Thanks for the link.
On the issue of class within hunter gatherer societies, early British settlers in the Sydney area, such as the Judge Advocate, David Collins, and the Royal Marine officer Watkin Tench, both made very similar observations about the traditional privileges of a particular senior man, Bennelong, e.g.:
"Their spears and shields, their clubs and lines, etc are their own property; they are manufactured by themselves and are the whole of their personal estate. But, strange as it may appear, they have also their real estates. Bennillong . often assured me, that the island Me- mel (called by us Goat Island) close by Sydney Cove was his own property; that it was his father's . To this little spot he appeared much attached; and we have often seen him and his wife Ba-rang-a-roo feasting and enjoying themselves on it. He told us of other people who possessed this kind of hereditary property..."
(David Collins [1798], ed. by B. H. Fletcher, 1975 _An Account Of The English Colony In New South Wales: With Remarks On The Dispositions, Customs, Manners, Etc, Of The Native Inhabitants Of That Colony_, Sydney, A. H. and A. W. Reed, p. 497.)
Erich Kolig, 1981_Silent Revolution: The Effects Of Modernization On Australian Aboriginal Religion_, (Philadelphia, Institute for the Study of Human Issues)
The chapter by J. R. von Sturmer in L. R. Hiatt, 1986, _Arguments about Aborigines: Australia and the Evolution of Social Anthropology_, (Cambridge?, Cambridge University Press)
The chapters by Kolig and Ian Keen in J. C. Altman (ed.) 1989 _Emergent Inequalities In Aboriginal Australia_, (Sydney, University of Sydney)
regards,
Grant.