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hard Philp Gallery
Australian Aboriginal, Central Desert
Churinga: man’s totem stick
c. 1900
Incised wood with pigments
Height: 64 cm
Churinga. (Tjuringa)
These flat incised sacred, stone, or wood boards were used in Central Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia.
They are associated with the ancestors of ‘Dreamtime’ – the ancestor materialising in visible form. They were used in sacred ceremonies enabling tribesmen to relate to their past – to know their ancestors.
The ritual patterns are carved by flints and stone – they are a ‘stone age’ people – neither bronze nor iron was discovered in the Aborigine history. The wood used is Mulga, a dark, heavy, red, hard wood.
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