Historisizing the ‘Dreaming’
The ‘Dreaming’ is an elaborate belief system that forms the governing ideology of Indigenous Australia. It religiously sanctions the relationship between people and place, and articulates it in a large repertoire of land-based mythology. The historical development of the ‘Dreaming’ is not known in any detail. Salomon Reinach and Émile Durkheim at the turn of the twentieth century saw it as preserving an elementary form of religious life. However, the long history of Aboriginal societies in Australia (now known to be at least 50,000–60,000 years) suggests that this belief system may itself have a long history of development and elaboration. Taking arid Australia as a case study, this article outlines the principal features of the ‘Dreaming’ in its ethnographic form and asks how we might trace it archaeologically. On the basis of current evidence, the ‘Dreaming’, in its classic form, appears to have taken shape during the last few millennia when many of its perquisites emerge in the archaeological record, although the possibility that it has more ancient roots is not discounted.