Majumbu ('Old Harry') and the Spencer-Cahill bark painting collection

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dc.contributor.authorTacon, P.
dc.contributor.authorTaylor, L.
dc.contributor.authorMay, S.
dc.contributor.authorGoldhahn, J.
dc.contributor.authorJalandoni, A.
dc.contributor.authorRessel, A.
dc.contributor.authorMangiru, K.
dc.date.issued2023
dc.descriptionPublished online: 22 Feb 2023.
dc.description.abstractFrom 1912, British anthropologist W. Baldwin Spencer and buffalo-shooter Paddy Cahill collected 163 bark paintings made by artists who also painted in rock shelters in western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. Spencer made detailed notes about the bark paintings, secret/sacred objects, and other material culture he collected and some rock art, as well as genealogies and other details of the Aboriginal people he encountered but did not record the names of the artists. In general, the names and life stories of the individuals who made most Aboriginal archaeological artefacts or ethnographic objects and paintings now in museums across the world are not known. We have recently begun to address this for western Arnhem Land contact period art and in this paper focus on an elder, Majumbu (‘Old Harry’), who made numerous rock paintings as well as at least eight of the Spencer-Cahill bark paintings. We use his work to begin a new interpretation of the importance of the Spencer-Cahill Collection in relation to land-based religion and show that knowing the names of the artists behind the collection, as well as related rock paintings, puts their work and the entire collection in new meaningful contexts.
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityPaul S. C. Taçon, Luke Taylor, Sally K. May, Joakim Goldhahn, Andrea Jalandoni, Alex Ressel and Kenneth Mangiru
dc.identifier.citationAustralian Archaeology, 2023; 89(1):14-31
dc.identifier.doi10.1080/03122417.2023.2177949
dc.identifier.issn0312-2417
dc.identifier.issn2470-0363
dc.identifier.orcidMay, S. [0000-0003-2805-023X]
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/2440/137512
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherTaylor & Francis (Routledge)
dc.relation.granthttp://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/SR200200062
dc.relation.granthttp://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FT210100118
dc.rights© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync- nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
dc.source.urihttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03122417.2023.2177949
dc.subjectBark painting; rock painting; Paddy Cahill; W. Baldwin Spencer; Oenpelli; Arnhem Land; Majumbu
dc.titleMajumbu ('Old Harry') and the Spencer-Cahill bark painting collection
dc.typeJournal article
pubs.publication-statusPublished

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