Lifted from the Pitt-Rivers Oxford;
Central Australian groups, including the Arrernte (also known as the Arunta), Luritja (Luritcha), Wakaya (Waagai), Warlpiri (Ilpirra or Warlbiri), Walmajarri and Warumungu (Warramunga), employed elongated oval-shaped convex shields made from a light soft wood called Sturt's bean tree (Erythrina vespertilio). Today these shields are found in most Western Australian desert communities as a result of exchange systems involving engraved pearl shell ornaments and the introduction of metal tools, a fact which allowed other Western Australian Aboriginal groups to manufacture shields for themselves. Gifted with considerable manipulative skills, traditional Central Australian shield makers used the flint of spear-throwers (instruments which allowed spears to be thrown with more force and accuracy), to furrow the long parallel grooves which characteristically ran with almost faultless evenness across the shield's surface. If a shield cracked or needed mending, the shield maker bored holes through the broken parts and tied them together with wet fiber so that they lashed on more tightly upon drying.
Central Australian shields primarily served as defensive weapons against spears and boomerangs, however the Arrernte, Warlpiri and Luritja specially valued them as their principal means for obtaining fire. Placing the shield face down and holding it steady with their feet, two squatting men would rub the shield in a rapid sawing movement using the bladed edge of a spear-thrower. After the charred surface begins to glow, the men would blow or fan it into a flame. Often utilized to restart other fires, the multiple grooves on the reverse side of the shield on the right shows signs of use in this manner. The Arrernte also believed that shields carried powers of divination and by ringing hollow, forewarned the bearers that death was close at hand. An undated photograph published by Walter Hutchinson in his Customs of the World book series shows Arrernte women striking the shields of men who had just taken part at an avenging party.
Kim Akerman at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, notes that the carved-out handles of central Australian shields were also used as vessels for certain rites involving blood-letting. Particularly important was the kutitji (shield) ritual, a type of circumcision ceremony conducted in a camp before a preselect group just before boys were taken away for circumcision. Originating from the Warlpiri people in the western desert region of Central Australia or possibly further east among the Kaytetye (or Kaytitj) near Tennant Creek, the observance of this ceremony has since spread into Western Australia, La Grange and the Eighty Mile Beach regions.
Although Central Australian groups did not specifically identify utilitarian objects with their owners, they painted shield surfaces with totemic-bearing symbols. Nancy Munn has written extensively about Central Australian Warlpiri iconography, basing her findings on interviews with local informants: concentric circles painted on objects such as shields and tywerrenge (or churinga, a term applying to something sacred or secret) relate to camps (water holes), meandering lines to snakes (lightning and smoke), and multiple dots around concentric circles to eggs (rain and clouds). Moreover, Munn points out that multiple elements like clusters of dots or circles suggest fecundity and reproduction. In the case of the shield on the right, the alternative symbolic equivalence of the circle (meandering) line is female-male and the cluster of dots as progeny or children eloquently combine ideas of procreation and transgenerational continuity, notions pre-eminent in male cults.
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