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From the perspective of time: hunter-gatherer burials in south-eastern Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Judith Littleton
Judith Littleton*
Affiliation:
*Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, Private Mail Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand (Email: [email protected])
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Extract

In this study of the Murray River basin in south-eastern Australia, the author shows that Aboriginal burials are persistently attracted to specific kinds of landscape feature intermittently over long periods of time. Some attributes of burial, like body position, vary from site to site and over much shorter periods; others, like orientation, are even more local, relating only to a specific group of graves. Burial rites are thus sets of variables which may be independent of each other and change at different rates. Far from reflecting cultural arrivals and departures, in south-eastern Australia burial grounds were never formally founded and continually abandoned.

Keywords

AboriginalAustraliaburial ritesmortuary practicetime frames
Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 81 , Issue 314 , 1 December 2007 , pp. 1013 - 1028
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2007

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