Australites. Part 2: early Aboriginal perception and useOPEN ACCESS
Philip A. Clarke
JOURNAL OF ASTRONOMICAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE, 22 (1), 155-178 (2019)
“This paper reviews the Indigenous perception and use of australites as recorded in the Australian ethnographic literature. Aboriginal people perceived australites as having power derived from their Creation ancestors. There are accounts of australites being ritual objects used for healing, rain-making, hunting, sorcery and conveying messages. There are also descriptions of Aboriginal people using australites as raw material for tool-making, as their glass-like properties enabled specialised microlith tools to be made from them.”
