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HOWCHIN, WalterBiblio.com
The Stone Implements of the Adelaide Tribe of Aborigines now extinct
1934réf. 108344Adelaide: Gillingham & Co. Ltd 1934. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Adelaide Gillingham & Co. Ltd. 1934. Quarto viii 94 pages with 19 illustrations from photographs featuring approximately 150 implements. Cloth a little scuffed and rubbed and bumped at the extremities with minimal wear; endpapers unevenly offset; a few mild signs of handling; a very good copy. Provenance: Stanley Robert Mitchell 1881-1963 ethnologist mineralogist metallurgist and businessman with his ownership signature on the front free endpaper. 'In the 1930s and 1940s he belonged to a distinguished group of "amateur" ethnologists and collectors who gathered around Sir Baldwin Spencer. They collected massive numbers of Aboriginal implements and championed the value of field-work over "armchair theorists". They believed that the raw geological material was the dominant factor in determining the forms of stone implements and that these forms had not changed from earliest times to the period of European contact' 'Australian Dictionary of Biography'. One correction in ink 'lava' for 'land' near the end of the first paragraph on page 14 and some light marginal emphases in pencil are presumably by Mitchell. The original four-page prospectus a little chipped and torn at the edges is loosely inserted. Gillingham & Co., Ltd hardcover
