Late 19th-Century Australian Aboriginal Artifacts
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GUEST:
My uncle was an archaeologist, and he traveled all over the world, and when he passed, I inherited all of his things from his finds. So these have been in my basement now for the last eight years in several steamer trunks, so I wanted to come find out something about them.
APPRAISER:
This is a non-returning boomerang. Not all boomerangs return. This is really a throwing stick, and they would go after birds or small animals and then try and retrieve it afterwards. This is from central Australia. This one is more of a fighting club. This would be for close action. Sometimes it would be a throwing stick, but as you can see, this is a very utilitarian object, so they wouldn't really decorate it very much at all. This has really wonderful decorations on it. And this is from New South Wales in Australia. It's called a lil-lil. This is what's called a spear-thrower, sometimes called an atlatl. It's an extension of your arm, so when you had a spear, you would put this atlatl underneath it and when you'd thrown the spear, this was some extra leverage that would give you more force to send it a further distance or at more speed. This one is from the northern part of Australia, and it has a bivalve at the other end as a counterweight. These are commonly called Kurdaitcha shoes, known by the Aboriginals as interlinia shoes. And Kurdaitcha shoes are made of emu feathers and some blood and a netting, and these are worn by really the ritual executioners in Aboriginal society. The Aboriginals don't really believe in a natural death; they believe it's been caused by some sort of spirit or something like that, and quite often when somebody died, in their last breath, they would either name the person-- and it's sort of a revenge thing in some ways-- who caused it. If they don't say anything and they suspect that someone has caused it, they will call for the Kurdaitcha. Sometimes it can take years, and they would seek out the person. On the journey to find this person, they would wear these shoes, but before they did it, they'd undergo a rather painful ritual, and they would get a heated stone and they'd put it against the joint of the little toe and they would dislocate it. When they found the person, they would then have this, what we commonly call a pointing bone, but with the Aborigines, it's called a kundela. It can be made out of a human shin bone or an emu bird bone or something like that, and it's got human hair around it and connected to a gummy substance, which is from the spinifex bush. When they found the person, they would point the bone at the person and the person then would get very distressed, knowing what was happening, and there are written accounts of people who when this has happened, they get listless, they can't sleep, and they die.
GUEST:
From stress? (laughs)
APPRAISER:
That's it, you know. All off these items are probably from the late 19th century, early 20th century.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
This is rather a utilitarian object. They're quite common, but starting to become quite collected. A retail price for these would be around about $400. The lil-lil is a beauty, with all the decoration, and I think probably $1,000 to $1,500.
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
This unfortunately, the end of the bivalve is broken. There's only one side of it. It's really a nice example, and I think probably $400 to $600. The Kurdaitcha shoes, I think probably about $1,500.
GUEST:
Oh, wow!
APPRAISER:
And the pointing bone, about $600.
GUEST:
Oh, wow.
APPRAISER:
All right?
GUEST:
Yeah, that's great.
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