Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate

Sutton and Walshe have succeeded in showing that the underlying premise of Pascoe’s Dark Emu, that First Australians were agriculturalists, is untenable. Its neartotal reliance on a subset of historical records removes insights that could have come from studies of ethnobotany, peoples’ aggregation patterns, and the spiritual basis for regenerating plants and animals. It does not consider widely used methods to establish the age and function of tools at sites. Instead, it offers the reaffirming glow of ‘agricultural supremacy’ which is argued to overshadow the voices of Traditional Owners, social and human scientists. Is this a universal conspiracy or just disciplinary blindness? Pascoe has projected the ingenuity of Aboriginal land and resource use into the public domain, but is it for the first time? It is approximately 20 years since I reviewed a monograph by Rupert Gerritsen on Nhanda Villages of the Victoria District, Western Australia (Veth 2002). I noted at the time ‘If you have ever subscribed to the theory of incipient agriculture in Australia or wanted to believe that (re)planting of yams or domiculture equated with the intensive management of cultigens then this slim research paper is just what you have been waiting for’ (Veth 2002:57). I concluded that the majority of Gerritsen’s conclusions were unsupported by the evidence. In short, I rejected the following claims: