An Alyawara Day: Flour, Spinifex Gum, and Shifting Perspectives

The events of a day among the Alyawara Australian Aborigines are described as they reflect on the problem of understanding what one witnesses in an alien sociocultural setting. Some of these events are then treated comparatively, as a way of recognizing the variables that conditioned the witnessed events. These discussions are then used, in a shift of perspective, in an evaluation of suggestions made by archaeologists as to the proper contexts for understanding the formation of the archaeological record and hence the proper interpretative postures to assume in seeking to infer a past.