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neighbouring groups for ceremonial, economic and marital exchanges and relations——or they
were “new”, resulting from colonisation’s and settlements increasing effect on inter—group
relations and modes of communication. In every case, sections are a Iinguafranca of kinship,
which in turn proposes a formal framework for interaction among humans. I a.rn not suggesting
here that kinship is the only framework for such interaction, nor do I imply that there are no
subjectively evaluated and experienced relationships that transgress the formal rigidity of the
kinship system Dousset 2005. I am only emphasising that the kinship and section systems
provide first and handy guides in conceptualising and formalising such relationships. The
diffusion routes of sections proposed earlier should, therefore, follow identical or similar
paths to those established by social networks.

I turn now to the second part of the question, which interrogates the vehicles transporting
the section system throughout the Western Desert. The reader may have understood that
the vehicles referred to here are the above-mentioned social networks. This needs some
explanation.

Thatsocial networks do, and did, criss-cross theAustraliau continent has been demonstrated
for some time, even though they are usually summarised under the more economical notions
of trade or exchange routes e.g. Davidson 1935; McCarthy 193940, 1963. Micha 1970
has probably discussed the available literature most exhaustively, and has presented the most
encompassing picture. This author shows that “inter-tribal trade” played an important role in
cultural change before European settlement, and that trade routes are simultaneously ways
through which material and immaterial cultural elements difliise, besides overlapping with
the tracks associated with Dreaming beings. Micha’s general conclusions are not convincing
overall, but the ethnographic material he summarises for demonstrating the importance of
networks is impressive. He sees behind such extensive routes a causal relationship between
totemic solidarities that is, between persons of identical totem but distinct tribal groupings,
inter—group initiations, exchange and difiusion. To make of totemism the engine of cultural
diffusion is rather problematic, and it is more probable that these networks or routes go hand
in hand with mutual initiations, inter-marriages, exchange and henceforth difiusion of cultural
features. If culture is about sharing common symbols and material elements, then these
routes demonstrate that Aboriginal culture, and certainly that of the people of the Western
Desert, is about actively sharing these symbols.

This overlap of trade, Dreaming tracks and routes of cultural diffusion is a good enough
reason to call these various routes, and the network they constitute, exchange systems. Despite
the necessity and importance of seeing difliision and routes of trade as integrated systems of
exchange, I will, for the sake of clarity, maintain the distinctions whenever possible, but urge
the reader to interpret these as analytical and not ethnographic distinctions.

We need to become more specific now and illustrate these “trade-routes” and “Dreaming-
tracks”. Mulvaney l976:77 distinguishes between “short-distance, intragroup meetings and
exchanges, and long—distance, intergroup activities”. Hereafier, I will largely concentrate on
long—distance intergroup activities. If we take the example of the Ngaatjatjarra “internal” and
short-distance groupings, we see that the networks criss-cross one another at a niicro—level