Australian Indigenous Art Of The Alligator Rivers Region Northern Territory
Ethnography Indigenous Art Australian Aboriginal Studies Art History Cultural Anthropology Non-Fiction Textbook Visual Arts Reference
Collectors and students searching for a concise yet authoritative introduction to Aboriginal visual culture will find Robert Edwards’ 1979 paperback Australian Aboriginal Art an indispensable reference. Published by the respected Australian Aboriginal series, this 202-page illustrated textbook distils the iconography, bark painting techniques and rock-art traditions of the Alligator Rivers region (Northern Territory) into a single, portable volume. Edwards—then Curator of Anthropology at the South Australian Museum—pairs museum-quality photographs with clear cultural context, making the book equally suitable for high-school projects, university surveys or gallery researchers who need quick, reliable facts on Arnhem Land motifs, ochre palettes and ceremonial design ownership.
Because every page is image-led, the volume doubles as a visual catalogue for dealers, travellers or Indigenous-art enthusiasts who want to compare authentic clan patterns against later commercial works. The 1979 publication date captures key artists and sites before later tourism pressures, so the photographs and clan attributions remain a baseline for provenance research. Ex-library copies like this one are affordable entry points into a now-scarce print run; while corner-clipped endpapers and circulation stamps confirm library provenance, the interior text block is clean and complete, ensuring all maps, colour plates and genealogical charts are present for study or display.
For buyers building a working Australiana or art-history shelf, this edition offers three extra advantages: it predates most later coffee-table tomes (keeping original terminology and spellings valued by scholars), it indexes both English and local language names for each motif, and it supplies a concise bibliography that points toward rare anthropological papers. Whether you need a quick visual identifier for a bark painting, a culturally sensitive teaching aid, or a nostalgic piece of 1970s Australian publishing, Edwards’ Australian Aboriginal Art delivers outsized authority at a modest price point.
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