Art. XIII. — Australian Aboriginal Stone Itnjdements. 

 A suggested Classification. 



By a. S. KENYON and D. L. STIRLING. 



(With Plates XXV-XXXIII). 



[Eead -ith October, 1900.] 



(Comniiinicated by Professor Baldwin Spencer). 



It appears hardly necessary to enlarge on the need for a 

 classitication of the stone implements of the Australian Aborigi- 

 nal. All investigators, as well as collectors, have experienced 

 difficulties through such want. The subject of these stone 

 implements, and their uses is one to which little attention has 

 been paid by writers on the Ethnology of the Australian 

 Aboriginal ; R. Brough Smyth in " The Aborigines of Victoria " 

 has dealt with the subject in some detail ; but his remarks, being 

 confined only to descriptions of the implements coming under his 

 notice, do not include amongst others, any of the vei-y interesting 

 series of chipped implements of paljeolithic type occurring 

 commonly in Victoria. In general, authors, save for cursory 

 remarks as to use of other stone implements, have confined their 

 attention to the ground cutting edged implements, generally 

 known as " Blackfellow's axes or tomahawks." These tools are 

 so easily recognisable that they are readily picked up by others 

 than collectors, and are to be found in number in all collections. 

 Other stone implements, even when so distinctive in shape as 

 grinding mills or sharpening stones, are not so easily recognised 

 by the non-collector, and they are contained in few collections. 

 The less distinctive implements have not been described, and 

 when occurring in collections, are frequently wrongly labelled. A 

 further reason for the undue preponderance of axes or toma- 

 hawks in collections is that they are found scattered over the 

 whole country, while almost all the other implements are found 

 at the sites of camps only, being chiefly used in domestic 

 operations. 



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