Warlpiri shield, Central Australia

This shield from Central Australia was possibly produced by the Warlpiri people. It was collected by Robert Edwards for Museum Victoria in 1995. Although shields were manufactured by Aboriginal men primarily for fighting, they were also used on ceremonial occasions. Depending on the nature of the ceremony, certain iconographic designs were painted on the surface of the shield and employed in different parts of the ritual to evoke the power of ancestral beings originating in the 'dreamtime' (tjukurrpa). Like the iconography that appears in contemporary Aboriginal painting, the designs represent certain events and activities relating to the ancestral heroes as they wondered across the mythic landscape.