Colonising With Style: Reviewing The Nexus Between Rock Art, Territoriality And The Colonisation And Occupation Of Sahul

Abstract

The role of material culture in the visual communication of information has been a focus of much recent debate in the international anthropological and archaeological literature (eg Conkey 1990; Davis 1990; Hodder 1985; Wiessner 1988; Wobst 1977). Central to this concern has been assessment of the role of information exchange in the occupation of particular environments (eg Brandt and Carder 1987; Gamble 1982; Jochim 1983). Recent analyses of Australian rock art (eg David and Cole 1990; David 1991; Franklin 1989; Lewis 1988; Morwood 1984, 1988; TaA§on 1987, 1989a) have also approached this question, with varying degrees of success. In this paper I consider these issues in terms of the role rock art may have played in the colonisation and subsequent occupation of Sahul. I argue that colonisation was facilitated by visual communication systems which emphasised bonding between groups of people. The designs in these systems were primarily geometric in character and exhibited regional variation even within the Pleistocene (Rosenfeld 1991). I also argue that a greater regionalisation of Australian rock art styles through time can be interpreted as a closure of social networks which can itself be related to increases in population densities, or changes in human dispersal patterns, and greater territorial bounding by groups of people. Such bounding was visually articulated by relatively heterogeneous art styles that facilitated social differentiation between people. Â