ABSTRACT
The Wik-mungkan are an Australian Aboriginal tribe who traditionally inhabited an area between the Watson and Edward Rivers on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula in Northern Queensland. They were studied independently, and at separate periods, by two anthropologists – Ursula McConnel and Donald Thomson. McConnel was in the field in 1927-8 and in 1934, while Thomson studied the Wik-mungkan in 1932-3. On the basis of their material, particularly McConnel's, the Wik-mungkan have been referred to or discussed at some length by a number of scholars, among them Radcliffe-Brown (1930: 245), Elkin (1940: 282-3), Lévi-Strauss (1969 passim; 1968: 38), Homans and Schneider (1955: 34; 1962), and lately the literature has been critically scrutinized by Needham in two articles (1962b, 1963a).
