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September 22, 2006
Australian deserts are generally not often seen as specific places with their own history that can be read. Puritjarra, a rock shelter in the Cleland Hills in western central Australia provides archaeological evidence of human existence in the region going back 35,000 years.Libby Robin, in Strata: Deserts, Past, Present and Future describes this place:
We are in sandplain country travelling west, deep in Pintupi-Luritja country, beyond Haasts Bluff, some seven hours travelling west of Alice Springs. We are beyond where the MacDonnells are a solid range - they are now just outliers on our right, an archipelago of islands in a sea of desert. We are also beyond cattle, sheep, clay and reliable water. This blue mallee, spinifex and desert oak country continues on westwards from here, dominating sandplains all the way to the Pilbara in Western Australia.
Robin says that the sandplain country absorbs water like a sponge. Without a claypan base, even ephemeral waters are not retained, except in the rocky ridges. Desperate times forced western desert peoples to leave their country, so their movements are indicators of the ecological stress of long waterless periods, periods when water and food were scarce.
Mandy Martin, Puritjarra I, Found local and sourced pigment, sand, ochre and acrylic on canvas, 2004
As the introduction to this book says this:
is a very long history of dwelling in a place that is very dry and difficult for people to find water, food and shelter. Although the climate has varied over these millennia, Smith and others have established that this desert environment has been very dry for at least 100,000 years - and that most of the past desert environments in this long period have been at least as dry as conditions prevailing at present.
Dwelling evokes Heidgger's being, which is realized as "being-there" or "being-in-the-world".
Heidgger insisted that one cannot "be" in an abstract sense without being in and of a particular place, situation, or context- "Being-in-the-World," or Being-There, Dasein. Heidegger claims that humans do not "inhabit" like animals do-- they "dwell," and that "dwelling" takes place not so much in a site or "environment" as in a "world" --animals supposedly have no "world."
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