Foragers or farmers? Dark Emu and the Debate over Aboriginal Agriculture

Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu, which has been a publishing phenomenon in Australia, argues that Aboriginal people were not ‘mere’ hunter-gatherers in 1788, but were farming. This article sets the argument of the book within the context of a long-term debate in archaeology and anthropology about Aboriginal agriculture. Some have argued that Aboriginal people were hunter-gatherers and asked why they did not adopt agriculture, while others have argued that at least some groups were practicing farming. The article finds that while the boundary between foraging and farming is a fuzzy one, Aboriginal people were indeed hunters, gatherers and fishers at the time of the British colonisation of Australia.