Warumungu Shield

This shield was produced by the Warumungu people. It has an ochre design possibly depicting a snake totemic ancestor. It was collected by James Field in Tennant Creek, Northern Territory, Australia in the early 1900s and acquired by Museum Victoria in 1907. 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.