Here adult males of each clan act as guardians or custodians of particular territories. There are certain sacra, known as churinga or tsurinja by the Aranda, which are relics of ancestors who effectively created each clan’s territory in ancient times. Mostly, they are smoothed pieces of wood or stone inscribed with a totemic emblem. The same objects could also embody legal title to those lands. Émile Durkheim considered them the very archetype of the sacred: things set apart from the ordinary world and accorded pious devotion; effectively, the ‘Holy Ark of the clan’.
