Rock Art Research Research Articles

Brilliant blue: The blue rock art of Awunbarna, Northern Territory, Australia

Within the extensively painted rockshelters of Awunbarna (Mt Borradaile) in western Arnhem Land, appears a cluster of paintings that are conspicuous amongst the traditional white, red, yellow, and black figures. Brilliant blue pigment has, for generations, captured the imagination of local Aboriginal community members and visitors, including rock art researchers. This rock art was created using laundry whiteners (such as Reckitt’s Blue) during a period of intense change in the region brought about by European arrival. This paper explores the largest documented cluster of laundry blue rock paintings in northern Australia. We investigate the subject matter, distribution, and manner of use at Awunbarna alongside its broader cultural and artistic context. We find that laundry blue rock art emerges as part of a flurry of innovative rock art being created in this region at the turn of the nineteenth–twentieth century and continuing, in rare instances, until the 1960s. We argue that blue paintings and the Painted Hand Figures represent two relatively short-lived, innovative experimental phases within an art-making tradition with Awunbarna as the epicentre for this rock art movement. Likewise, we suggest a very small number of artists may be responsible for the blue rock art of Awunbarna indicating its use may have been restricted to artists of a certain status.

Murujuga: Dynamics of the Dreaming — A long and short history of this cultural landscape with reference to rock art, stone features, excavations and historical sites recorded across the Dampier Archipelago between 2014 and 2018 Edied by JoMcDonald and KenMulvaney. The Centre for Rock Art Research + Management (CRAR+M) Monograph 2, UWA Publishing, 2023 ISBN: 9781760802554. pp.775. AUD120.00.

Murujuga: Dynamics of the Dreaming — A long and short history of this cultural landscape with reference to rock art, stone features, excavations and historical sites recorded across the Dampier Archipelago between 2014 and 2018 Edied by JoMcDonald and KenMulvaney. The Centre for Rock Art Research + Management (CRAR+M) Monograph 2, UWA Publishing, 2023 ISBN: 9781760802554. pp.775. AUD120.00.

Finger Fluting in Prehistoric Caves: A Critical Analysis of the Evidence for Children, Sexing and Tracing of Individuals

Finger flutings are channels drawn in soft sediments covering walls, floors and ceilings of some limestone caves in Europe and Australia and in some cases date as far back as 50,000 years ago. Initial research focused on why they were made, but more recently, as part of a growing interest in the individual in the past, researchers began asking questions about who made them. This shift in direction has led to claims that by measuring the width of flutings made with the three middle fingers of either hand, archaeologists can infer the ordinal age, sex and individuality of the ‘fluter’. These claims rest on a single dataset created in 2006. In this paper, we undertake the first critical analysis of that dataset and its concomitant methodologies. We argue that sample size, uneven distribution of sex and age within the sample, non-standardised medium, human variability, the lack of comparability between an experimental context and real cave environments and assumptions about demographic modelling effectively negate all previous claims. To sum, we find no substantial evidence for the claims that an age, sex and individual tracing can be revealed by measuring finger flutings as described by Sharpe and Van Gelder (Antiquity 80: 937-947, 2006a; Cambridge Archaeological Journal 16: 281–95, 2006b; Rock Art Research 23: 179–98, 2006c). As a case study, we discuss Koonalda Cave in southern Australia. Koonalda has the largest and most intact display of finger flutings in the world and is also part of a cultural landscape maintained and curated by Mirning people.

CATEGORISING CATFISH, JEWFISH AND EEL MOTIFS IN LAURA (QUINKAN) ROCK ART, CAPE YORK PENINSULA, AUSTRALIA

Fish motifs in Aboriginal rock art of the Laura area (Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia) include a heterogenous group that has been imprecisely classified by rock art researchers. By analysing motif attributes, style and contexts (including natural populations), we characterised three categories: fork-tailed catfish (Neoarius paucus), eel-tailed catfish (Neosilurus spp.) and eel (Anguilla reinhardti). We label the categories with the local names ‘catfish’, ‘jewfish’ and ‘eel’. The catfish cohort has a relatively naturalistic style, while the eel exhibits anatomical trends of eels, distinctive arrangements, and stylistic overlaps with jewfish that may denote shared meanings. Ambiguity is confirmed as a cultural value and communication mode of the rock art system.

Conservation and Co-Management of Rock Art in National Parks: An Australian Case Study

Using rock art conservation as a focus, this paper outlines the levels of legislated protection afforded to designated natural and cultural areas/sites in Australia and describes the co-management approach adopted in 1998 in relation to Mutawintji National Park in western New South Wales. The park encompasses four different protection categories: a Historic Site, a Nature Reserve, a National Park, and a State Conservation Area. Known for more than a century, the Historic Site is a major area of rock art containing Aboriginal engravings, paintings and stencils. Management of the Historic Site is a key concern, given the tourist interest and associated potential for accelerated deterioration of cultural heritage. The Mutawintji Plan of Management pointed to the importance of Mutawintji for Aboriginal people to connect with the country, and the co-management model encouraged tourism development as a means of providing employment opportunities as Aboriginal guides. No special legislative requirements in relation to rock art conservation, beyond those already in existence, were applied to the co-management system. Using field knowledge involving rock art research and early guide training programs at Mutawintji and literature sources, this paper suggests possible future approaches to rock art conservation in the Mutawintji Lands.

Scratching the surface: Subtractive rock markings from the Cockburn Ranges, eastern Kimberley, Western Australia

This article deals with visual expression in the form of subtractive rock markings from the Cockburn Ranges, situated within the Balanggarra Native Title determination in the east Kimberley, Western Australia. We present examples of subtractive rock marking diversity, ranging from cupules and abraded grooves, recursive cultural practises in the form of battering and scratching of extant artworks, figurative and non-figurative images, potentially random scratches and battering of the rock surface and tally marks. These kinds of visual expressions in rock art research have a tendency to fall under the radar when researchers discuss the meaning and significance of Aboriginal Australian rock art. We argue that the broad diversity of subtractive rock markings is employed through time and space, stretching from the Pleistocene through to the more recent past. The article presents two avenues for interpreting this often-neglected corpus of Kimberley rock art: rock art as an intergenerational cultural knowledge transfer and its connection to maintenance rituals.

Histories of Australian Rock Art Research, edited by Paul S.C.Taçon, Sally K.May, Ursula K.Frederick, and JoMcDonald. ANU Press, Terra Australis 55. 2022. ISBN 9781760465353. pp. 292. $75.00 (Open Access Digital Copy)

Archaeology in OceaniaEarly View Book Review Histories of Australian Rock Art Research, edited by Paul S.C. Taçon, Sally K. May, Ursula K. Frederick, and Jo McDonald. ANU Press, Terra Australis 55. 2022. ISBN 9781760465353. pp. 292. $75.00 (Open Access Digital Copy) Rachel Hoerman, Corresponding Author Rachel Hoerman [email protected] RH: Nohopapa Hawaiʻi, Huliaupaʻa, the Kaliʻuokapaʻakai Collective Correspondence: Rachel Hoerman, Nohopapa Hawaiʻi, Huliaupaʻa, the Kaliʻuokapaʻakai Collective. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Rachel Hoerman, Corresponding Author Rachel Hoerman [email protected] RH: Nohopapa Hawaiʻi, Huliaupaʻa, the Kaliʻuokapaʻakai Collective Correspondence: Rachel Hoerman, Nohopapa Hawaiʻi, Huliaupaʻa, the Kaliʻuokapaʻakai Collective. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 13 June 2023 https://doi.org/10.1002/arco.5298 Reviewed by Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

Digital Rock Art: beyond 'pretty pictures'.

The term 'Rock Art' is loosely used in this article to refer to prehistoric carvings and paintings. Rock art research has changed profoundly in the last two decades. Partly, this is due to the introduction of more 'scientific' methodologies such as digital recording, to overcome the subjective nature of analogue documentation methods. Digital recording offers not only 'pretty pictures' but more immediate and quantifiable datasets and methods of analysis. As a result, new research implementing complex, multi-scalar and inter-relational analyses, which do not focus solely on the motifs or the landscape location, but encompass many variables of the rock art assemblages, have been successful in bringing rock art to wider narratives of prehistory. This article reflects on the interaction between rock art and digital archaeology, considering how the application of digital resources has changed the way we think, record and conduct research in this field. It will be illustrated by two main case studies from Iberia: Schematic Art in its painted form, and Atlantic Rock Art, a carving tradition.

A DStretch discovery: A Crow calling card pictograph at Writing-on-Stone

DStretch enhancement technology has enabled rock art researchers to identify and record previously obscure pictographs at thousands of sites worldwide. Recent DStretch enhancement of photographs from Writing-on-Stone, Alberta, exposed a previously unknown horse and rider pictograph at site DgOv-2. The pictograph can be identified as a “calling card” painted by a Crow warrior-artist to taunt his Blackfoot enemies at one of their most sacred places. The image details the artist’s success against a force of enemies that are presumably Blackfoot.

Qualia in late precolonial Pueblo rock art: An exploration of conventionalized sensorial experience in Rio Grande Style petroglyphs

Although the application of semiotics to the archaeological study of rock art is not new, Peircean perspectives are still uncommon, and those implementing the concepts of qualisigns and qualia are only rarely employed. Yet, an approach centered on sensuous properties can serve as a valuable complement to other materiality- and landscape-based frameworks popular in contemporary rock art research. Using Ancestral Pueblo rock art from the Middle and Northern Rio Grande region of the U.S. Southwest as an example, I offer an archaeological narrative of how social values may be attached to conventionalized qualia rooted in sensorial experiences. Specifically, I examine how diverse media—rock art, shields, objects of adornment, and feathers—were connected through luminosity and security, culturally conceptualized qualitative properties that became formalized and enregistered in the context of new social institutions and modes of group conduct appearing during the 14th century CE.

Boar or bear? Rock art of the Shakhty rock-shelter (Eastern Pamir)

One of the fundamental lines of rock art research is chronological attribution of images. State-of-the-art methodology includes a set of direct and indirect approaches aimed at correlation the imagery with specific archaeological cultures or at least at definition of the chronological boundaries.The highlands of Eastern Pamir (Tadjikistan) is known by a very few rock art sites among which the Shakhty rock-shelter located at the height of 4200 m above sea level representing a very unique hunting scene which is created in an archaic naturalistic style which has no direct parallels. It was preliminary attributed to the Stone Age by its discoverer V. A. Ranov at the beginning of the 1960s. A taxonomic identification of zoomorphic figures from Shakhty was not clear. The main hypothesis proposed two options: brown bear or wild boar. The species definition could be a chronological marker in correlation with data on paleofauna and paleoenvironment in the region.The present study focuses on indirect dating of the Shakhty rock-shelter rock art through the determination of the taxonomic affiliation of zoomorphic figures and correlation with data on the fauna composition and paleoclimate of the Eastern Pamir in the Pleistocene and early Holocene.

Performance theory: a growing interest in rock art research

ABSTRACT It is always surprising to find clear examples in archaeology of researchers with common interests working, albeit unintentionally, without any awareness of their colleagues’ allied research. The sub-discipline of rock art research provides a striking example. All rock art practices involve performances of one kind or another. While performance is notionally implicated in rock art studies around the globe, earnest appeals to performance theory are less common. The few studies employing recognisable performance theory to study rock art are largely independent of one another. Consequently, this sub-field has not accumulated insights. It is, nevertheless, a growing interest. This comparative appraisal reviews a selection of performance theory approaches to rock art, drawing attention to their similarities and differences as well as some of the benefits of performance theory. The standard terms, concepts and definitions of performance theory provide a means to coordinate and formalise disparate ideas. Rock art research globally stands to gain from comprehensive, rather than partial, engagements with performance theory.

반구대 암각화 편년에 대한 비판적 검토

The objective of this paper is to reexamine the chronology of the Bangudae petroglyphs established in 1980 and generate a new chronology. This paper argued that the chronology of the rock art should be dated to the ‘Neolithic.’ According to the old chronology of the Bangudae rock art formulated in 1980, the date ranges between the Korean Bronze and Early Iron Ages (BC 300-100 AD). This chronology is still playing a critical role in Korean archaeological and historical societies and supported by a number of rock art researchers. In particular, since the Korean National History text books are adopting the old chronology, almost all the Korean students have been significantly influenced by it. In the mean time, various material evidence discovered at different archaeological sites suggests that the rock art may have been engraved much earlier than ‘the Bronze and Early Iron Ages.’ Based on newly collected materials, many researchers have been arguing that the rock art may have been manufactured during the Korean Neolithic (ca. 4000-3000 BC). This paper pointed out some problems that the old chronology has and focused on a few variables and archaeological context necessary to formulate a new chronology of the Bangudae petroglyphs. This paper emphasized the importance of the interpretation and appropriate archaeological explanation of the motifs in which we are interested. To testify the new date of the rock art, ecofact and artifacts such as whale bone, whaling gears, oceangoing vessels and oars, obsidian discovered in Ulsan and southeastern part of Korean peninsula were examined in conjunction with archaeological context. This paper focused on the subsistence patterns and frequency of shell midden of both the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, hunting-fishing and stone tools related to agricultural practices.

On the use of Machine Learning methods in rock art research with application to automatic painted rock art identification

Rock art is globally recognized as significant, yet the resources allocated to the study and exploration of this important form of cultural heritage are often scarce. In areas where numerous rock art sites exist, much of the rock art is unidentified and therefore remains, unrecorded and unresearched. Manually identifying rock art is time-consuming, tedious, and expensive. Therefore, it is necessary to automate many processes in rock art research, which can be accomplished by Machine Learning. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) can greatly facilitate rock art research in many ways, such as through Object Recognition and Detection, Motif Extraction, Object Reconstruction, Image Knowledge Graphs, and Representations. This article is a reflective work on the future of ML for rock art research. As a proof-of-concept, it presents a machine learning method based on recent advances in deep learning to train a model to identify images with painted rock art (pictograms). The efficacy of the proposed method is shown using data collected from fieldwork in Australia. Furthermore, our proposed method can be used to train models that are specific to the rock art found in different regions. We provide the code and the trained models in the supplementary section.

Standardization procedure to provide a unified multi-method elemental compositional dataset, application to ferruginous colouring matters from Namibia

Curation of archaeological materials often leads to carrying out multi-analytical methodologies that combine non-invasive and invasive elemental analyses. Such materials are often analysed with different techniques. It results in the production of complementary but apparently non-compatible compositional datasets that cannot be easily compared. In the present paper, we propose to compare results acquired on geological ferruginous colouring matters from Namibia with analytical techniques (X-Ray Fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), Proton-Induced-X-ray Emission spectrometry (PIXE), Inductively Coupled Plasma coupled to Optical Emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) and Inductively Coupled Plasma coupled to Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS)). We aim to provide a unified elemental dataset about these ferruginous colouring matters, usually referred to as “ochre” in archaeology. Analysed geological samples come from three distinct tectonostratigraphic zones of Namibia surveyed in the frame of rock art research. When compared directly, three of the four datasets obtained from these measurements appear as non-compatible because of the inter-equipment variability. However, through a simple standardization procedure, we demonstrate that it is possible to unify these datasets. This procedure minimizes the inter-equipment variability, making the inter-zones of provenance predominant and allowing distinctions of the samples according to their sole origin. Beyond shedding new light on the possibility to compare different elemental analytical techniques, this procedure paves the way for complementary multimodal studies of ferruginous colouring matters.

Fluidities of personhood in the idioms of the Maloti-Drakensberg, past and present, and their use in incorporating contextual ethnographies in southern African rock art research

ABSTRACT In the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains of southern Africa, beliefs about snakes and their representations in rock art images are emblematic of hybrid histories of regional societies. The snake symbol initially represented an attempt at ‘reaching out’ as forager societies incorporated a prominent figure in the mythologies of incoming societies into their own – a figure which became a symbolic reference to cross-cultural symbiosis and admixture. Reflecting the long history of such contact, the ritual uses and ontological positions of snakes in contemporary knowledge systems of the Maloti-Drakensberg are coherent with those of earlier societies. This offers fertile ground for novel forms of interpretation. Using contextual historic and modern ethnographic material, this paper presents a relational account of regional idioms. It dwells on the language of taming and domestication that permeate these ethnographies, and the concern they show for the mitigation of ‘wild’, sometimes ‘monstrous’, consequences of spiritual power in the social world. Symbolic resolutions of these consequences are discernible in rock art images, particularly those of snakes, demonstrating the ritual brokerage of relations between human and non-human communities, with both forms of agency depicted in various states of ‘domestication’, bridging forager and farmer understandings of human–animal relations.

A Conversation with Felipe Criado Boado

Professor Criado-Boado’s work is wide-ranging, encompassing landscape archaeology, rural history, community science, the transfer of knowledge, and applied archaeology as well as heritage. He has done research on origins and developments of monumental architecture (field work in Spain, Portugal, UK, Chile, Argentina, Perú and Uruguay) and rock art (field experience and research on Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia, and Chile). His approach is linked to Interpretive theory, pointing out the conditions of possibility of archaeological and cultural knowledge and defining a systematic methodological framework to base archaeological interpretation.

Resistance and remembering through rock art: Contact‐period rock art in Wardaman country, Northern Australia

AbstractAlthough notions of resistance are not new in rock art research concerning cross‐cultural colonial encounters, this study shows how multiple dimensions of Indigenous resistance can be explored through a multidisciplinary analysis of rock art in northern Australia. The study explores the intersections between introduced “Western” and pre‐existing “traditional” motifs in rock art near Yingalarri waterhole in Wardaman Country, Northern Territory, analysing the visual conventions and superimpositions with an eye towards Wardaman epistemological engagements with rock art and experiences of colonial occupation. These intersections reveal further dimensions of Wardaman responses to colonial occupation, including the negotiation of shifting inter‐regional relationships and engagements with Country as well as the continued emphasis on inherited artistic practices. The study also explores the continuing role that rock art, and its interpretation, plays in Indigenous colonial resistance. Wardaman discussions of introduced motifs documented during the 1988–1991 Earthwatch project brought the paintings out of the past, giving them contemporary significance via kinship connections and narratives of survival that challenge colonial efforts to erase Indigenous experiences of early colonial contact and occupation. The paper contributes to archaeological understandings of inter‐regional connections between northern Australian rock art regions and rock art production and discussion as a means for Aboriginal resistance and remembrance after the arrival of Europeans.

Монографические публикации и исследования петроглифов северных районов Китая в последней четверти XX века

In China, rock art is spread mainly in the border regions – carvings and engravings in the north of the country and paintings in the south. Before the beginning of the 21st century, research books and albums of petroglyphs were published in four administrative units at provincial level in the north-west of the county: Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Xinjiang and Qinghai. Petroglyphs of Inner Mongolia were studied and published by Gai Shanlin, Liang Zhenhua and N. Dalengurib. The earliest and the latest books by Gai Shanlin available to us (published in 1985 and 2002 respectively) were entirely devoted to the interpretation of rock carvings and searches for their analogies. All four monographs on Ningxia rock art – by Zhou Xinghua, Li Xiangshi and Zhu Cunshi, Xu Cheng and Wei Zhong were published almost simultaneously, at the beginning of the 1990s. Ancient rock art of Xinjiang was published in albums by Zhao Yangfeng, Wang Linshan and Wang Bo and in books by Wang Binghua and Su Beihai. The monograph by Tang Huisheng and Zhang Wenhua was devoted to the description of Qinghai petroglyphs and the problems of their interpretation. The album of photos “The Rock Arts of China” is a kind of a guide to the main rock art sites known by 1993 in all the Chinese provinces. Generally, it can be stated that modern Chinese scientific rock art research was born in the first half of the 1980s, when the first articles on rock carvings started to appear in Chinese archaeological periodicals and flourished in the second half of the 1980s and the 1990s, when quite a number of monographs were published.

Nalangkulurru, the Spirit Beings, and the Black‐Nosed Python: Ontological Self‐Determination and Yanyuwa Law in Northern Australia's Gulf Country

ABSTRACTWe write from an ontological premise that there are other ways to know and understand the “archaeological record” and “rock art” that are devoid of Western ontology, and there have been for many millennia. In this article, we consider one specific Indigenous place and its associated visual elements, what might be commonly referred to as “rock art.” This place, Nalangkalurru, is replete with meaning, grounded in a well‐founded and understood logic and reason. Nalangkalurru belongs to the Yanyuwa people of the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria region, northern Australia. By adopting methodological openness, we take a journey of steadied nondistraction oriented towards the Yanyuwa ontology that is in place. When viewing the visual elements of Nalangkalurru, which include Ancestral Beings that are visually present on the cave's large rock surface, Yanyuwa have resolutely declared that this “is not a painting.” We explore what this comment means and expand the discussion to consider the nature of rock art research, when “rock art” is not “rock art.” These insights inspire a reflective discussion on the ways Yanyuwa, and Indigenous ontologies more broadly, unsettle and aid the ontological turn. [ontology, rock art, colonialism, Indigenous, Australia]