Book review: Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate rigorously critiques Bruce Pascoe's argument

While some have described Dark Emu as fabrication, Sutton and Walshe are more measured. They methodically show that in Dark Emu, Pascoe has removed significant passages from publications that contradict his major objectives. This boosts his contention that all along Aboriginal people were farmers and/or aquaculturalists.

One example concerns Pascoe's quoting of the journal entries of the explorer Charles Sturt. Sutton writes:

Sturt is quoted [by Pascoe] on his party's discovery of a large well and 'village' of 19 huts somewhere north of Lake Torrens in South Australia.

This "village" concept arose from colonial records, and is still sometimes used in recent articles.

Pascoe's edit of Sturt's original 1849 text breathes oxygen into Dark Emu's polemical edge. It's misleading at best. For Sturt's diary reveals Aboriginal people didn't live in "houses" in any single site all year round.

Such accounts destabilise Pascoe's argument, reinforced by ethnographic, colonial, and archaeological records.

Hunter-gatherers did alter the country in significant ways - most Australians know about the ancient practice of firing the country, recently discussed in depth owing to our increasingly devastating bush-fires. This involved ecological agency and prowess. But expert fire-burning isn't an agricultural practice, as Pascoe avers.

Identification of implements

In a key chapter, Walshe homes in on Pascoe's mis-interpretations of hunter-gatherer implements, which he labels "agricultural" tools. For instance, Pascoe misconstrues grooved "Bogan Picks" as heavy stones used for agricultural activity.

Walshe disputes Pascoe's claim, stating that, "with their adze-shaped end and grooved midline for hafting, they were likely used in a similar way to stone axes."

Wooden digging sticks were also used for breaking up the earth to extract yams when in season, among various other purposes - not for "tilling" or "ploughing" the soil in preparation for planting seeds.

Grooved (Bogan style) picks. Photo by Malcolm Davidson