Resource Managers: North American And Australian Hunter-Gatherers by Nancy M. Williams Eugene S. Hunn

Author:Nancy M. Williams, Eugene S. Hunn [Nancy M. Williams, Eugene S. Hunn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781000309850
Google: vRGjDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

Principles of Land Allocation

The Patterns

A Yolngu man, explaining to me the location of lands owned by clans at Yirrkala drew a checkerboard pattern. He said this grid was not a "real" map, but he used it to explain that adjacent areas belonged to groups of opposite moiety and alternate areas to groups of the same moiety. Another man produced a different schematic plan that referred to an even larger area. His plan was based on the location of water courses, and he explained that beginning at the point where the rivers empty into the sea, land ownership alternates in an upstream direction between groups of opposite moiety. Thus if a clan of the Dhuwa moiety owns the land at the mouth of the river, then a clan of the Yirritja moiety owns the contiguous land commencing on its upstream boundary. He also explained a further pattern of alternation by moiety affiliation in the ownership of coastal lands: Along the coast ownership of land that includes the mouth of a river alternates between groups of opposite moiety (cf. Gould this volume, on the allocation of sand and rock beach tracts in northwestern California). He underscored the jural status of this allocation of lands when he called it an important law.

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