Cirrus@Austlit

'Over the millennia that Australia and the South Pacific were settled by the original peoples of the region different but often related indigenous cultures developed in comparative isolation. The belief systems that developed owed a great deal to the prevalence of shamanism. In the years since Mircea Eliade’s ground breaking work on north Asian shamanism was published (Eliade 1964) much attention and recognition has been given to the regional shamanism that was to be found on all continents either as a current religion or as an underlay to that religion. Aboriginal shamanism and Oceanic shamanism had much in common despite having developed independently and it is useful to consider them together.'  (Introduction)