As I have almost finished the content for my Australian Frontier Wars I need to paint some suitable figures to illustrate the book. Over the next few days I will need to spend my time painting the thirty odd Eureka Miniatures Denisovians I have set aside for the purpose.
I have included below a note on the Australian First Nations peoples use of body paint for those interested. It is taken from another book I am writing at the moment.
The group I have for today consists of a war party leader and five men.
In the historical records a war party leaders are recorded as a “leading men,” “principal men,” or “war leaders,” but these are English glosses rather than Indigenous titles. Leadership was situational: a man might lead in war because of his reputation, experience, or spiritual authority, but not hold absolute authority outside that context.
It is also important to note that spiritual authority and warfare were not separate spheres. Men with ritual knowledge, or those recognised as having particular spiritual power, could play decisive roles in organising and sanctioning violence. Decisions to undertake raids or reprisals were typically collective, embedded in law (often referred to as “customary law”), and connected to obligations around land, justice, and kin.
So, while “war party leader” is a useful descriptive phrase in English, in Aboriginal contexts leadership in conflict was situational rather than institutional, often grounded in status, knowledge, and kinship, and often shared or negotiated rather than strictly hierarchical
More Denisovians tomorrow.
Body painting among Aboriginal Australian peoples served multiple, interrelated purposes that were social, ceremonial, and epistemological. At its most immediate level, body paint functioned as a visible marker of identity. Designs indicated clan affiliation, kin relationships, and connection to specific Country, often encoding rights to land, stories, and ceremonial roles. In this sense, painted bodies were not merely decorative but communicative surfaces through which social position and belonging were made legible to others. The patterns and motifs applied were not arbitrary. They were governed by inherited law and protocol, with particular designs restricted to those with the authority to wear them.¹
Body paint also played a central role in ceremonial and religious life, especially within what is often referred to as the Dreaming or ancestral law. During ceremony, painted designs materialised ancestral beings and events, transforming the human body into a site where the past and present coexisted. The act of painting was itself ritualised, often accompanied by song, dance, and instruction, reinforcing cultural knowledge across generations. In this context, the body became a living map of story and cosmology, with each line and colour carrying specific meaning tied to narrative, place, and law.²
A further function of body painting lay in its performative and psychological dimensions. In initiation rites, mourning practices, and conflict related gatherings, paint could signal transition, status change, or emotional state. For example, white ochre might be used in mourning to mark separation from the living world, while other colour schemes could indicate readiness for ceremony or conflict. The process of painting also created cohesion among participants, reinforcing collective identity and shared purpose. This was particularly important in large gatherings where multiple groups came together, as paint allowed individuals to be recognised within a broader social and ceremonial framework.³
Materially, body paint was derived from natural substances such as ochres, charcoal, pipeclay, and plant based binders. These materials were themselves culturally significant, often sourced from specific sites with their own ancestral associations. The act of collecting and preparing pigment formed part of the broader cultural system, linking people to landscape and reinforcing knowledge of resource locations. In some regions, ochre was traded across long distances, indicating that body painting practices were embedded within wider networks of exchange and interaction.⁴
Taken together, Aboriginal body painting cannot be understood as mere adornment. It operated as a complex system of communication, law, and embodiment through which identity, belief, and relationship to Country were expressed and maintained. The painted body was at once individual and collective, aesthetic and juridical, situating the person within a web of meaning that extended across time, place, and community.⁵
¹ Howard Morphy, Aboriginal Art (London: Phaidon, 1998), 23 to 45.
² W E H Stanner, “The Dreaming,” in White Man Got No Dreaming (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1979), 23 to 40.
³ Nicolas Peterson, “Ritual Body Painting in Aboriginal Australia,” in Aboriginal Religions in Australia, ed. Ronald M Berndt (Sydney: University of Sydney Press, 1974), 89 to 110.
⁴ Ian McBryde, “Exchange in South Eastern Australia,” Mankind 10, no 4 (1976): 278 to 291.
⁵ Fred Myers, Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 41 to 67.