local, and it has a fundamentally spatial character. Bringing together the concept of Dreaming and Country, knowledge is therefore not only local in space, but also in time. Knowledge is fundamentally attached to place and knowledge about a place can only be acquired by bodily engagement that is always spatially and temporally situated.
Places are constituted by levels of intersecting and interacting temporalities. Referring to Bakhtin's ‘chronotopes’, Rose (Reference Rose2004, 37) argues that places are locations in which knots of narrative are tied and untied. Time and space are fashioned into specific social and symbolic configurations to become ‘common sense’ social knowledge. Elaborating on the understanding of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara people from the Western Desert (Central Australia), James (Reference James, McGrath and Jebb2015, 39) relates the words of Senior Elder Nganyinytja and explains that ‘the most important learning came from the Tjukurpa Creation Law stories told to her by her father and mother, grandfather and grandmother, uncles and aunts’. These narratives provide explanations for fundamental aspects of existence, social rules and moral behaviour. However, there are also tjukurpa stories that relate to seemingly more recent and personal events (see also, e.g., Rumsey Reference Rumsey1994). Both narratives are inscribed in Country and have marked and shaped the land. These temporalities flow into and speak to each other; similarly, the division between cultural and natural features breaks down:
Some early contact history of the Musgrave Ranges is recorded in the rock figures of men on horses painted in ochre on the ceiling of the large overhang at Cave Hill. This human history is recorded alongside symbols of the Kungkarangkalpa Seven Sisters Tjukurpa. Outside the cave entrance, a large single rock embodies Wati Nyuri, the ancestral man who pursued the sisters across land and sky; he is intently watching the sisters inside the cave. (James Reference James, McGrath and Jebb2015, 40, emphasis original)
These few considerations should draw attention to the fact that the materiality or the material quality or character of landscape or, broader, the environment are complex and not self-evident categories. This orientation has been described in the nineteenth century as ‘animistic’ and it has recently been resurrected to counter modernist and essentialist views of human–environment interactions (Bird-David Reference Bird-David1999; Brown & Walker Reference Brown and Walker2008; Haber Reference Haber2009). However, as an anthropological label, it is itself in danger of becoming an essential description of an ‘other’ way of knowing and smothering its creative potentialities as an ultimately false way of understanding reality (Porr & Bell Reference Porr and Bell2012; Praet Reference Praet, Ingold and Palsson2013; Willerslev Reference Willerslev2007; Reference Willerslev2013). In contrast, Povinelli (Reference Povinelli2016, 17) has argued that the so-called animist orientation is not restricted to Indigenous societies, but foremost a consequence of the insistence ‘that the difference between Life and Nonlife is not a problem because all forms of existence have within them a vital animating, affecting force’. It is the recognition of an inherently dynamic and relational character of reality. It extends qualities of ‘life’ to the category of ‘being’, so that the former ‘roams freely as a form of univocal vitality’ and allows the ‘reciprocal transpositions of the biological concepts of birth, growth-reproduction, and death and the ontological concepts of event, conatus/affectus, and finitude’ (Povinelli, Reference Povinelli2016, 18). This orientation, consequently, refers to material, temporal, spatial and creative qualities, which are reflected in the Australian Aboriginal context in the entanglement of Country, life and humanity: ‘Country is the key, the matrix, the essential heart of life. It follows that much Aboriginal art, music, dance, philosophy, religion, ritual and daily activity has country as its focus or basis’ (Rose Reference Rose1996, 11; see also Rumsey Reference Rumsey1994, 21).
Rock-art research and archaeology in Australia have engaged with these complex ethnographies and philosophies in variable ways over time. As in other parts of the world, archaeological research in Australia has emerged from a strong colonial and Eurocentric historical and epistemological foundation that continues to affect interpretative frameworks and methodologies (McNiven & Russell Reference McNiven and Russell2005). As an intellectual and practical endeavour, archaeology is historically and epistemologically closely connected to the project of Western modernity (see, e.g., Schnapp et al. Reference Schnapp, Shanks and Tiews2004; Thomas Reference Thomas2004; Trigger Reference Trigger1984) and this influence has also affected research into Australia's deep past (see, e.g., Flood Reference Flood1990; Hiscock Reference Hiscock2007; Mulvaney & Kamminga Reference Mulvaney and Kamminga1999, for general overviews). Today, the discipline is experiencing intellectual debates and shifts that can also be observed in other colonial and post-colonial contexts (Bruchac et al. Reference Bruchac, Hart and Wobst2010; Gosden Reference Gosden1999; Reference Gosden and Hodder2012; Hamilakis & Duke Reference Hamilakis and Duke2007; Liebmann & Rizvi Reference Liebmann and Rizvi2008; Lydon & Rizvi Reference Lydon and Rizvi2012; Smith & Wobst Reference Smith and Wobst2005). In recent years, there have been some significant and valuable developments within a broad spectrum of themes, ranging from a critical reassessment of the research history of Australian archaeology to the development of post-colonial research strategies and methodologies, the collaboration with Indigenous communities and the integration of Indigenous knowledge and forms of representation (e.g. Ferris et al. Reference Ferris, Harrison and Wilcox2014; Harrison Reference Harrison2015; McNiven Reference McNiven2016a,Reference McNivenb).
Similar complex developments can be observed within Australian rock-art research, which is traditionally closely related to archaeology. Consequently, rock art tends to be studied foremost within an archaeological framework with an emphasis on spatial patterns, chronological stylistic schemes and environmental contexts (Layton Reference Layton2010; Morwood Reference Morwood2002; see contributions in McDonald & Veth Reference McDonald and Veth2012). However, the increasingly collaborative character of research in Australia and the involvement of Aboriginal communities have significantly transformed the practice of the respective disciplines. They have contributed to an increase in studies that equally engage with the complex anthropological situation, as well as the complexity of the material record (see Brady et al. Reference Brady, Bradley and Kearney2016; McDonald & Veth Reference McDonald and Veth2012; Morphy Reference Morphy, McDonald and Veth2012). These are interesting and encouraging developments that have relevance beyond the Australian context.
The current key challenges for both disciplines are related to the epistemological negotiation of the relationships between storied (Aboriginal) knowledge and classificatory (Western scientific) knowledge and the development of interpretative frameworks that allows assessment of their respective ontological characteristics (Ingold Reference Ingold2011, 141–76; Porr & Matthews Reference Porr and Matthews2016). As outlined above, these aspects impact the understanding of time, space, agency, materiality and so on, and are highlighted whenever a serious and significant engagement with Traditional Owners’ views and perspectives is attempted (McGrath & Jebb Reference McGrath and Jebb2015 and references therein; Porr & Bell Reference Porr and Bell2012). Currently, these aspects are increasingly impacting archaeological thinking and they present both significant challenges as well as new potentials for Indigenous archaeologies and collaborative archaeological practice and interpretation. Here, I want to contribute further to these discussions by viewing the Indigenous rock art of the Northwest and Central Kimberley region, Western Australia, and the practices and ideas associated with it as expressions of relational ontology.
Kimberley rock art and the relational philosophy of Country
The Kimberley in Northwest Australia contains one of the most complex and diverse records of art anywhere in the world (Donaldson & Kenneally Reference Donaldson and Kenneally2007; Layton Reference Layton2010; Morwood Reference Morwood2002; Mulvaney Reference Mulvaney2013; Veth et al. Reference Veth, Myers, Heaney and Ouzman2017). The region is also home to Aboriginal people with cultural traditions that integrate aspects of so-called rock art into ongoing cultural practices and philosophies. The best known of these relate to the Northwest and Central Kimberley and form the so-called Wanjina Wunggurr cultural bloc—although rock art is a part of many more Aboriginal groups’ culture in other parts of the Kimberley as well (Blundell Reference Blundell, Trigger and Griffiths2003; Blundell & Woolagoodja Reference Blundell and Woolagoodja2005; Reference Blundell, Woolagoodja, Veth and McDonald2012; O'Connor et al. Reference O'Connor, Balme, Fyfe, Oscar, Oscar, Davis, Malo, Nuggett and Surprise2013; Ryan & Akerman Reference Ryan and Akerman1993). Most recently, radiometric dating efforts have suggested that some rock-art expressions in the Kimberley are at least 16,000 years old and that Wanjina Wunggurr art is at least 5000 years old (Ross et al. Reference Ross, Westaway, Travers, Morwood and Hayward2016). These findings not only suggest a great antiquity of the rock art in this region. They also draw attention to the survival of continuous as well as dynamic Aboriginal cultural traditions that reach back well beyond the antiquity of the European Bronze Age.
Since the 1930s, authors have established and discussed the many layers of meaning of Wanjina Wunggurr rock art. They have also ‘unequivocally documented the autochthonous nature of these paintings, while providing a wealth of information on their roles in Wanjina-Wunggurr culture’ (Blundell & Woolagoodja Reference Blundell, Woolagoodja, Veth and McDonald2012, 474). Of course, it is not possible here to go into great detail in this respect, so that the text rather concentrates on aspects related to the ‘enactment of landscape’ (for further information see, e.g., Blundell Reference Blundell, Trigger and Griffiths2003; Blundell & Woolagoodja Reference Blundell and Woolagoodja2005; Crawford Reference Crawford1968; Doring Reference Doring2000; Doring & Nyawarra Reference Doring and Nyawarra2014; Mowaljarlai & Malnic Reference Mowaljarlai and Malnic1993). The Wanjina Wunggurr cultural bloc, located in the Northwest and Central Kimberley, can overall be described as an expression of the wider Indigenous Australian beliefs that were outlined above. Aboriginal Traditional Owners of the Wanjina Wunggurr community also regard their home land as a life-affirming entity, ‘Country’. The latter, which equally comprises land, sea and sky, encompasses the belief in Wandjina creator ancestors, who are anthropomorphic beings, who can also appear in animal form, Woongudd (the sacred life force Snake) and Gwion, who can appear in various forms, including plants and vegetation. These different creator beings exist in a past–present–future continuum that is locally called Lalai (or Larlan or Larlay) and through their actions they create Country as a rich tapestry of tangible and intangible elements.
Lalai has a deep, deep meaning. It is not just ordinary dreaming that you have at night. For us it is about the creation of country, the fining of children, many other kinds of spiritual things and our way of life. It is about the future and what might happen. (D. Woolagoodja, quoted in Blundell et al. Reference Blundell, Doohan, Vachon, Allbrock, Jebb and Bornman2017a, 44)
Lalai is not only the local form of Dreaming; it is a rich collection of religious narratives that relate to the core of how and when the land, the sea, the heavens and all that is within them came into existence and continue to exist. Lalai also relates to the moral rules for social behaviour and caring for Country, and when they were formed. The members of the respective communities understand Lalai as a framework for social order and engagement with the natural and supernatural worlds, within which patterns of governance, responsibilities, accountability and entitlements are explicated. It is equally a body of sacred knowledge as well as common and daily practice that includes caring for Country and those beings that created it and belong in it. The boundary between mythical, natural and human-made phenomena does not follow a Western understanding. Evidence of creator beings and their creative acts is found throughout Country. It can be human-made artefacts or natural formations including mountains, rivers, waterfalls, islands, mangroves, vine thickets, rock art and stone arrangements. In the end, also human beings themselves are products and expressions of Country and Lalai (see, e.g., Blundell et al. Reference Blundell, Doohan, Vachon, Allbrock, Jebb and Bornman2017a,Reference Blundell, Woolagoodja, Oobagooma, Umbagai, David and McNivenb; Oobagooma et al. Reference Oobagooma, Umbagai, Doohan and Porr2016).
Barramundi was splashing around and made Walcott Inlet. Yardadda, he's the one that made that gap for Walcott Inlet. Yardadda and Wandjina made that country together. Yardadda doesn't belong to the seaside; he's from that side, the desert [inland], You don't see that goanna around here, but he's in the desert. He came from the desert, maybe because of fire, and he got stuck in Walcott Inlet and he couldn't go anymore. Jindeebiridj [willy wagtail] and Yardadda, they were travelling together in Lalai and then they got caught in the whirlpool. That's why you see the whirlpool going, making a big pool; well, those two made it. Yardadda's in the whirlpool in Walcott Inlet. When it's low tide you can see the two statues [on a reef in the inlet]: one is Jindeebiridj and one is Yardadda, standing up together. When the tide comes in, it just covers it, right in that opening. They're rocks, yeah. When it's low tide you can see those two. (D. Woolagoodja, quoted in Blundell et al. Reference Blundell, Doohan, Vachon, Allbrock, Jebb and Bornman2017a, 366)
The basic features of these cultural understandings were already reported by the first ethnographic studies in the region (e.g. Elkin Reference Elkin1930; Lommel Reference Lommel1952; Love Reference Love1936; Petri Reference Petri1954; Schulz Reference Schulz1956). They also drew attention to the fact that the Wanjina Wunggurr rock art is truly ‘an art of country’, because it is one of the key elements through which the people of the respective Indigenous communities ‘construct a distinct cultural landscape as well as individual and group identities based on multiple connections to land’ (Blundell Reference Blundell, Trigger and Griffiths2003, 159). Woongudd is credited with the original creation of dry and flat land from the great world ocean. Woongudd also created the first Wandjina, who transformed the featureless world, created and shaped culturally significant features. Wandjina are mostly of anthropomorphic shape, both male and female, but can also occur in animal form. Famously, the respective Wanjina Wunggurr rock art that is visible today is largely not regarded as images and representations of Wanjina or other spiritual beings. They are beings themselves:
After completing their creative labours, the Wandjina went into the earth at a rock shelter—while the rock was still soft—leaving their ‘imprint’ as a painting. Or they transformed themselves into various rock formations and other features of the landscape, which like certain Wandjina sites, can be a source of spiritual danger for individuals not authorised to approach them. (Blundell Reference Blundell, Trigger and Griffiths2003, 161)
Ngarinyin Lawman David Mowaljarlai described the rock art in his Country as IMAGES WITH ENERGIES. He also describes the images as alive and the responsibility to keep the images alive through interactions that can also involve repainting (Mowaljarlai et al. Reference Mowaljarlai, Vinnicombe, Ward and Chippindale1988). The Traditional Owners’ responses to Wandjina Woongudd images and the associated narratives remain important references of a geospatially focused ontology that is characterized by a non-linear appreciation of time. The images are important links to their continuing relationship with Lalai, the continuing evolution of the material and non-material world as well as a core element of their sense of self, their belonging to place and their particular Wanjina Wunggurr community. As Senior Woddordda Elder Janet Oobagooma explains:
People who do not understand say ‘somebody painted it’ but they didn't. Wandjina put themselves in the cave and they said ‘this is an important person and you have to go by the rules. (Oobagooma et al. Reference Oobagooma, Umbagai, Doohan and Porr2016, 371)
This is called ngarrgulum; the spirit in us. It's when you feel good in your body, your tummy; then your ngarrgulum is happy. You get that feeling when you come into country and when you visit Wandjina and talk to the country and to the Wandjina and show respect. You feel happy and excited that your presence is there. (Blundell et al. Reference Blundell, Doohan, Vachon, Allbrock, Jebb and Bornman2017a, 44)
This understanding is reflective of a complex cultural geography that relates people, space, time and the material environment to each other in a complex way. Wanjina are understood to have created and continue to create Country, which is divided into so-called dambina, patrilineal clan estates. The latter are integral elements of Aboriginal identity and kinship terms and categories mirror people's connections to these areas of land. The connection between people and Country becomes so closely intertwined that they become interchangeable. As Blundell (Reference Blundell, Trigger and Griffiths2003, 162) writes: ‘Men will refer to all women who belong to the dambina from which they receive a wife as their “wife”, and they will also call the country itself their “wife”. As the late David Mowaljarlai once told me: “It's the land we're married to”.’
These close connections are also mirrored in the moiety divisions that are made within this society, which equally encompasses people, places, plants, animals and so on. This system is called wunan in the Wanjina Wunggurr context and divides everything into two tribes, Wodoj and Djungun, and specifies various forms of exchange between them. Accordingly, this system also has a spatial dimension to it:
In space, the clan countries (or dambina) of Djungun clans tend to be geographically adjacent to one another, as do the countries of clans associated with Wodoj, so that two large areas of land and water are recognised, [. . .] Mamaladba contains the clan countries of the clans associated with Djungun, and Monadba those associated with Wodoj. (Blundell Reference Blundell, Trigger and Griffiths2003, 163)
The activities of engagement with places and images, including retouching and repainting, were traditionally embedded in the complex interrelationships between people and places in the Kimberley. Blundell (Reference Blundell, Trigger and Griffiths2003, 166) reports that Sam Woolagoodja learned from his older relatives to look after Country and specific Wanjina in the first half of the twentieth century. He subsequently followed the wunan to assume responsibility for ‘repainting the Wandjina at the rock art site of certain clans whose populations had declined’.
Culture comes from the country. That's why we have to look after the country. Even the birds and animals understand what we're talking about. When people stop visiting country, the country cannot smell their malambad, the sweat of the body, the body scent; even the fish, they are half human too, and they miss the people. And then the country changes. Mangroves cover it over and the waterholes get dry because the people are not in their country. (J. Oobagooma, quoted in Blundell et al. Reference Blundell, Doohan, Vachon, Allbrock, Jebb and Bornman2017a, 44)
Beyond the finer cultural details and complexities, this system of interrelatedness between people and places also determines people's responsibilities for caring for and looking after Ancestral Land. Looking after Country has many dimensions to it. It refers to aspects that might in a Western logic be part of natural environmental management practices (e.g. regular burning of dry vegetation), but it also includes the protection of rock-art images and sites or even repainting or refreshing them. As these places are all part of a mythological landscape of social relationships, it is the respective family group which has the related responsibilities and authority. Again, Senior Woddordda Elder Janet Oobagooma explains:
It is not for anybody to use the image but the family to decide. The family are the ones that know how the image is connected to the Wandjina for that country and the people who belong to that country. The images belong to the songs for the Country as well and Lalai is the record of it all. (Oobagooma et al. Reference Oobagooma, Umbagai, Doohan and Porr2016, 369)
In the ethnographies from the early twentieth century, the information was related that it was the responsibility of the oldest member of the local group who claimed descent from a particular Wandjina to retouch or refresh the images. Based on his fieldwork in 1939, Lommel (Reference Lommel1952, 14) reported that one man, who took on the task of retouching the paintings, said: ‘Ich gehe jetzt, um mich zu erfrischen und zu stärken, ich bemale mich jetzt neu, damit es Regen gibt’ [I am going now to refresh and invigorate myself, I am now repainting myself so that there will be rain] (trans. M. Porr). Redmond (Reference Redmond, Petersen and Kenny2017, 420) also reports that ‘Wanjina become incarnated in the living persons who identify with their wanjina by referring to it as “I” or “me” when narrating stories of events occurring in the larlan (“ancestral past”)’. In both cases, the human person and Wandjina become interchangeable. Mythical time and the present collapse into each other, and ‘such men would fill their mouths with water and blow it over the painting in order to replicate the way the Wandjina had blown rain over the land during Lalai’ (Blundell Reference Blundell, Trigger and Griffiths2003, 164).
Wandjina made these things, not with his hands but with his mouth. The power is in his mouth. Wandjina just said the words. (J. Oobagooma, quoted in Blundell et al. Reference Blundell, Doohan, Vachon, Allbrock, Jebb and Bornman2017a, 55)
These observations further stress the unstable nature of the categories involved and the ontological differences that must be considered. Wandjina and human beings are relationally constituted, and Country plays an active and dynamic role in these relationships. Not only are the acts of retouching and repainting understood as not being initiated by human beings, but it is the ‘saturated air emanating from the sun-warmed rocks that gives a new life to the painted images’ (Redmond Reference Redmond, Jones, Eliade and Adams2005, 9459). In fact, rocks are not so much seen as saturated with water, but indeed themselves as water and clouds.
He [Wandjina] chosen the place [rock]. That's the cloud. He come with it. He stopped there, and he stopped forever, for I don't know how long, thousands and thousands. It representing cloud, that stone is a cloud, heat take him up. It's the smoke up, then when the cold air get it he'll stop there then, up in the sky here, then the rain falls. (D. Mowaljarlai, quoted in Vinnicombe & Mowaljarlai Reference Vinnicombe, Mowaljarlai, Helskog and Olsen1995, 235–6)
This information strengthens the understanding of the Wanjina Wunggurr cultural landscape as a complex and dynamic meshwork of many levels of meaning and significance. Within this landscape, places can gain their significance also in relation to overarching mythological narratives and creation stories that have relevance to the whole community. Ngayanggananyi (Mount Trafalgar) is the place of the local origins of circumcision and is known as ‘the Mountain of Initiation’. Here, ‘Ancestral Beings first dug a trench around a mountain so it was cut off from its surrounding stone matrix’ (Redmond Reference Redmond, Jones, Eliade and Adams2005, 9462). The respective initiation circle dance is, in turn, an emulation of digging around the base of the mountain.
These observations further illustrate the close bodily and experiential connections between people and Country. The different elements that can be identified and observed are fundamentally dynamic and can potentially be regarded as transformations of each other. In some contexts, places and people, people and paintings become interchangeable and appear as different expressions of implicit materials or spiritual energies. The creation of identity of human beings is understood to be fundamentally and irreducibly relational. Their creation is bound to the spatio-temporal constitution of Country. Following Clifford (Reference Clifford1997), Blundell (Reference Blundell, Trigger and Griffiths2003, 176) has stated that ‘identities are constituted in the contexts of people's historically specific experiences of dwelling and travel’. These processes are necessarily negotiations between socially constituted persons and Country. Both people and places can be understood as constituted by mythic as well as personal or historic events. Rumsey (Reference Rumsey1994, 123–4) gives the example of the rock-shelter Ngegamorro Minjil Munganu (see also Mowaljarlai & Malnic Reference Mowaljarlai and Malnic1993, 62–5) in the Northern Kimberley near the King Edward River. Here, a small hole is said to have been created by a bolt of lightning when the Wunambal man Collier Banymorro was conceived. As a result, Collier was not only identified with the respective spirit from Ngegamorro, but rocks at this place are now being identified as ‘Collier’. These observations illustrate the dialectic between the individual and the communal, ‘a nice example of the fusion of mythic and historic modes, subject to shifting hierarchies of emphasis’ (Redmond, quoted in Rumsey Reference Rumsey1994, 124).
People used to camp here rain time, all this lot is their home, belong to Ngegamorro tribe and the stop here and people camp here every flood time. This one Ngegamorro chosen this cave and he put his picture here. Ngegamorro standing up there. (D. Mowaljarlai, quoted in Doring Reference Doring2000, 248)
The relationship between people and Country is inherently dynamic and unstable. While members of the Wanjina Wunggurr community insist that ‘even if no one today knows the full story, the story is still in the country if you know how to read it’ (Oobagooma et al. Reference Oobagooma, Umbagai, Doohan and Porr2016, 369), there is always more to be discovered and Country is never treated as though its significance were already completely known. It is accepted that the world is inherently indeterminate and under-determined; it remains historically plural (Pina-Cabral Reference Pina-Cabral2017, 12). Based on his research in the Kimberley and elsewhere in Australia, Rumsey (Reference Rumsey1994, 127) has consequently made the case that in people's actual experience of Country and ‘the Dreaming’, the strands of mythical stories and those of human agents are thoroughly intertwined: ‘What is most characteristic of this “mode of orientation” is not necessarily any particular emphasis on mythic versus historical consciousness, but the realisation of both in a particular form of inscription—in the places through which one moves in the course of social life’ (Rumsey Reference Rumsey1994, 127).
This way of being prioritizes relationships over essences. It does not assume that the latter remain unchanged when their context is changed. Technical definitions or categories, taxonomies and classifications play minor roles in this world view. If a rock image, an artefact or a place is constituted primarily by its context, by its relative spatiality to others and by its position in narratives that constitute Country, it can, by definition, not be removed or displaced. In this sense, an image or a place can acquire the status of a person, who is also a unique consequence of a myriad of historical and present relationships. In the local Indigenous understanding, the relationship between people, place and landscape is constructed according to an ontology that focuses on processes and context. It stresses involvement over disassociation, dynamic specific development over classification (Holbraad & Pedersen Reference Holbraad and Pedersen2017; Strathern Reference Strathern1988).
This is the Lalai story about the people who killed the baby Whale. When they killed the baby Whale the mother and father whales were so upset they wanted to punish the people, so they made a big tunnel to break the country in half. They busted the country in half with their arms [flippers]. The mother one used her arm and the father used his tail. They busted it and killed all the people because they were really upset that their baby was killed. The father Whale split the rock, hit it with his tail to kill the people. And when they were swimming he hit them again with his tail. (J. Oobagooma, quoted in Blundell et al. Reference Blundell, Doohan, Vachon, Allbrock, Jebb and Bornman2017a, 286)
These significant and constitutional relationships are created and expressed by narratives and stories, which, accordingly, take on a central position in the expression and communication of knowledge—as opposed to their marginal position in Western ideologies (Porr & Matthews Reference Porr and Matthews2016). For Aboriginal people and societies, story is crucial for all aspects of life and existence. Furthermore, narratives and stories are often articulated spatially and mapped in caves across Country. Learning stories means learning about Country, its history and significance and the relationships between Wandjina as they sit in their Home Country. Just as people therefore are connected in a fundamental way to places, so they are fundamentally connected to stories and narratives that form the fabric of Wanjina Wunggurr society. Just as people have responsibilities to look after Country, they have responsibilities to look after and preserve stories. In doing so, they preserve society and culture which is both embedded and embodied in ‘art’ and Country.
Country, landscape and archaeological interpretation
What are the implications of these considerations for the interpretation of archaeological evidence? Restricting myself here to so-called hunting and gathering societies (itself a problematic category: see, e.g., Barnard Reference Barnard2004), the main consequence appears to be that also in the concern with these societies complex issues surrounding the perception of the environment and alterity must be considered. This seems to be a rather trivial conclusion (see, e.g., Ingold Reference Ingold2000; Reference Ingold2016). However, in the archaeological study of hunting and gathering people, and particularly in deep time or Palaeolithic contexts, the mainstream analytical framework remains positivist and modernist with a focus on cost-benefit considerations, adaptive strategies, optimal foraging and quantifiable relationships between the organism, resources, costs and effects (Porr Reference Porr, Coward, Hosfield, Pope and Wenban-Smith2015). This focus can be contrasted with the available ethnographic and social anthropological literature and respective approaches, which are much broader and variable (see contributions in Cummings et al. Reference Cummings, Jordan and Zvelebil2014). I believe that the examples presented above clearly support a much more intense concern with these issues and, as I want to argue below, with a much more intense concern with recent discussions around ontological and epistemological questions in archaeology and anthropology (Alberti & Bray Reference Alberti and Bray2009; Alberti & Marshall Reference Alberti and Marshall2009; Alberti et al. Reference Alberti, Fowles, Holbraad, Marshall and Witmore2011; Harris & Robb Reference Harris and Robb2012; Webmoor & Witmore Reference Webmoor and Witmore2008). Referring to the rich ethnographic insights from New Guinea and Australia, David et al. (Reference David, Lamb, Kaiwari, Cummings, Jordan and Zvelebil2014) have argued for epistemologically and ontologically variable and reflexive approaches towards the understanding of place, mobility and movement in hunting and gathering, and other traditional societies. In the context of a case study discussing Indigenous people from New Guinea, they stress that food and resource procurement does not feature as a central focal point of interest: ‘Instead, landscapes, mobility, residence, history, gender, kinship, and territoriality are centrally located in a world of mythical origins’ (David et al. Reference David, Lamb, Kaiwari, Cummings, Jordan and Zvelebil2014, Loc. 30236; see also Ballard Reference Ballard2014; Bradley Reference Bradley, David and Thomas2008; David Reference David2002; David et al. Reference David, Lamb, Delannpy, Pivoru, Rowe, Pivoru, Frank, Frank, Fairbairn and Pivoru2012). In this paper, I want to support the direction of this argument and, based on the discussion above, I want briefly to elaborate three interrelated themes: ‘space and place’, ‘story and narrative’ and ‘knowledge and representation’.
The understanding of human practices in landscapes rests on the understanding of space. There can be little doubt that in the archaeological study of hunting and gathering people, space usually does not form a significant category of critical engagement. It rather features as an invisible background in which organisms and other entities exist. Space only becomes important as the distance between the organism and relevant resources (which can then be used to calculate costs and benefits). This orientation resonates very little with the considerations outlined above. In contrast, it is very notable that numerous similarities can be observed with a dynamic, relational and phenomenological understanding of the interrelationship between human beings and space (see contributions in Bender Reference Bender1993; David & Thomas Reference David and Thomas2008; Hirsch & O'Hanlon Reference Hirsch and O'Hanlon1995; Seaman & Mugerauer Reference Seaman and Mugerauer1985). For example, Casey (Reference Casey, Feld and Basso1996) has argued that instead of space, the notion of place should be given greater attention, because it rather captures the phenomenological and socio-cultural character of spatial relationships. This view also emphasizes that the idea of neutral space is itself a socio-cultural and historically dependent construct. Inspired by recent approaches within human geography, Massey (Reference Massey2005) has similarly proposed that space should be recognized as the product of interrelations and as constituted through interactions. Space should be understood as the sphere in which distinct trajectories coexist, in the sense of contemporaneous plurality. Because space is a product of ‘relations-between’, ‘it is always in the process of being made. It is never finished; never closed. Perhaps we could imagine space as the simultaneity of stories-so-far’ (Massey Reference Massey2005, 9).
Dambeema is home. It represents our land. Dambeema is where you came from. where your Wandjina come from. We have a map in our brain. Dambeema can be a big place or a small place; it can be as big as the whole country from Oobagooma to nearly the Hunter River, and it can be where you put your swag with your family. Dambeemangaddee means all the people from the dambeema. That's why we called our claim ‘Dambeemangaddee’. (J. Oobagooma, quoted in Blundell et al. Reference Blundell, Doohan, Vachon, Allbrock, Jebb and Bornman2017a, 26)
Within this understanding, space does not have an independent (Cartesian) quality or existence. It is always a product of socially constituted practices. As such, it cannot feature as a neutral background category in which things and people exist. Such an understanding resonates not only with the Aboriginal understanding of ‘place’ outlined above (Casey Reference Casey, Feld and Basso1996). As Pina-Cabral (Reference Pina-Cabral2017, 11) has recently outlined,
humans invest their meanings in the world (they reify meaning) and then interact with these reifications—theirs and other people's. Even if I am alone, I permanently interact with the traces of others; I encounter the traces of earlier persons as affordances with which I engage in my own processes of meaning creation [. . .] the very development of problem solving and skill acquisition in children is a process of scaffolding, to the extent that adults provide the child with pathways for problem solving.
The space in which life is lived and human beings grow is always already socialized and historicized. Life means engaging with the spaces, traces and tracks that others have created. In relationship and correspondence with these, one needs to find and create one's own pathways. The latter concept was not only the explicit focus of a project by four Senior Aboriginal Elders from the Kimberley (Doring Reference Doring2000; Doring & Nyawarra Reference Doring and Nyawarra2014); it is also the basis for recognizing and acknowledging the logic and importance of ‘story and narrative’ in Indigenous ontologies.
We call it now Pathway Project because where all the tracks of wanjina and kangaroo and emu everything that walked put their track and that is the project now we following the history. All that education belong here to this area. People can respect all different area when he got his own story. I can't go stealing another man's story, no way! This story only belong here . . . one place. (D. Mowaljarlai, quoted in Doring Reference Doring2000, 25; emphasis in original)
Ingold (Reference Ingold2011, 152–4) has developed the notion of ‘wayfaring’ as the most fundamental mode of being in the world. It draws attention to the fact that, for an inhabitant, places are not locations with intrinsic attributes. Rather, they are ‘topics’ that are joined by stories; they are things that call up memories of previous journeys. Things do not exist like facts, but they occur. They cannot be classified like facts or data, but must be narrated. Places become gatherings of things, knots in stories:
It is a world of movement and becoming, in which any thing—caught at a particular place and moment—enfolds within its constitution the history of relations that have brought it there. In such a world, we can understand the nature of things only by attending to their relations, or in other words, by telling their stories. (Ingold Reference Ingold2011, 160)
The importance of story consequently relates to the fundamental recognition that every thing is constituted relationally and through its history and development. This orientation accepts that the world is of a mind-boggling complexity that cannot be grasped and explained through and with reference to general and universal causes. It also means that anything needs to be understood within its local context and relationships, and cannot be removed from the latter, or presented outside them. Complexity is the product of local entanglements and cannot be accessed and learned independently from its respective context. This is a world of engagement and interaction, and not one of separation and dissection. To be able to understand the status of story in relational ontology, one must ask what knowledge in a storied world is and how it can be developed, shared and accessed (Porr & Matthews Reference Porr and Matthews2016). These ideas have profound effects on the notions of representation and knowledge.
Within a relational framework, images, language and stories do not contain information about places and things that can easily be removed from bodily engagement; they are there to direct attention. To learn about anything, you need to do it yourself, you need to establish your own interaction and dynamic relationship. The Indigenous view accepts that knowledge can only be acquired through these entanglements. There is no distinction between representational knowledge and bodily skill. It can only be acquired practically, dynamically and through movement and engagement. No living being acquires knowledge independently from its becoming. With reference to the work of de Certeau, Massey (Reference Massey2005) makes the point that within this framework or understanding, representation becomes de facto an impossibility. Any act of marking or engagement is necessarily a creative act in its own right; it cannot represent in a mimetic sense, but it is always itself constitutive (Massey Reference Massey2005, 28). The idea of knowledge as removed from bodily engagement is a product of the Western illusion of the ability of representation. The latter is foremost a product of the invention of writing (as distinct from orality) and of the modern scientific method: ‘Narratives, stories, trajectories are all suppressed in the emergence of science as the writing of the world. And that process of writing, more generally of making a mark upon the blank space of a page, is what removes the dynamism of “real life”’ (Massey Reference Massey2005, 25; see also Ingold Reference Ingold2007). The reliance on images and stories in Indigenous thought is therefore not an ineffective or early expression of knowledge production or information storage; it is the reflection of relational ontology (see also Holbraad & Pedersen Reference Holbraad and Pedersen2017, 83; Olsen Reference Olsen2010).
Based on these considerations, it appears that archaeological interpretation should indeed rather start from the premise of a framework of relational ontology and not within an essentialist and positivist one. However, epistemologically, archaeology depends heavily on the latter and it remains unclear if it is even possible to revise the project of archaeology without having to abandon it altogether (González-Ruibal Reference González-Ruibal2013; Thomas Reference Thomas2004). As part of a wider shift within the social sciences, the discipline of archaeology has also struggled with these questions in the more recent past. It is obviously not possible to review the respective discussions here (see, e.g., Alberti et al. Reference Alberti, Fowles, Holbraad, Marshall and Witmore2011; Holbraad & Pedersen Reference Holbraad and Pedersen2017; Holbraad et al. Reference Holbraad, Pedersen and Viveiros de Castro2014). However, the three general themes that have been identified above might serve as valuable starting points to give the discussion within archaeology more focus. Archaeology should be ideally situated to examine the social and relational construction of space and how this has impacted the making of different types of things. The focus should be placed on processes and local transformations, tracks and pathways, and not on classifications. Life is not lived in blocks and areas, but along pathways, tracks and routes. Archaeology has a unique potential to reengage and define the spatial, and to develop methodologies that stress the local and contextual over the taxonomic. Furthermore, the insights into the understanding of Country, together with a critical challenge to a representational understanding of knowledge, can also be brought to bear on a reassessment of the phenomenon of so-called rock art and Palaeolithic (cave) art (see, e.g., Hussain & Floss Reference Hussain, Floss, Bueno-Ramirez and Bahn2015a,Reference Hussain and Flossb; Oobagooma et al. Reference Oobagooma, Umbagai, Doohan and Porr2016; Porr Reference Porr, Coward, Hosfield, Pope and Wenban-Smith2015). These developments should not invalidate traditional taxonomic archaeological methods, but they should allow a better understanding of their status in relation to past practices and motivations. Questions of scale, agency and causality will not disappear, but must be renegotiated within a relational ontological framework.
There appear to be numerous technological opportunities available in the current toolkit of archaeology to address the challenge of bringing storied knowledge and classificatory knowledge into a conversation with each other (McDonald & Veth Reference McDonald and Veth2011; Reference McDonald and Veth2013). If these engagements fail, the past will become only an impoverished version of the present. Worse, the past only becomes a justification for the present. Related questions have been discussed extensively within the context of archaeological theory and practice in the light of the post-colonial challenge (Liebmann & Rizvi Reference Liebmann and Rizvi2008; Lydon & Rizvi Reference Lydon and Rizvi2012). The most productive way forward seems to be an enhanced awareness of the numerous deeply engrained modernist and colonial legacies and an acknowledgement of the social construction of scientific knowledge (Thomas Reference Thomas2004; Willerslev Reference Willerslev2011). As a result, archaeological narratives as well as Indigenous narratives can be critically assessed as scientific, mythical or historical narratives (David et al. Reference David, Lamb, Kaiwari, Cummings, Jordan and Zvelebil2014, Loc. 30234), to understand their respective strengths, weaknesses and ontological logic. These orientations open spaces for exchange and debate as well as collaborative and creative responses, which can also include new forms of expression and writing that themselves reflexively accept the limitations of writing and representation.
In the case of the Kimberley, some inspiration can come from projects and publications that were either developed in close collaboration or even fully directed by local Aboriginal communities (Blundell et al. Reference Blundell, Doohan, Vachon, Allbrock, Jebb and Bornman2017a,Reference Blundell, Woolagoodja, Oobagooma, Umbagai, David and McNivenb; Doohan et al. Reference Doohan, Umbagai, Oobagooma, Porr, Kohl, Kuba, Ivanoff and Burkard2016; Oobagooma et al. Reference Oobagooma, Umbagai, Doohan and Porr2016). The history of the community of Mowanjum, written in collaboration with anthropologist Mary Anne Jebb (Reference Jebb2008), integrates historical analyses and explanations with direct statements and perspectives from a range of individuals from different generations and backgrounds. This strategy allows an analytical approach that does not drown or suppress individual voices. A related perspective was also explored in a recent paper on the problematic status of the idea of ‘animism’ in the context of understanding Aboriginal rock art (Porr & Bell Reference Porr and Bell2012). This paper not only argued that the analytical notion of ‘animism’ is Eurocentric and outdated. It also advocated a different approach, both in content and form, that integrates direct Aboriginal voices and presents the research process as a conversation (two-way thinking) that relates different levels of meaning with a range of strengths and weaknesses. Finally, Gwion Gwion (Doring Reference Doring2000) reflects a project of four Senior Aboriginal Elders that presents cultural knowledge in an authoritative as well as a multi-layered fashion. The book is part of a long-term project of cultural education and communication. It equally contains academic explanations and contextual elaborations as well as direct statements by the relevant Aboriginal knowledge holders. It also heavily relies on images and photographs to show the interrelationships and existential exchangeability between beings, images, animals and Country—as well as their independence and incommensurability. These publications (and the authors and communities behind them) must attempt to communicate, through writing and photographs, meanings and insights that cannot be communicated through language and representation. They must present the contextual out of context and must engage with the limitations of language and knowledge themselves. Each book is the product of a complex negotiation; it is an attempt to achieve the impossible (see also Blundell et al. Reference Blundell, Doohan, Vachon, Allbrock, Jebb and Bornman2017a).
‘. . . it's beyond our knowledge’ (D. Mowaljarlai, quoted in Doring Reference Doring2000, 256).
In the spirit of the ontological turn, it is important to take these publications and their logic seriously. Largely without making explicit reference to the respective academic literature about the ontological turn, they are indeed ‘comparative engagements, the coming together of alterities in ways that acknowledge and celebrate those alterities. They are engagements that hold alterities open to scrutiny without collapsing or eating them’ (Marshall, in Alberti et al. Reference Alberti, Fowles, Holbraad, Marshall and Witmore2011, 900). In a sense, these publications are reflective of the ‘ontological turn's intensification of anthropology's experimental condition’ and the attempt to transform ‘cultural critique into conceptual creativity without in so doing losing any of its critical edge and reflexive impetus’ (Holbraad & Pedersen Reference Holbraad and Pedersen2017, 23). Most importantly, if the insights of the ontological turn are indeed to be taken seriously, then the products of our engagements must also find new forms of expression, both in content and form.
Acknowledgements
This paper has profited immensely from discussions with many people over the years: Leah Umbagai, Kim Doohan, Janet Oobagooma, Valda Blundell, Donny Woolagoodja, Hannah Rachel Bell, Peter Veth, Jo McDonald, Sven Ouzman, Ben Smith, Jamie Hampson, Leslie Zubieta. I would like to acknowledge the members of the Wanjina Wunggurr communities for sharing their insights with me. Finally, the paper has also profited from funding by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Research Fellowship) and the Australian Research Council (LP150100490). Two anonymous reviewers provided important suggestions for improvements. The author remains solely responsible for any mistakes.
