Rock art and inter-regional interaction in northeastern Australian prehistory

David, Bruno; Cole, Noelene

doi:10.1017/s0003598x00078881

Cited by 34 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 20 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…A vast number of regional Simple Figurative art bodies have now been documented across the country (Cole and Trezise 1992;David 1992David , 1994David and Cole 1990;Flood 1987;Gunn 1983Gunn , 1995Gunn , 2000Gunn , 2003Hatte 1992;Layton 1992a;McDonald 1998aMcDonald , 1999McDonald and Veth 2006;Morwood 1984Morwood , 1988Morwood , 1992bOfficer 1984Officer , 1992Ross 1997Ross , 2003. While being cohesive style regions -usually defined by bio-geological regions -internal variation (both synchronic and diachronic) is found in these.…”

Section: Sydney Art In the General Scheme Of Australian Rock Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other parts of Australia, the burgeoning of regional art bodies has been explained in terms of greater demographic pressure, increased social complexity and amplified territoriality (David 1991;David and Cole 1990;McDonald and Veth 2006;Morwood 1984Morwood , 2002Rosenfeld 1993Rosenfeld , 2002. It has been argued that patterns of change in symbolic behaviour (including rock art) were functionally interrelated with changes in resource structure, technology and economy (David 2002, Morwood 1987.…”

Section: Diachronic Variation In the Art Of The Sydney Basinmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dreamtime Superhighway (TA27) : Sydney Basin Rock Art and Prehistoric Information Exchange

McDonald¹

2008

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Terra Australis reports the results of archaeological and related research within the south and east of Asia, though mainly Australia, New Guinea and island Melanesia -lands that remained terra australis incognita to generations of prehistorians. Its subject is the settlement of the diverse environments in this isolated quarter of the globe by peoples who have maintained their discrete and traditional ways of life into the recent recorded or remembered past and at times into the observable present. List of volumes in Terra AustralisVolume 1: Burrill Lake and Currarong: Coastal Sites in Southern New South Wales. R.J. Lampert (1971) Volume 2: Ol Tumbuna: Archaeological Excavations in the Eastern Central Highlands, Papua New Guinea. J.P. White (1972) Volume 3 vi Dreamtime Superhighway: an analysis of Sydney Basin rock art and prehistoric information exchange FOREWORD I remember the visit with clarity: it was 1991 and my first trip to Australia. One day was spent at Sydney's West Head with the young and enthusiastic Jo McDonald, where we toured some of the rock engraving sites and the painted Great Mackerel rock shelter. I can still see the large flat curving rocks at West Head on which animals had been engraved -fish, kangaroos, a goanna. And, as is so often the case when I visit rock art sites, my imagination gets going as to the 'how's' and 'why's'. I try to run some sort of a show in my head as to the people who produced these, viewed these, and what kinds of significations the images and their makings played in the lives of past peoples. At the time of this visit, Jo McDonald was well into her 1994 dissertationthe work upon which this monograph is based. Already, in that PhD dissertation, she was able to touch on some of the things that my imagination was searching for. Thus, it is with great pleasure and even more enthusiasm that I am writing this Foreword to a revised and thoroughly up-dated monograph based on that initial dissertation research.At the time of the 1994 dissertation, the anthropological and archaeological study of 'rock art' was really emerging into new trends and new prominence. Surely Australia was one of the leaders in the training of students and in the research that contextualized the images and 'art', thanks to such scholars as Andrée Rosenfeld, Robert Layton, and John Clegg among others. By this time, the work of David Lewis-Williams and colleagues in southern Africa had set off numerous studies world-wide into the relationship between the production of rock art images and altered states of consciousness and the role of shamans in image-making practices. But this was not the direction or focus of rock art studies in Australia, and McDonald's original work would not be tempted either. Rather, she carried out an extensive project of contextualizing the rock art in question, and in two different ways. First, she wanted to give us an understanding of the rock art in its archaeological contexts-sheltered or open, dates and chronologies, site types and, in general, what the archaeology c...

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Section: Sydney Art In the General Scheme Of Australian Rock Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Diachronic Variation In the Art Of The Sydney Basinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dreamtime Superhighway (TA27) : Sydney Basin Rock Art and Prehistoric Information Exchange

McDonald¹

2008

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“…McNiven (1999) elaborated these ideas in modelling regionalisation in the Great Sandy Region since the mid-Holocene (see David 1991;David and Cole 1990;Hall and Bowen 1989). He defined regionalisation as 'a process whereby social groups segment or fission into smaller social groups with separate and smaller territories.…”

Section: Localisation Of Resource Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Coastal Themes: An Archaeology of the Southern Curtis Coast, Queensland : An Archaeology of the Southern Curtis Coast, Queensland

Ulm¹

2006

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terra australis 24Terra Australis reports the results of archaeological and related research within the south and east of Asia, though mainly Australia, New Guinea and island Melanesia -lands that remained terra australis incognita to generations of prehistorians. Its subject is the settlement of the diverse environments in this isolated quarter of the globe by peoples who have maintained their discrete and traditional ways of life into the recent recorded or remembered past and at times into the observable present.Since the beginning of the series, the basic colour on the spine and cover has distinguished the regional distribution of topics as follows: ochre for Australia, green for New Guinea, red for South-East Asia and blue for the Pacific Islands. From 2001, issues with a gold spine will include conference proceedings, edited papers and monographs which in topic or desired format do not fit easily within the original arrangements. All volumes are numbered within the same series. List of volumes in Terra AustralisVolume 1: Burrill Lake and Currarong: Coastal Sites in Southern New South Wales. R.J. Lampert (1971) Volume 2: Ol Tumbuna: Archaeological Excavations in the Eastern Central Highlands, Papua New Guinea. J.P. White (1972) Volume 3 994.01Copyright of the text remains with the contributors/authors, 2006. This book is copyright in all countries subscribing to the Berne convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher. THE RESEARCH DOCUMENTED here represents the first systematic archaeological work in this area of the southeast Queensland coast and was undertaken as a major part of a larger, multicomponent project concerning archaeology and cultural heritage in the traditional country of Gooreng Gooreng speaking people. Sean's task was to build upon the results of exploratory site survey and excavation to address two key concerns. The first was the relationship of patterns of cultural change in his study area to those described elsewhere in southeast Queensland. The second was to ensure that any such comparisons were taphonomically well-founded, particularly with regard to the analytical integrity of the shell middens upon which he and other coastal researchers in Australia rely so heavily. Sean took to this task with a vengeance, closely surveying a large area of landscape and excavating an array of site types to provide himself with a solid sample of the archaeological variation thus revealed. Though most were not archaeologically rich, these sites provided substantial grist for Sean's taphonomic mill, prompting him to adapt conjoining techniques to work on bivalve shellfish -a simple but clever innovation -as well as to undertake much more sophisticated work on local variation in correction factors for the radiocarbon dating of marine shell. In the end, he was able to distil the three-phase cul...

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“…Examples of this correlation occur in Northern Australia where rock art style 'boundaries' parallel ethnographically-stated clan groups (David 2002;Taçon 1993). On Cape York, an expansive tradition of engraved geometric figures shifted to a dualistic division of painted motifs, closely correlating with two ethnographicallyknown regions (David 1991;David and Cole 1990;David and Lourandos 1998). This duality was also observed in a number of other regions of Queensland (Lourandos 1997) and Western Arnhem Land (Taçon 1993(Taçon , 1994.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Painted shark vertebrae beads from the Djawumbu–Madjawarrnja complex, western Arnhem Land

Wright

Langley

May

et al. 2016

Australian Archaeology

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In Europe and Africa, fine grained use wear and residue analyses of various organic bead technologies have provided remarkable information about specialist artisans and their affiliate communities. Ethnographic research suggests that personal ornaments represent one of the best ways to explore past human interactions and ethno-linguistic diversity. The study of material culture featured in rock art is now well established in Australia, but few detailed analyses have concentrated on personal ornaments recovered from the archaeological record. Fewer still have assessed the potential of this medium for assessing regional variations, despite rich ethnographic histories which point to the significance of these objects for self-differentiating communities and/or clans. This paper examines a collection of painted shark vertebrae beads recently discovered during archaeological survey in Arnhem Land. Detailed morphometric and use wear analysis is presented for these ornaments, alongside Aboriginal oral traditions, and assessment of similar artefacts held in museum collections across Australia. The potential of this combined approach within the Australian context is discussed, including how these studies add to our understanding of group signifying behaviour.

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Rock art and inter-regional interaction in northeastern Australian prehistory

Abstract: The Cape York peninsula, in tropical Queensland, shows distinct regional pattern in its recent rock art. And there is regional pattern also in the exchange networks of ethnohistorical times. Do these patterns bear a relationship?

Cited by 34 publications

References 20 publications

Dreamtime Superhighway (TA27) : Sydney Basin Rock Art and Prehistoric Information Exchange

Dreamtime Superhighway (TA27) : Sydney Basin Rock Art and Prehistoric Information Exchange

Coastal Themes: An Archaeology of the Southern Curtis Coast, Queensland : An Archaeology of the Southern Curtis Coast, Queensland

Painted shark vertebrae beads from the Djawumbu–Madjawarrnja complex, western Arnhem Land

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