[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

84

while featuring significant openings towards the outside world. Map 17 illustrates the principal
networks within the Ngaatjatjarra dialectal group black arrows, and the connections towards
other groups grey arrows. The highly schematised arrows summarise traditionally employed
routes of travelling as well as the circulation of people for marriage between regional sub-

groups.



V Pinlupi
_ Marrtjildlara
‘“"°"= <~__ X 9
1
x l e
N ‘
N3"“3"_“"" Pllianljatiarra
Warhu1ou
_wm-n umm I .
l

Map 17: Ngaatjatjarra internal networks

As such, the entire “Ngaatjatjarra network" can be considered a single point within the
larger web linking them to the Pintupi to the north and west, the Mandildjara in the west, the
Pitjantjatjarra in the south-east and the Ngaanyatjarra in the south-west.“ This larger network
refiects the difl‘usion routes of section names that I have been illustrating so far, but they
also link to archaeological findings concerning the difliision of material culture, as well as to
matters relating to Dreaming tracks.

To my knowledge, archaeologists have not yet been able to draw actual routes of cultural
ditfusion for the Western Desert. However, they have, without doubt, demonstrated the
principles for such routes, and argued the necessity for them to exist. Gould is, in this respect,
the most quoted researcher, although others have also argued in similar terms. In Living
Archaeology 1980, Gould discusses his findings from Tika Tika north of Warburton,
where he undertook research with a contemporary Aboriginal group in 1966 and 1967, and
Puntutjarpa, an archaeological site in the Warburton Ranges, and examines the material
culture in comparison with that of other sites, such as James Range East in Central Australia.
Gould’s principal aim is to promote the utility of an ethno—archaeological approach that uses
“anomalies”, rather than the more traditional analogical approach in ethno—archaeology. He
studies unexpected material and behaviour, such as the presence of tools made from exotic,
that is non-local, material, and explains these as being the signature of what he calls the
“r-' 1' ' ' ' ' 0 mode of hunter-gatherer adaptation” e.g. Gould 1980:137. Among other
factors, this risk—minimising mode articulates the ssity for social networks to exist and be

‘3 Incidentally, this schematised internal network with its outwards doors correqyonds well with Birdsell's model for
local group contacts 19S8:197; see also Peterson 1976.