Public-domain ebook
The Australian aboriginal
Language: en2,400 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Archaeology & Anthropology
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #71940.
About this book
Herbert Basedow’s work is a sprawling ethnographic treatise that gathers together decades of field notes, expedition reports, and personal observations on the peoples of central and northern Australia. The opening pages explain how a series of delayed plans and a succession of government‑sponsored journeys, ranging from geological surveys to medical relief trips, provided the author with unparalleled access to “uncontaminated tribes” and to the collections of Australian skulls and artefacts housed in European museums. Basedow frames the volume as a selective, illustrated account of everything from racial characteristics and tribal organization to religious ideas, art, and language, acknowledging the inevitable gaps forced by limited space and by his own need to publish promptly.
Written in the early‑1920s, the book bears the voice of a scientist‑explorer who blends meticulous description with a palpable sense of urgency about a culture he sees vanishing. Its style is formal, dense, and heavily footnoted, reflecting the academic conventions of its time while also conveying personal anecdotes of fieldwork and encounters with Aboriginal elders. Readers with an interest in the history of anthropology, colonial-era exploration, or the detailed documentation of Indigenous Australian customs will find it a valuable, if demanding, source.
The opening · free to read
For some years past it had been my intention to write a progressive series of treatises on the Australian aboriginal, embodying observations as they were being made. As time wore on, however, my procrastination amassed so great a fund and so great a variety of notes that my original plan became impossible. The delay was not altogether through any fault of mine, but through a run of fortunate happenings which allowed me to spend the better part of every year in the great unbounded spaces of central and northern Australia, to live among the uncontaminated tribes, and to study Australian anthropology at the fountain head. It was through my repeated and prolonged absences from the city (and civilization in general) that I could not attend to the publication of any lengthy scientific papers.
Apart from my private and professional journeys, the following are some of the better known expeditions I have accompanied or led:
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