UMaine professors studying Australia’s Mardu people

ORONO – In January, Rebecca and Doug Bird of the University of Maine anthropology department will return to Australia and continue their research among the Mardu Aboriginal people of the Western Desert.

For the pair, who just joined the faculty in September, UMaine provides a home where they can develop their interest in cultural ecology to the fullest. For UMaine, the Birds’ research is providing valuable information and experience that is already translating into the classroom and eventually may involve research experience for undergraduate students.

Rebecca Bird is an assistant professor and teaches courses on cultural ecology and theory in anthropology. Doug Bird is an assistant research professor. When the Birds began their research, they were working at the University of Utah.

Doug Bird said that UMaine’s anthropology department is one of only a handful nationwide that makes research in cultural ecology a top priority.

“This department has a long and rich tradition in studies of cultural ecology. It has produced some of the best cultural ecology studies in the world,” he said.

Cultural ecology is a specialized subdiscipline within anthropology. It focuses on the interactions between humans and their environment, emphasizing the influence of social and geographical factors.

Anthropology chairman Henry Munson said that most professors in the department conduct research in this area.

“It happened as time went by. It became clear that this was one of our strengths. There are also considerable funding opportunities available in this area,” he said.

The Birds are receiving funding for their project from the National Science Foundation and the LSB Leakey Foundation. Doug Bird said he expects the project to continue through 2003.

Along the way the Birds will produce a series of journal articles, the first of which is in the works. It will detail men’s and women’s foraging strategies and will be published in Australian Aboriginal Studies, a journal produced by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres-Strait Islander Studies.

Munson said the Birds’ previous research in Australia’s Torres-Strait Islands has helped to establish their reputations within the discipline.

“They are both very productive, and have published in very prestigious journals. They have very impressive National Science Foundation grants, which we’re delighted by. They’re doing some outstanding research, and they’ve gotten a lot of attention,” he said.

Rebecca Bird was invited to give a series of lectures about the project by the highly regarded Leakey Foundation. Although it is unclear whether she will be able to present the lectures since she will be in Australia conducting research, Munson said the invitation was a testimony to the respect her work has gained.

The San Francisco-based Leakey Foundation awards more than $600,000 in field grants annually and is the only funding organization in the United States entirely committed to human origins research.

It was founded in 1968 by a group of friends who wanted to support the fieldwork and scientific priorities of Dr. Louis Leakey. The foundation sponsors lectures, workshops and symposiums and publishes a newsletter. The Birds’ work fits the foundation’s commitment to human origins research because it is believed that the study of surviving hunter-gatherer groups can shed light on how hominid ancestors organized their lives.

The Birds have spent about five months among the Mardu – two months in the summer of 2000 and three months this summer. They live in the community with the Mardu and participate in their daily lives. Although they do not speak the Mardu language, they are learning and can now communicate effectively.

Rebecca Bird said they are submitting an application for a Research Experience for Undergraduates Grant from the National Science Foundation’s cultural anthropology division. That would allow one or two qualified UMaine students to spend one or two months conducting research in Australia as early as the summer of 2002. The Birds will be notified in April if their grant application is successful.

The Mardu, one of the last groups of aborigines to come out of the western Australian desert, number 500-800 people and still live primarily in the desert, although they have access to motor vehicles and can purchase food and other goods at outpost stations. Their territory is about the size of the state of Utah.

The focus of the Birds’ research is how gender relates to hunting and foraging strategies. Mardu women primarily hunt smaller animals that are relatively easy to catch, such as goanna lizards. The men hunt larger animals, such as bush turkeys and kangaroo, animals that may require days of tracking.

The women’s hunting proves to be much more economical, with three days of work normally producing 45-65 pounds of goanna meat. The men’s hunting may only produce one 13-pound turkey after a three-day chase.

Rebecca Bird said that anecdotal evidence indicates that this was not always the case, but that women and men once engaged in similar hunting activities. She hypothesizes that with the advent of the ability of the Mardu to purchase food, it became less necessary for every Mardu to hunt to maximize food intake. Thus, the men gradually began to adopt hunting practices that had more social than immediate economic significance.

Doug Bird said that while this research focuses on a small group of people, it is significant in that it ties in with a larger body of anthropological research concerned with the differences in the work that men and women do in all cultures.

“We’re looking at basic clues about factors that influence something as important as gender – the factors that make up what it means to be human. We’re finding that even in materially simple circumstances, it’s not just about the food. It’s often as much about complex social arrangements and complex social interactions,” he said.

Doug Bird adds that the research also will incorporate the significance of the Mardu religion to cultural and economic activities.

“You can’t disentangle their daily lives from a complex set of ideological, mythical and religious beliefs about the landscape,” he said. “Spots of ritual importance are linked by the paths of their dream-time ancestors, and are associated with ritual ceremony. Going out and burning a patch of grass to catch goanna lizards has religious symbolism tied with their relationship to their ancestors and the beings that created their world. Maintaining the religion has tremendous significance tied up with men’s and women’s initiation.”