ORNAMENTATION

Summary

The modes of ornamenting the shields, clubs, and other weapons of the Aboriginal natives of Victoria are similar to those of the people who fabricated the urns of baked or burnt clay found in tumuli in England and Scotland. They are restricted to forms few and simple, but, whether separate or in combination, not without some pleasing effects. Of the hundreds of old weapons that I have examined–weapons made before the natives had gathered any hints from Europeans–I find that the lines carved on them were in the form of the chevron, herring-bone, or saltier. In some, the round or egg-shaped figure was used as a border. If the reader will refer to the figures of the shields and clubs in this work, he will see every variety of these styles; and in not a few broad bands at right-angles to the longer axis of the shield, or in the form of a cross with two feet (saltier).

Similar figures are found impressed on an urn recovered from the stone cists of Lesmurdie, in Banffshire; and on another of well-baked material and of unusual thinness which was “discovered under a tumulus at Memsie, Aberdeenshire. Beside the latter lay a bronze leaf-shaped sword, broken in two.”

In the Memsie urn, the round dots or rings are arranged in a band dividing one set of herring-bone lines from others above and below it.