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.
- ISBN10 0718502434
- ISBN13 9780718502430
- Publish Date 26 December 2002
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 1 August 2023
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint Leicester University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 256
- Language English