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While the range of factors affecting pigment preservation in rockshelters has been the subject of study, the degree to which the physical form (shape) of individual rockshelters affects the preservation of the rock art within remains largely unexplored. The Arnhem Land Plateau is well-known for its wealth of pigment rock art, some of which is repor...
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Context 1
... Arnhem Land Plateau, in northern Australia ( Fig. 1), is characterised by quartz sandstone that is relatively undeformed, although interspersed with minor interbedded volcanic units (Ferenczi and Sweet 2005: 2). The plateau rises some 300 m above the surrounding plain with occasional peaks to 500 m. With a steep escarpment along its north-western margin, the plateau slopes gently to the ...
Context 2
... other archaeological site types, some of which are open sites (such as lithic scatters, standing stones or scarred trees not within rockshelters), and hence are termed archaeological site complexes (cf. Vinnicombe 1984;Gunn 1997;Gunn et al. 2017). In general, the greater number of shelters per complex the greater variety of shelter forms present (Fig. 21), suggesting that the pattern of shelter forms present may be part of the broader retreat erosion process; a pattern that may reflect the variation in the concentration of water movement within the bedrock block. It also suggests that shelter form diversity per site complex is related to the quantity of rock art present. At this stage, ...
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IntroductionThe southern Arnhem Land plateau contains a rich mosaic of thousands of rock art sites located in outcrops of Proterozoic Marlgowa Sandstone of the Kombolgie formation (Carson et al. 1999) (Figure 11.1). Within this region in Jawoyn Country can be found Nawarla Gabarnmang, an impressive rockshelter exhibiting a gridded network of pillar...
Citations
The Chauvet cave (UNESCO World Heritage site, France) is located in the Ardèche Gorge, a unique physical and cultural landscape. Its setting within the gorge—overlooking a meander cutoff containing a natural arch called the Pont d’Arc—is also remarkable. Investigating possible associations between sites’ physical and cultural settings, chronologies of human occupation, and access conditions has become a major theme in archeological research. The present study aims to reconstruct the landscape of the Pont d'Arc meander cutoff during the Upper Paleolithic, when humans were present in the Chauvet Cave. We used uranium-series and electron spin resonance analyses to date the formation of the Pont d’Arc natural arch in the Combe d’Arc meander cutoff, near the Chauvet Cave. Results show that the meander became totally cutoff between 108 and 138 ka (95%). Hence, the natural arch formed before the Upper Paleolithic and the first known human presence in the Chauvet Cave, dated to 37 ka cal BP. These results allowed us to reconstruct a key part of the landscape surrounding the Chauvet Cave when it was being used by Upper-Paleolithic societies.
