Nov 



igiV] Spencer, Kitchen Middens and Native Ovens. ny 



had been used in later times as places of burial." These are, 

 without doubt, the remains of cooking grounds. 



Those investigated and described by Mr. Etheridge,* on 

 the North- West Bend of the River Murray, near to Morgan, 

 evidently also belong to this series, and were genuine cooking 

 mounds or " ovens." In regard to them Mr. Etheridge says :— 

 " They consist of oval, or, at any rate, longer than broad 

 depressed mounds, often of considerable extent, as much as 

 one hundred feet long, made up of soil, burnt clay, wood ashes, 

 charcoal, burnt fresh-water shells, burnt and unburnt bones, 

 tomahawks (whole or fragmentary), chips of other rocks, and 

 works of industry, such as bone awls, bone nose-ornaments, 

 and the less perishable articles of aboriginal everyday use. 

 Within these heaps the scattered cooking places, composed of 

 stone, occur, each site having been used by generation after 

 generation of blacks, and the entire mass slowly heaped 

 together, thus representing the work of a long period of 

 years." 



On the other hand, there is a second series which are always 

 approximately circular in outline, very much in general appear- 

 ance like huge mound-birds' nests. It is these that are 

 evidently referred to by Chauncy f as existing close to the 

 outlet of Lake Connewarren, near to Mortlake. Unfortunately, 

 he gives no details except as to size. They vary in diameter 

 from 99 feet with a maximum height of five feet to 75 feet 

 with a maximum height of three and a half feet. 



In 1898 Mr. R. H. Walcott, Mr. C. French, jun., and myself 

 investigated some of these " native ovens " close to Koondrook, 

 on the Murray River. The latter is here bordered by swamp 

 land covered with gum-trees, many of which are marked with 

 great scars, showing where the natives secured the bark out of 

 which they made their primitive canoes. On the margin of 

 this swamp land, where it gives place to the wide, open plains 

 that stretch for long distances back from the banks of the 

 Murray River, there are many of these mounds or " ovens." 

 A careful examination of ten of these, the general structure 

 and form of which is shown in Plate II., fig. 1, affords really 

 very little indication as to their origin and use. So far as we 

 could discover, the mounds are composed of loose soil with 

 lumps of material looking much like burnt earth ; but we found, 

 except for the latter, no traces of anything that could indicate 

 their having been used continuously as " ovens." We dug- 

 trenches right across the mounds, which varied in diameter 

 from 20 to 40 feet, their greatest height being not more than 



* R. Etheridge, Proc. R.S., S.A., vol. xvii., p. 22. 

 f In Brough Smyth's "Aborigines," vol. ii., p. 232. 



