'The dome of thought, the palace of the soul' : interpreting the craniological morphology of ancient and near-contemporary Australian aborigines

Abstract

This thesis serves a number of purposes. Broadly, using craniometrics, it examines the biological affinities of most available ancient and near-contemporary Australian Aboriginal cranial remains. Changes in cranial size and shape are among the major manifestations of human evolution (Henneberg & Steyn 1995) and so this skeletal element provides possibly the best biological and morphological information that is available about an individual or population. Little craniometric research has been conducted on Aboriginal cranial remains in recent years and it is nearly fifteen years since the last continent-wide assessment of Aboriginal craniometric morphology was undertaken. This research project provides an opportunity to reassess pre-contact Aboriginal morphological and biological relationships. Essentially, the thesis is divided into two major parts. The first part analyses relationships between near contemporary cranial remains using multivariate statistics. The major purpose of this section is to determine which factors influenced human cranial morphology. For example, did gene-flow along trading routes have noticeable effects on skull form? The second part of the thesis appraises some of the most important Australian palaeoanthroplogical research conducted in the last half of this century, particularly that from the late 1960s and 1970s. Much of the work examined is due to the efforts of Dr Alan Thome who, while generating original and insightful ideas about the arrival of Australia's indigenous inhabitants, helped raise the profile of palaeoanthropology in this country. As it is now about thirty years since Thome first presented his ideas on the colonisation of Australia, a re-examination of the research is necessary, especially since the debate has become polarised. The thesis draws upon, but also extends, the arguments of several recent commentators, particularly Brown (1981, 1987). It highlights the problems of small and inadequate sample size and the implications of this for Thome's hypothesis concerning gracile and robust colonising populations. Moreover, it emphasises the great morphological variation among and between both ancient and near­ contemporary Aboriginal people. Show more