Yolngu technologies

The following is fairly rudimentary, but should be sufficient to lead the reader to the more detailed sources. Warner (1937:471-505) has a long section on material culture.

Portability

Certain Yolngu technologies were highly specialised, placing Yolngu technology as a whole at the least portable end of the spectrum. Not only did Yolngu people use a variety of fixed facilities, notably fish-traps, but spear-types were highly elaborated and numerous.

Energy

Yolngu fire-sticks were similar to those used in other regions, and used in a similar way, but without the carrying container of Sandbeach people (Warner 1937:495). A fire-brand of pandanus heart-wood was carried on journeys. People used fire for cooking, repelling mosquitoes, as a deodorant during mortuary ceremonies, to burn off long grass and undergrowth, and as a tool for the shaping of bark and wood, to produce steam for shaping wood, and in rites of passage.

Manufacturing tools and techniques

The use of iron pre-dates European and Chinese settlement of the Northern Territory, for the Macassan trepangers who visited Arnhem Land each wet-season, beginning at least in the seventeenth century (McKnight 1976 ), used iron tools and weapons. The iron axe (“tomahawk”) was used to make lipalipa dugout canoes (Warner 1937:491).
           The manufacture of string was similar to elsewhere (using the inner bark of the banyan tree, and human hair). Warner reports the use of a spindle, twirled against the thigh, for hair string. (Warner 1937:475-6). String was both an implement in itself, and a raw material for the manufacture of other implements as well as clothing and religious paraphernalia.

Transport

Yolngu used a variety of types of canoe and raft (Warner 1937:490-3):

bark canoe (barrwan) or stringybark, with the inner side of the bark on the outside and with sewn ends, lashed gunwale-poles, and four wooden stretchers; a stone secured with a rope served as an anchor;

lipalipa dug-out canoe of a type introduced by Macassan trepangers; no outrigger, sometimes used with a woven pandanus sail, and carved wooden paddle (used also as a rudder), used in coastal waters to hunt dugong and turtle;

paper-bark roll raft, used to cross creeks and rivers;

log raft, used to cross creeks and rivers;

swamp canoe, used in the extensive Arafura Swamp, especially for goose-egging: men used these to pushthrough the flooded grass-plains and reed-beds, to travel to the goose hatcheries, make camp, and transport eggs back to base-camp (Thomson photos 1102-1136).
 

Containers

Women’s net-bags, of looped string, made on a simple loom of two upright sticks, were used to carry cycad-nuts, yams, large bulbs and other foods (Warner 1937:478).
           Twined baskets or “dillybags” (22.5-37.5 cm. long) were of pandanus leaf. Women used them to carry food, fire-sticks, string and other gear, worn with the string handle round the forehead. Men used similar baskets to carry spear-heads, red ochre and white clay, human hair, fibre string, and ceremonial objects. Women also used twined baskets with a large, open mesh, used to carry cycad-nuts (Warner 1937:480-82).
           A man’s madayin dillybag (about 17.5 cm long), which Warner (1937:480-82) calls a “honey basket” was closely woven, and painted with patrigroup designs, decorated with human hair, lorikeet feathers and possum fur. It was worn under the armpit, with the string handle over the shoulder (ibid.).
People made troughs from folded paperbark, e.g. for gathering munydjutj plums (Thomson photo 1024-5).
           Twined pandanus nganmarra mat as working surface in food preparation, or sheets of stringy-bark or paperbark.

Shelter and clothing

Warner (1937:471-2) describes six types of dwelling from a semicircular wind-break and bark lean-to, used in the dry season, to the stringybark tunnels and platform-houses used in the wet. The latter “pile-house” was found particularly on the Glyde and Goyder rivers, an adaptation to infestation by mosquitoes – a fire under the platform provided smoke. A simpler version was a sleeping platform, with fire underneath. Thomson also photographs the tree platform, constructed for camping in the goose swamps, and for catching flying geese. Other house-types included a large paperbark covered domw (liya-damala, “eagle-head”), and semi-circular huts of paperbark (dhudi djerrakitj, ‘quail tails’) in the cold, windy time (Thomson photos 1111-19; See Shaneen Fantin (2003) for a omprehensive overview of Yolngu houses and shelters).
            The basic element of construction was two forked sticks and a horizontal rail, also used in the construction of fish-traps, a construction that was sacralised (Reser 1977).
            Given the hot climate, clothing in this region was minimal. Women and children wore a pubic covering, necklaces, arm-rings, and in certain ceremonies, a string breast girdle; men wore hair belts, arm-rings, and carried “spirit bags” of looped string, painted with red ochre, round the neck. It was used by healers and hunters, and was carried in the teeth when fighting to lend courage and power (Warner 1937:478-9).
            Men wore other items in ceremonies, such as the hair belt, and a forehead band for the Gunapipi ceremony (p.479).
            An important multifunctional item used in this region was the nganmarra conical mat of twined pandanus. It was used by women as an apron, a sunshade for mother and infant, and as a bassinet; men and women used it as a mosquito and fly-net and a working surface. A flat semi-circular version was used by men and women as a shade for the mid-day siesta (Warner 1937:483).

Production technology

Tools and weapons
Extractors
As in other regions the hardwood digging stick (dhona) was the main tool in women’s production. The edge-ground axe also served as an extractor for mangrove worms, honey, etc.

Immobilisers
Notable in this region were the many types of spear used for hunting, fishing and fighting, and for exchange: Warner describes some thirteen varieties (1937:484-486).

Stone-headed spear
Stone spear, cane or wooden shaft, of Eucalypt or mangrove wood, hafted with string and beeswax (Thomson 1949).

Wooden-headed spears
single prong, unbarbed
separate head and shaft, cane shaft, large and small versions, fighting and hunting;

javelin spear
barbed one side;

multi-prong
hafted wooden head, barbed one side for fishing;

iron prongs for fishing;

manydjalpi lace spear
one piece;
separate head and shaft, of ironwood or stringy-bark
mainly for display and exchange.

Spear-thrower
flat, for spears and harpoons, small hook inserted in the narrow end, to insert in depression at the end of the spear or harpoon;

cylindrical rod, with hair tassel, used by older men and in ceremonies.

Immobilisers/retrievers

Harpoon, single iron prong inserted into a socket in a thick wooden spear-shaft, employed with a 20 m. three-ply rope of hibiscus fibre (Warner 1937:493); in the 1970s a multi-prong harpoon head was in use for turtle hunting.

Poisons
Thomson names the roots of “Tehphroia leptoclada” and fruits of “Diospyras maritima” as fish poisons (DT photos 860-1).

Facilities
Yolngu used a wide variety of facilities, especially fishtraps.

Nets
Warner mentions the string net, with a 2.5 cm. (1 in.) mesh, but not its form or use. Altman describes the eastern Kunwinjku hand-held net (Altman 1987).

Fish-traps
Yolngu employed several types of fish-trap, adapted to use in coastal waters, estuaries, rivers, streams and swamps

V-shaped fence of stone and sticks, at mouth of small tidal stream, stranding fish at low tide (Warner 1937:494; Thomson photos 772-3).

Burarra people used a long cylindrical basket-net at the point of the V for netting fish in large swamps (Thomson photos 751-771). Three men seem to have cooperated in its use. Fish fences were also used at Murrungga Island in the Crocodile Islands by Yan-nhangu people (Thomson photos 776-7).

Straight paperbark and rock fence across mouth of stream at junction with river, to trap large incoming fish.

Swamp-trap: covered channel leading into hole with twined basket as a trap; small fish trapped by bailing out the hole.

Gurrka-gol fish trap, consisted of a fence or weir, with stringy-bark spouts inserted, and directed into circular bark troughs in which the fish were caught on grass beds. A man would sit inside each trough to collect the fish (Thomson photos 720-750).  It was used to catch catfish, ratjuk, watarra (rifle fish), and guykulu (Thomson, 1938; photos 862-71).

Food processing

Cooking
Yolngu used an earth oven for larger game: stones were placed in a fire in a shallow pit, covered with dampened paper-bark or leaves, the meat placed on the bark or leaves, and covered with the same material, andthe whole covered in sand (Warner 1937:495). Smaller game and fish were cooked directly on the fire, or first wrapped in paperbark (Warner 1937:496).
            Some foods, notably cycad-palm nuts, required considerable labour in their preparation – pounding, leaching and cooking – to remove toxins.
            Among food-processing equipment the following are recorded:

broken spiral-shell knife, mounted on a stick, for cutting yam (djitama) (Thomson photo collection 960-2);

nganmarra mat as working surface in food preparation
or sheets of stringy-bark or paperbark;

the use of grindstones and mullers for lily seeds and rush-corms, as well as cycad palm nuts, pounded and/or ground to make into cakes.

Storage

Yolngu people pounded meat with Buchanania obovata (Green Plum) and red ochres to produce a paste that could be stored for some time.

Military technologies

In contrast with Gippsland, Warner describes only two types of club used by men, the “jabiru type” with a beaked head, and a flat-bladed club or ironwood, also used to parry (Warner 1937:489-90). No shield was used Women and sometimes men used digging sticks as fighting clubs (Warner 1937:176). Fighting spears included:

Wooden-headed spears
single prong, unbarbed
one-piece, mangrove wood, for fighting in mangroves and vine-forest, and used when many spears are to be carried;

separate head and shaft, cane shaft, large and small versions, fighting and hunting;

hafted flat wooden blade, both edges sharpened;

javelin spear
barbed one side;
barbed both sides for fighting and “aesthetic” purposes;

multi-prong
two-prong, hafted head, barbed one side, short.

Other
stingray spine spear;

shovel-spear – based on the hafted flat wooden blade, but substituted with a beaten iron blade.
 

References

Altman, J.C., Hunter-Gatherers Today: an Aboriginal Economy in North Australia, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1987.

Fantin, S., ‘Housing Aboriginal culture in north east Arnhem Land’ (PhD dissertation, University of Queensland, 2003.)

MacKnight, C.C., The Voyage to Marege': Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1976.

Reser, J. P., ‘The dwelling as motif in Aboriginal bark painting’, in P. J. Ucko eds, Form in Indigenous Art: Schematisation in the art of Aboriginal Australia and Prehistoric Europe, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1977, 210-19.

Thomson, D.F., Photographic collection, Museum Victoria.

Thomson, D.F., ‘A new type of fish trap from Arnhem Land, Northern Territory of Australia'’, Man, vol. 38, no. 216, 1938, 193-198.

Thomson, D.F., Economic Structure and the Ceremonial Exchange Cycle in Arnhem Land, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1949.

Warner, W. L., A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe, 1st edit., Harper, New York, 1937.

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