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Ritually Orchestrated Seascapes: Hunting Magic and Dugong Bone Mounds in Torres Strait, NE Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2003

Ian J. McNiven
Affiliation:
School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia; ian.mcniven@arts.monash.edu.au.
Ricky Feldman
Affiliation:
227a Brighton Road, Elmwood, Victoria 3184, USA.

Abstract

People dwell in a world of their own subjective making. For many hunters, engagement with the ‘natural’ world is a negotiated affair because animals, like people, possess spirits. A critical part of the negotiation process is mediation of the human–prey relationship by hunting magic. Torres Strait Islanders of NE Australia are skilled hunters of dugongs, a marine mammal whose capture entails a broad range of ritual practices. Following ethnographic expectations, excavation of bone mounds reveals ritual treatment of dugong bones, especially skulls, to increase hunting success. Extensive use of dugong bones in ritual sites has important implications for the extent to which ‘secular’ midden deposits are representative of Islander subsistence practices. Since dugong bone mounds provide archaeological insights into Islander spiritual relationships with dugongs, chronological changes in use of these sites inform us about historical developments in Islander ontology and their ritual orchestration of seascapes and spiritual connections to the sea.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2003 The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

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