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The power of stone: symbolic aspects of stone use and tool development in western Arnhem Land, Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Paul S.C. Taçon*
Affiliation:
Division of Anthropology, The Australian Museum, PO Box A285, Sydney South, NSW 2000, Australia

Extract

For want of other secure evidence, the study of art in prehistoric societies normally amounts to looking at pictures, though there must have also been sound, and surely music. The long lithic tradition of central northern Australia permits a rare insight into another kind of prehistoric art, the meaning and aesthetic order that may lie behind a lithic industry.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1991

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