Birth of the Rainbow Serpent in Arnhem Land rock art and oral history

Abstract

The Rainbow Serpent is agreed to be one of the most powerful, all consuming and widespread Ancestral Beings of Aboriginal Australia. It pervades not only oral history but also ceremony, performance and visual art, and is associated with great acts of creation and destruction. Although Rainbow Serpent imagery varies, its supernatural nature is usually emphasised by its form, often through the incorporation of attributes derived from a variety of natural creatures. Rock paintings of the Being are scattered across the continent but a particularly large sample can be found in western Arnhem Land. We analyse 107 of these in detail and note variation across both time and space through the use of multivariate statistical techniques. We hypothesise about the origins of the oldest images and compare key elements of Rainbow Serpent stories to those of 'Yam Style' Rainbow Serpents, reputed to be 4000-6000 years of age. It is our contention that an archaeological context for many of the more significant aspects of Rainbow Serpent oral history can be found over several millennia.

How old is X-ray art? Minimum age determinations for early X-ray rock art from the ‘Red Lily’ (Wulk) Lagoon rock art precinct, western Arnhem Land

“…Significant changes occur in archaeological assemblages during this period, such as the appearance of shell middens at Ngarradj Warde Djobkeng (Allen and Barton 1989;Kamminga and Allen 1973), major changes in stone artefact technologies (Hiscock 1999(Hiscock , 2011 and the occupation of Birriwilk to the south of Red Lily Lagoon Site 3 (Shine et al 2013). Taçon and Brockwell (1995) and Taçon et al (1996) suggest that these archaeological changes in the early to mid-Holocene parallel the development of new rock art traditions. The radiocarbon age determinations produced in this study support that proposition.…”

“…The image is not clear enough to determine its exact shape, or indeed its corresponding style. The 'spines' are reminiscent of those common in 'Yam'-style Rainbow Serpents (Taçon et al 1996). The image is superimposed by others, as outlined below.…”

“…While the decorative attribute of spines has previously been categorised as typifying 'early X-ray' art ( Figure 7.3), the spines feature on the outside of the painting. Therefore the spines are more likely to indicate decorative features seen in 'Yam'-style Rainbow Serpents (Taçon et al 1996). Taçon (1989) defines the internal attributes that constitute the 'early X-ray' style (see Figure 7.3), some of which are present in Motif 1, but also occur in Motif 3 of Panel 2.…”

“…The snake's depiction in this instance does not have any characteristic features of a 'Rainbow Serpent'. Rainbow Serpents are commonly depicted with elaborately detailed tails, and plant and animal appendages, macropod-like heads and cross-hatching decorative features (Taçon et al 1996). Motif 3 does not feature any of these attributes.…”

The Artification Hypothesis and Its Relevance to Cognitive Science, Evolutionary Aesthetics, and Neuroaesthetics

“…Second, the physical and neurological coordination of participating with others in temporally organized activity has at least three stabilizing effects: satisfying predictability, tension-producing-andresolving manipulation of expectation, and neurophysiological coordination that is felt subjectively as emotional coordination or integration, which ultimately provides individuals and groups with a sense of coping through social support (Caporael 1997). Several studies report that ritual and artful behavior increased in prehistory at times of resource stress, as in populations of Mimbres (Brody 1977: 210), Late Dorset (Taçon 1983), prehistoric Arnhem Land (Taçon & Brockwell 1995, Taçon, Wilson & Chippindale 1996, and Numic-speaking peoples (Garfinkel, Marcom & Schiffiman 2003).…”