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Rock Art
This paper presents a pioneering analysis of a distinctive engraved motif from the Pilbara region: the fat-tailed macropod (kangaroo). This stylistic analysis has used a combination of conventional qualitative and multivariate techniques with less commonly deployed geometric morphometrics analysis (GMA). Focusing on a distinctive engraved motif in Australia’s northwest, this study has quantified the stylistic characteristics of the fat-tailed macropod depictions by identifying the significant attributes that contribute to this motif’s schema. By using both multivariate analysis and GMA software, we have developed a more nuanced understanding of the synchronic and diachronic dimensions of this deep-time indigenous artistic tradition. Differing levels of stylistic homogeneity across this region are interpreted as distinctive signalling intentionality by the artists. Based on the precepts of information exchange theory, stylistic homogeneity is interpreted as indicating an open social system, while stylistic heterogeneity represents people signalling social difference(s). The geographic distribution of this distinctive motif, and its specific placement within sites demonstrates different inscribing behaviours across the Pilbara. This is interpreted as evidence for intentional identity production by Pilbara artists. GMA identifies that a major contributing factor to the variability in this motif form is in the distinctive depictions of posture and gait. Indigenous knowledge of kangaroo behaviours is demonstrated in these iconic Pilbara motifs.
Landscape has long had a submerged presence within anthropology, both as a framing device which informs the way the anthropologist brings his or her study into “view”, and as the meaning imputed by local people to their cultural and physical surroundings. A principal aim of this volume follows from these interconnected ways of considering landscape: the conventional, Western notion of “landscape” may be used as a productive point of departure from which to explore analogous ideas; local ideas can in turn reflexively be used to interrogate the Western construct. The Introduction argues that landscape should be conceptualized as a cultural process: a process located between place and space, foreground actuality and background potentiality, image and representation. In the chapters that follow, nine noted anthropologists and an art historian exemplify this approach, drawing on a diverse set of case studies. These range from an analysis of Indian calendar art to an account of Israeli nature tourism, and from the creation of a metropolitan “gaze” in nineteenth-century Paris to the soundscapes particular to the Papua New Guinean rainforests. The anthropological perspectives developed here are of cross-disciplinary relevance; geographers, art historians, and archaeologists will be no less interested than anthropologists in this re-envisaging of the notion of landscape.
A key challenge in rock art research has involved developing methods to assist in recovering and documenting deteriorated and superimposed pigment art. The " digital revolution " has played a crucial role in this endeavor as it has brought many new and innovative ways of seeing and recording rock art. In this chapter, we examine the methods and results generated from using computer enhancement techniques. Given the potential of these techniques to shed light on aspects of assemblages that may have been missed using conventional recording strategies, we argue that these techniques must now form an integral component of recording methodologies.
A large painting of an unusual emu-like bird was recorded in western Arnhem Land. The painting and its setting are described in relation to reported megafauna depictions in the region. Concordance with palaeontological evidence suggests that the painting was of Genyornis newtoni, one of the giant 'thunder birds' which some palaeontologists claim became extinct around 45,000 years ago. This image raises four particular questions: Is the painting 45,000+ years old? Did Genyornis survive in Western Arnhem Land until much more recently than the palaeontological record demonstrates? Did the collective memory of the painters retain the precise details of the extinct animal for many thousands of years? Or, is it an image of some imaginary bird/creation ancestor? It is concluded that the painting is most likely a representation of Genyornis newtoni but there is insufficient evidence to indicate any age for the painting.
During the late Holocene, Aboriginal rock painters in north Queensland selected and combined various natural inorganic and organic materials in paint recipes – possibly to increase the longevity of their paintings. The organic materials make direct radiocarbon dating possible.
Minute biological traces, with their prospect of recovering even ancient DNA, are the most attractive of archaeological materials to work with. This supplementary report on field studies of rock-art first published in ANTIQUITY further explores how these studies may in truth be carried out.
This chapter explores how sex, gender, and embodiment are expressed in North European rock art. Contributions that approach rock art with engendered perspectives are described, along with an appraisal of the present state of gendered rock art research. We regard rock art as part of the prevailing cosmologies of Stone and Bronze Age societies in northern Europe, and investigate how sex and gender are significant components of these. The great advantage of gender as an analytical tool is that it operates at all levels in society, from the structuring of daily life to cosmologies. (Dommasnes 1992 :12).
The dating studies of the ‘modern rock-art scientists’, when critically examined, are found not to show that the Côa valley petroglyphs are of recent age. Their Upper Palaeolithic characteristics, and therefore their likely late Pleistocene age, are consistent with their archaeological context.
Through combining the functions of three different digital image programs, a method to document and interpret superimposed pigment motifs is described.
The 1950s, era of the first radiocarbon revolution, saw famous clashes between confidence in the old chronologies and the new results from radiocarbon, which sometimes appeared ‘archaeologically unacceptable’. The same issues continue in respect of the radiocarbon dating of rock art, where the sheer technical difficulty of securing a dating number in which one can have confidence, remains a large real obstacle.
The recognition of the occurrence of Pleistocene rock art in Australia is reviewed in the context of historical developments as well as recent observations. The frequency of misinterpretations of reported data and their effects are discussed, with particular emphasis on the traditional heartland of the 'Panaramitee style', in NE South Australia. Despite the continuing paucity of credibly dated examples, it is apparent that most rock art of the earliest phase has survived as petroglyphs rather than pictograms, which is consistent with the evidence from the rest of the world. An attempt is made to characterise Australian petroglyphs that are probably of the Pleistocene, and to estimate their potential number. In comparing them with the Pleistocene rock art of other continents their close similarity with traditions elsewhere belonging to Mode 3 lithic industries is noted.
This paper addresses the development of the human species during a relatively short period in its evolutionary history, the last forty millennia of the Pleistocene. The hitherto dominant hypotheses of “modern” human origins, the replacement and various other “out of Africa” models, have recently been refuted by the findings of several disciplines, and by a more comprehensive review of the archaeological evidence. The complexity of the subject is reconsidered in the light of several relevant frames of reference, such as those provided by niche construction and gene-culture co-evolutionary theories, and particularly by the domestication hypothesis. The current cultural, genetic and paleoanthropological evidence is reviewed, as well as other germane factors, such as the role of neurodegenerative pathologies, the neotenization of humans in their most recent evolutionary history, and the question of cultural selection-based self-domestication. This comprehensive reassessment leads to a paradigmatic shift in the way recent human evolution needs to be viewed. This article explains fully how humans became what they are today.
Nineteenth-century texts provided by San people point to parallels and interrelationships between certain myths, paintings and landscapes. Both the myths and the paintings discussed in this article come from the Drakensberg, a dramatic landscape about which the San entertained cosmological beliefs. Transition, a fundamental of San religious thought and art, was embedded in components of the landscape. KEY WORDS: San, mythology, landscape, rock art, ritual. In recent decades, landscape archaeology has proved a valuable, if sometimes controversial, approach to the past. Researchers have tried to recover, even to re-live, the ways in which ancient people experienced their landscapes (e.g. Ashmore & Knapp 1999; Chippindale & Nash 2004: 1–36; Tilley 1994; Ucko & Layton 1999). How this can be accomplished without extreme subjectivity is a problem. Unquestionably, as Christopher Chippindale and George Nash put it, "All rock-art was initially created or caused to be created by someone; its landscape position would have been most important" (Chippindale & Nash 2004: 21). But where do we go from there? Benjamin Smith and Geoffrey Blundell have considered the issue of landscape in relation to southern Africa rock art. They conclude that, without an ethnographic context, researchers' conclusions would be "embarrassingly far off the mark" (Smith & Blundell 2004: 259). In an attempt to avoid as far as possible the sort of Eurocentrism that Smith and Blundell criticize, I focus on two San myths. In them, we encounter the rich symbolism that, for the San, animated the landscape in which they lived. I show that, by unpacking the key concepts that inform the myths, we can build up an idea of how the San thought about the landscape in which the painted rock shelters were situated.
Sexual roles in deep prehistory are among the most intriguing puzzles still to solve. Here the author shows how men and women can be distinguished by scientific measurement in the prints and stencils of the human hand that occur widely in Upper Palaeolithic art. Six hand stencils from four French caves are attributed to four adult females, an adult male, and a sub-adult male. Here we take a step closer to showing that both sexes are engaged in cave art and whatever dreams and rituals it implies.
Examples of striped marsupial depictions have been reported from both the coastal and inland Pilbara. Many are regarded as images of the thylacine, an animal that disappeared from mainland Australia some 3000–4000 years ago. Also observable in the rock art is the ‘fat‐tailed macropod’, a distinctive rendition of a marsupial with an extremely thick tail. Recent investigations in the Tom Price area and on the Burrup Peninsula confirm that both motifs pertain to the more ancient rock art corpus. Restricted artistic variation within the depiction of these two species confirms the trend to naturalistic style within animal subjects and suggests a extensive, culturally cohesive, artistic tradition across the Pilbara during the Pleistocene and early Holocene.
At two specific locations, aspects of the rock art may be explained in terms of contemporary oral traditions and cultural practices, affording one way of placing temporal parameters on these early graphic traditions. I argue that the rock art is not just representational; that it communicates mythological narratives and behavioural traits, which have a deep antiquity to the Dreaming of more than just a few thousand years.
In 2007 the Dampier Archipelago petroglyph province was included on the National Heritage List. This paper outlines the process of determining the province's scientific values. We briefly describe our findings, which are based on all existing site data lodged with regulatory authorities. We synthesize published and unpublished systematic survey and rock art recording data collected over three decades for research and environmental impact assessment. Based on this synthesis we provide the first thorough analysis and contextualisation of petroglyph sites across the Archipelago. We compare this art province with other art style provinces in the Pilbara.
Presentation d'un modele neuropsychologique permettant d'interpreter les signes dans l'art paleolithique comme des formes resultant de phenomenes entoptiques. Mise en parallele avec differents arts chamanistes. Six categories de phenomenes entoptiques sont ainsi mises en evidence
Pastoral rock art, composed of the prehistoric paintings and engravings of domestic animals, is one of the most impressive yet least understood aspects of the archaeology of the Horn of Africa. Previous studies of more than one hundred pastoral rock art sites in the Horn have focused almost exclusively upon description, chronology and stylistic distribution. This paper presents an alternative perspective by developing a cultural ecological model based upon past and present features of the environmental, demographic and social landscape. The model posits diachronic changes and predictive relationships between the ecological and social demands of cattle pastoralism in the Horn and pastoral rock art.
There have been many accounts of prehistoric ‘art’, but nearly all of them begin by assuming that the concept is a useful one. In this extensively illustrated study, Richard Bradley asks why ancient objects were created and when and how they were used. He considers how the first definitions of prehistoric artworks were made, and the ways in which they might be related to practices in the visual arts today. Extended case studies of two immensely popular and much-visited sites illustrate his argument: one considers the megalithic tombs of Western Europe, whilst the other investigates the decorated metalwork and rock carvings of Bronze Age Scandinavia.
Historic period Northern Plains Indian rock art consists of well-drawn biographic compositions showing warfare and hunting scenes. In style and content this art closely resembles the hide paintings and ledger drawings done by ethnographic groups throughout the Plains. Some ledger drawings done after 1870 were acquired by whites who also obtained the original artists’ inter. pretations of the messages these scenes were meant to convey. The result is a series of drawings that serve as a “Rosetta Stone” where English translations are provided for the ledger book picture writing. Using this Rosetta Stone quality it is possible to project the meaning of some ledger drawings onto similar rock art scenes, thereby greatly increasing our understanding of Historic period Biographic rock art and improving its utility for use by anthropologists in general.
The rock art of the north Queensland highlands has previously been argued to be the northern limit of the Central Queensland Province, based on a similarity of techniques and motifs. In this paper we test this hypothesis through an archaeological study of the rock art of Middle Park Station in the Gregory Range. Motifs from 88 rock art sites were analysed, revealing a predominance of stencilling of a limited range of motifs, with rare paintings of mostly geometric motifs and similarly rare occurrences of geometric motifs executed in a variety of engraving techniques. We argue these results, coupled with other considerations of distance and biogeography, suggest the north Queensland highlands should be regarded as a distinct rock art province, separate from the Central Queensland Province. Evidence is also presented to suggest that open social networks with limited territoriality were operating in the study area through at least the late Holocene.
Authentic petroglyph portrayals of Columbian mammoths and a possible bison at the Upper Sand Island rock art site along the San Juan River in south-eastern Utah in the United States are described and illustrated. Evidence is presented supporting their authenticity, including rock varnish and wear observations and comparisons to nearby Puebloan and Historic period petroglyphs, depiction of anatomical details not commonly known to the public, depiction of relatively small tusks (which differs from typical public perceptions), and the presence of accompanying motifs produced in a similar previously unknown style. The most likely dating of the motifs is between 13000 and 11000 years BP.
Absolute dating of prehistoric rock paintings is an exciting archaeological pursuit. Sophisticated sample collection, handling and pretreatment methods and new analytical equipment and techniques are minimizing contamination and permitting identification of trace amounts of organic substances in prehistoric paints. Radiocarbon dating using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is producing dates for minute residues of blood, charcoal and plant fibres, either accidentally or deliberately incorporated in paintings. Carbon-bearing laminations, such as oxalate-crusts and silica skins, which have accumulated under and over rock art, have also been recently dated.
Aboriginal rock paintings of policemen near Laura and their 'ethnographic interpretation' were reported by Percy Trezise (1985:74, 1993) but are otherwise unstudied. This research integrates formal analysis of an assemblage of police and associated depictions with cultural, historical and archaeological evidence to shed light on Indigenous society and identity in the frontier period (c.1873-1890s). In drawing on Aboriginal testimony the study connects with local webs of meaning. Stylistic analysis reveals the police motif as an innovative, specialised category within Quinkan style. Signs of cognitive structure include visual, material and contextual attributes (e.g. shape, colour and form, paint recipes, graphic associations, positions and locations). Stylistic coherence suggests that radically new contexts of production (war, social and demographic transformations) did not disrupt the ancestral knowledge systems and unique worldviews which lie at the heart of visual culture at Laura. Unlike most colonial texts, the depictions record Indigenous identity in the contexts of local agency and colonialism.
This chapter is an attempt to express some frustrations about how we conduct and what we expect from an archaeology of a regional sort. Although I will mostly focus on more general issues of method, I was motivated to think about these issues because of the kind of regional archaeology that is prevalent for the Upper Paleolithic of southwestern Europe, the so-called classic region. This region as “classic” is perpetuated in the most recent of archaeological texts as the sequence or model for the transformations and behaviors of human life during the late glacial period of the Old World. Why this has been termed classic and so elevated is, of course, a product of a web of historical and sociopolitical factors. But after more than a century of research, an assessment of Upper Paleolithic archaeology as a regional archaeology raises some issues of method and theory as well as some concerns with the nature of the archaeological record, given the kinds of interpretations that are preferred and popular. This chapter will merely raise—not solve—just a few issues of method and theory, particularly those that accompany a regional approach.
In the past two decades, several scholars have suggested that Paleolithic art studies have been undergoing a revolution. This disciplinary transformation is generally related to the discovery of new sites, such as Chauvet or Blombos Cave; the development of new methodologies, such as AMS radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating; and the rise of new theories concerning human cognitive evolution. These firsts are not only revolutionizing the chronology and technical study of the oldest forms of art, they are also modifying the ways Paleolithic art is conceptualized. In this article we analyze some of these recent variations in how we view, think about, and define such art. Borrowing David Clarke's terminology, we interpret the current change in our understanding of Paleolithic art as a "loss of innocence " stemming from an increasing criticism of the main axioms that defined the study of Paleolithic art until the 1980s. In this context, the loss of disciplinary innocence can be defined as the process by which most specialists become conscious of the complexity of this art.
Few issues are more fundamental to research, yet more controversial, than rock art dating, raising the unsettling conclusion that the hard - science aspect of our research is sometimes the least intellectually certain. Various scientific approaches to rock art dating are reviewed from the perspective of the 1998 Dorn varnish - dating scandal, a controversy that received international news coverage and demonstrated that the truth is often elusive. This chapter reviews cation - ratio, varnish microlamination and lead - profile analyses and other techniques (e.g., OSL) used for dating engravings. This chapter is both a primer on rock art dating, but, more importantly, an appeal to critical analytical thinking.
Paintings and engravings on cliffs, boulders, and the walls of rock-shelters and caves often can be better understood by thinking about them with gender in mind. Who made images on stone? What kinds of people do anthropomorphic images represent? More important, what can rock art tell us about the gendered lives and gendered worldviews of ancient peoples? This chapter explores the often complicated gendered dimensions of rock art iconography, technology, style, and landscape placement. All art is gendered, be it images that represent bodies or those that are abstract. Art is gendered by codes of production, who produces it and who consumes it. (Dowson 2001 :321).
Previous StudiesUsing Multivariate Statistics to Analyze Rock Art DataNorth American Early Hunting TraditionSouth Siberian Early Petroglyph StylesConclusions
References
The Cape York peninsula, in tropical Queensland, shows distinct regional pattern in its recent rock art. This paper considers examples from the tropical north of Australia. We find two distinct systems of inter-regional interaction operating, during the ethnohistoric past, in northern and in western Queensland, and corresponding spatially to two distinct bodies of rock art. In western Queensland, extensive, open networks of inter-personal relations operated during ethnohistoric times, but in the northern network, shorter and more intensive interactions were based more on individual, than on group, alliances. If the rock art record is any indication, this dual division only came about in the last 2000 to 3000 yr. We conclude, in support of Lourandos' original model of mid to late Holocene change, that the patterning of changing rock art forms signals changes in inter-regional alliance systems and a re-structuring of demographic units. -from Authors
Since 1998, a multidisciplinary scientific team has been studying the Chauvet Cave, the oldest painted cave in Europe. Lines of research have included studies of the physical environment and its evolution, subterranean climatology, karstology, sedimentology, taphonomy, palynology, and anthracology. Biological studies (molecular biology and geochemistry) and studies on the archaeological context (archaeozoology, human and animal ichnology) have also been completed, along with standard test excavations. Studies of the art have included tracing, recording, and pigment analysis. Dating has been via 14 C AMS dating on charcoal and bone and U/Th TIMS dating of calcite. This chapter presents these multidisciplinary results.
This paper explores stylistic variability in engraved art in the Sydney region. It is argued that engravings operated in a distinctive social context, fulfilling a regional bonding function and providing the opportunity for large scale group cohesion. Conversely the sheltered pigment art, produced in an arguably domestic social context, is thought to have provided the opportunity for individual and localised group identifying behaviour.
The region's open engravings are considered to be the stylistically more conservative of the two art components. This paper explores rare engraved motifs and compositional details in an attempt to explore the artists of this region's bedrock notions and isochrestic choices (Sackett 1990). It concludes that by exploring regional patterning at a variety of integrated scales we can understand better the processes and complexities of a regional rock art network.
This paper illustrates the potential of rock art for understanding the past. It uses the visual specificity of rock paintings in the Kimberley, N.W. Australia, to monitor the development of spear and spearthrower technology over time. For instance, only simple, hand-thrown spears are depicted in the earliest Kimberley rock painting styles, with spearthrowers and composite spears first appearing during the late Bradshaw and Clothes Peg Figure Periods, respectively. The rock painting sequence also depicts changes in spearthrower morphology and size, the appearance of stone spear points, and post-European use of metal spear heads. We conclude that rock art can provide evidence at a level of resolution normally absent from archaeology.
For various historical, linguistic, and political reasons our understanding of the Upper Paleolithic Old World (and especially of Europe) is predominantly based on data collected in western Europe. This chapter attempts to redress somewhat this West European bias by evaluating hypotheses proposed to explain late Pleistocene pan-European phenomenon with data gathered in central and eastern Europe.
Adoption of Robust Digital Imaging by Rock Art PractitionersReflectance CaptureAlgorithmic RenderingPhotogrammetryConclusions
References
This paper critically reviews the various approaches used to estimate the age of the rock art in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. They include: (i) the relative superimposition of styles; (ii) the use of diagnostic subject matter (depictions of extinct animals, stone tool technology, introduced European and Asian objects and animals); (iii) the recovery of a ‘painted’ slab from a dated archaeological unit; (iv) radiocarbon dating of beeswax figures, charcoal pigments, organic matter in overlying mineral deposits and ‘accreted paint layers’ (oxalate rich crusts and amorphous silica skin), pollen grains from an overlaying mud-wasp nest; and (v) optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of quartz grains from overlying mud-wasp nests. Future directions for rock art dating in the Kimberley include uranium-series dating of overlying and underlying mineral deposits.
This article initially examines the foundations of our modern understanding of Paleolithic art. Taking the period 1860-1905 into account, I show that the depiction of Paleolithic art elaborated by Western archaeologists at that time was largely based on the projection of categories used to characterize craft at the end of the nineteenth century with prehistoric art. As I depict in the final section of the article, the weakening of evolutionism and the recognition of the complexity of primitive societies at the turn of the century provoked a new definition of Paleolithic art, which included cave paintings.
The rock carvings in Scandinavia and Northern Russia are predominantly located in the shore area. It is argued that this location is connected with a basic cosmology where the cosmos is divided into an upper (in the sky), a middle (on earth) and a lower (under the ground/water) world. It is argued that the shore is the only landscape where the three cosmic worlds and natural zones water, earth, sky meet and, as such, the rock carvings signify liminal places where communication between the human and the three spirit worlds of the cosmos was made. The 'interaction' of some compositions of carved figures with structures in the rock surface both illustrate the tripartite division of the cosmos and indicate that the carvings and the rock surface together depict a cosmic landscape, that they in fact represent a cosmic map and a cosmological story or stories.
Cation‐ratio dating has allowed us to obtain chronometric ages for 13 rock engravings from the Cima region, and an additional date from the Coso Range, eastern California, North America. These fourteen new dates, in combination with five previous dates from the Cosos and other lines of evidence, enable us to reassess the rock engraving chronology for eastern California. Rock engraving is indicated as beginning in the Late Pleistocene and continuing into the Historic period, rather than the short 1500 to 3000 year prehistoric spans of production previously hypothesized. Stylistic chronologies of curvilinear followed by rectilinear and representational motifs are also provisionally supported by our results.
A large engraving site in the arid zone of western New South Wales has many thousands of engravings. It is argued that the engravings were made over a long time‐span, and the subsites were engraved at different periods; both tradition (continuity) and style (change in accidentals) have contributed to the engravings. Tradition is sought (and found) in the associations between different engraving types; style is sought (but not found) in variants of engravings which may depict tracks of certain genus of kangaroos.