ABSTRACT
One of the most visible consequences of culture contact with outsiders, both in Australia and elsewhere throughout the New World, was the adoption of foreign material culture as trade goods within indigenous societies. Circulating through regional exchange networks, such items could be carried a considerable distance from the places where physical contact with outsiders took place. Even in cases where people continued to practise largely traditional lifeways, the circulation of foreign trade goods often marked the beginning of profound changes to indigenous social and economic structures (e.g. Fitzhugh 1985; Kaplan 1985; Thomas 1985; Brenner 1988; Arkish 1993). Tragically, the process of culture contact was frequently cataclysmic for indigenous societies through the introduction of new diseases, the loss of land and resources and the impact of warfare with foreigners. Consequences of cross-cultural engagement also included the onset and/or intensification of internecine conflict within indigenous societies, as they were forced to deal with territorial dispossession, loss of resources and rapid social and demographic change (Bitterli 1989).
