Dark emu : Aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture / Bruce Pascoe.
By: Pascoe, Bruce
.
Publisher: Melbourne : Scribe, 2018Description: 278 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.ISBN: 9781911344780 : (pbk).Subject(s): Aboriginal Australians -- History | Aboriginal Australians -- Agriculture -- History | Agriculture -- Australia -- History | Land use, Rural -- Australia | Aboriginal Australians -- Social life and customsDDC classification: 994.0049915 | Item type | Current location | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loanable Book | Library | General Collection | 994.0049915 PAS (Browse shelf) | Available |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Chapter 1. Agriculture -- Chapter 2. Aquaculture -- Chapter 3. Population and housing -- Chapter 4. Storage and preservation -- Chapter 5. Fire -- Chapter 6. The heavens, language and the law -- Chapter 7. Australian agricultural revolution -- Chapter 8. Accepting history and creating the future.
Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for precolonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing - behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.
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