Method of mounting stone tools on Koondi. Tribes east and north-east of Lake Eyre

The gum used for mounting constituted a very important article of barter. However, although the natives had collected the gum in their own country, they would barter it to neighbouring tribes, and were not willing to divulge the secrets of its location. The best source of gum was from the mindry bush, and it was mostly the women who usually collected the mindry roots. The roots would be broken into lenghts of about two feet, then sliced, and placed on hot ashes. Next it was rolled into a ball nad mixed with kangaroo dung to increase its toughness. Includes plates and figures

Chipped stone tools of the Aboriginal tribes east and north-east of Lake Eyre, South Australia

Many of the stones used for weaponry or as tools, were easy to source and therefore, any that were worn out were discarded as the supply for new ones was plentiful. Rough flakes which were chipped from the original stone were discarded and the pieces which were suitable to be made into tools, were taken back to the camp where further sorting was done, into various categories. Some were useful as tuhlas (chisels), others as kalara, (scrapers), and others were made into pirries. Sometimes, one man would specialise on one tool only. Pirries were used for fine graving work, or as a drill to drill holes into mussell shells

Design Theory and the Australian Tula Adze

The tula adze is a distinctive composite tool that was used in the Australian arid zone during the late Holocene. In this paper we use design theory to investigate why this particular tool form was so pervasive across time and space. Design theory provides a rational means for classifying tool designs and for determining why particular tool design classes were employed over others. We draw upon ethnographic and archaeological evidence to characterize the design of the tula adze and conclude that it is consistently the product of a “reliable” design strategy. We further determine that the high cost of a reliable design was chosen because the tula adze was employed in situations where failure could not be tolerated. Specifically, we argue that an important role of the tula adze was to manufacture wooden goods for not only personal use but more significantly for trade. The quantity and quality of these goods had an extremely strong bearing on the economic sustainability of arid zone Aboriginal groups

Magic stones of the tribes east and north-east of Lake Eyre.

Any stone that was unusual was picked up by the tribes- man and sooner or later was endowed with magical qualities. To the native, there was no effect without a cause, so anything which occurred without a reasonable explanation was thought to be caused by the stones, which then became known as magic stones. Another misconception the natives held was that if the stones could be dissolved they would create rain. This misconception arose, most likely from the discovery of a piece of ice, shaped like a stone that melted once the temperature rose. They believed that the melted stone had caused the rain. Includes plates

Quantifying the Mulligan River Pituri, Duboisia hopwoodii ((F. Muell.) F.Muell.) (Solanaceae), trade of Central Australia

Pituri (Duboisia hopwoodii (F. Muell.) F. Muell.) (Solanaceae) is a narcotic shrub which grows in the parallel dune fields of the Simpson Desert of far south-western Queensland, Australia. The ethnographic literature points to an impressive scale of trade of pituri between Aboriginal groups across inland eastern Australia, and suggests total annual production of 2500-3000 kg of dried plant material. However, there has been no attempt to assess the feasibility of these figures, or investigate the number of pituri plants required to sustain such a scale of trade. We mapped the distribution and density of D. hopwoodii along four one km wide transects, totally 130 km in length. Our results suggest that the population of pituri west of the Mulligan River could number around 36,000 mature plants. Ninety randomly selected plants were measured, and the foliage of six of these was harvested and dried. Plants yielded between 0.15 and 6.68 kg of dry matter. Our 90 measured plants would have yielded around 155 kg of dried pituri. Therefore, between 1450 and 1740 plants would be required to sustain the purported level of trade and use. With knowledge of the location of dense pituri groves and highly efficient expeditions, harvesting this number of plants is feasible. However, numerous questions remain surrounding the ecological and ethnographic aspects of the pituri trade

Truly Non-Cooperative Games: A Unified Theory

This dissertation introduces "Truly Non-Cooperative Games" – axioms and complimentary negotiation models developed to analyse the human "Struggle for Life" – and presents "The Principle of Relative Insularity", a unified theory of value which unites economics, astrophysics, and biology. In brief, we discover that, reductio ad absurdum, value is a derivative function of relative insularity.non-cooperative games; theory of value; economic development strategy; systemic risks; global threat mitigation; national security; the problem of induction; relative insularity; international cooperation; human survival