Landscapes, Rock Art and the Dreaming : An Archaeology of Pre-Understanding

The apparent timelessness of the Dreaming of Aboriginal Australia has long mystified European observers, conjuring images of an ancient people in harmony with their surroundings. In this book, Bruno David examines the archaeological evidence for Dreaming-mediated places, rituals and symbolism. What emerges is not a static culture, but a mode of conceiving the world that emerged in its recognisable form only about 1000 years ago. During ethnographic times, the Dreaming was the framework of beliefs through which Aboriginal people gave meaning to the world. All peoples, past and present know and experience their world as already meaningful but changing. This is a world of what the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer has called "preunderstanding", a condition of knowledge that shapes one's experience of the world. The known and experienced world is a place of culture; not a place that is, but one that has become, through meaningful engagement. The world is given presence - given pre-sense - through the historicity of one's own being. It is the archaeology of this condition that forms the major theme of this book. By tracing through time the archaeological visibility of one well-known mode of preunderstanding - the Dreaming of Aboriginal Australia - the author argues that it is possible to scientifically explore an archaeology of preunderstanding; of body and mind, identity and Being-in-the-world.