Aboriginal Australians use ochres in varied cultural practices. It is found in the earliest to most recent archaeological sites and geographically across the wide-ranging geological and climatic contexts of the continent.
Aboriginal people made stone tools by removing a sharp fragment of a piece of stone.
The people brought with them laws, ceremonial traditions, languages, knowledge and customs of survival and social rules and kinship obligations. Their stone tools comprised large scrapers and hand axes, they used ochre for dress, ceremony and ritual and they buried or cremated their dead.
Rock is a natural material that has long been used by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the construction of stone tools. Knowledge of the properties of different types of rock informed the selection of specific rock types for particular purposes.
