Perspectives on Differences in Rock Art
Edited by
Jan Magne Gjerde [+–]
Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research
Jan Magne Gjerde is Researcher in Archaeology at the High North Department in Tromsø at NIKU (Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research). Gjerde has a PhD in Stone Age rock art of Fennoscandia with extensive fieldwork in Finland, Norway, NW-Russia and Sweden. Gjerde has in the last years published several papers on Fennoscandian Stone Age rock art. He also led the large-scale Stone Age excavations at Tønsnes, Northern Norway in 2011 and 2012. Gjerde is currently working on the project “Stone Age Demographics: Multi-scale exploration of population variation and dynamics” (2017-2021) funded by the Norwegian Research Council.
Mari Strifeldt Arntzen [+–]
World heritage rock art centre – Alta Museum, Norway
Mari Strifeldt Arntzen is an archaeologist at the World Heritage Rock Art Centre, Alta Museum in Norway
Rock art is a global phenomenon with enormous variation in its shapes and figures, and research interests that are wide and inclusive.
This volume explores the differences observed in rock art through time and space, synchronically and diachronically. These differences can, for example, be in form, content or space (macro and micro), where explanations might relate to a variety of factors such as political or societal beliefs and rituals. This volume also discusses the many-sided and complex issues connected with authenticity and presentation, and the efforts and choices that are taken to preserve and present rock art.
The wide-ranging papers presented here have been written by scholars from across the globe, from a variety of perspectives on differences in rock art. This volume will be of interest to students and archaeologists, and to researchers from related disciplines.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research
Jan Magne Gjerde is Researcher in Archaeology at the High North Department in Tromsø at NIKU (Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research). Gjerde has a PhD in Stone Age rock art of Fennoscandia with extensive fieldwork in Finland, Norway, NW-Russia and Sweden. Gjerde has in the last years published several papers on Fennoscandian Stone Age rock art. He also led the large-scale Stone Age excavations at Tønsnes, Northern Norway in 2011 and 2012. Gjerde is currently working on the project “Stone Age Demographics: Multi-scale exploration of population variation and dynamics” (2017-2021) funded by the Norwegian Research Council.
World heritage rock art centre – Alta Museum, Norway
Mari Strifeldt Arntzen is an archaeologist at the World Heritage Rock Art Centre, Alta Museum in Norway
Rock art is a global phenomenon with an enormous variation in shapes and figures and the research interest is wide and inclusive. The volume aims to explain differences observed in rock art through time and space, synchronically or diachronically. Differences can for example be in form, content, space (macro and micro), where explanations might relate to a large variety of factors such as political, societal, beliefs and rituals. Issues connected with authenticity and presentation where efforts and choices taken to preserve and present rock art are indeed many sided and complex are discussed. The wide-range papers in this volume are by scholars from across the globe with different perspectives on differences in Rock Art. This volume will be of interest to students, archaeologists and researchers from related disciplines.
Chapter 1
The University of Western Australia
Professor Joakim Goldhahn holds the Kimberley Foundation Ian Potter Chair in Rock Art at The University of Western Australia. His research interests include rock art traditions in Australia and northern Europe, the European Bronze Age, and research themes such as human-animal relations, landscape perceptions, death and burial rituals, ritual specialists, war and warriorhood, cultural memory praxis, archaeological theory in praxis, the history of archaeology, and more. His latest publications include ‘Sagaholm – North European Bronze Age Rock Art and Burial Ritual’ (Oxbow 2016), ‘Birds in the Bronze Age – A North European Perspective’ (Cambridge University Press 2019), and the guest editorial issues ‘Contact Rock Art’ for Australian Archaeology (2019, edited with Dr Sally K. May), ‘Rock Art Worldlings’ for Time and Mind (2019), and ‘Human-Animal Relationships from a Long-Term Perspective’ for Current Swedish Archaeology (2020, edited with Professor Kristin Armstrong Oma).
This article discusses the chronology and use of hunter-gatherer rock painting sites in northern Europe from an archaeological perspective, using formal methods. Until recently, the dating of different rock painting traditions has been based on comparative analyses of style and shore displacement data from various areas in northern Europe. During the last few decades, however, several rock painting sites have been excavated. Each of these excavations has produced a variety of answers and questions, but no attempt has yet been made to analyse and interpret the entire assemblages. This article aims to initiate such a discussion. As such, it focuses on available radiocarbon analyses, the deposition of organic material, and material culture. It is argued that there are several distinct patterns in the analysed material, defined here as four time horizons, stretching from ca. 4400 BC to the early modern period. It is suggested that there is more than one way to interpret these horizons.
Chapter 2
Arctic University Museum of Norway
Knut Helskog is a Professor Emeritus in Archaeology at The Arctic University Museum of Norway and Academy of Fine Arts, UIT The Arctic University of Norway. His research interest is oriented towards prehistoric hunter – fisher – gatherer populations in northernmost Europe, with a specific focus on the World Heritage rock art sites in Alta, northern Norway. His last works include, Communicating with the World of Beings. The World Heritage rock art sites in Alta, Arctic Norway. Oxbow Books (2014).
Integrating rock art into local and regional archaeological records is a major problem as the evidence of direct cultural connections frequently is weak and even lacking. This paper focus on the creation of a chronological sequence based on altitudinal and temporal relationships between petroglyphs, radiocarbon dated occupation sites and the Holocene shoreline displacement within a confined coastal area in Alta, Northern Norway. The proposed shore displacement curve based on the maximum dates from different sites deviates slightly from that based on geological data and need to be challenged through multi-disciplinary research. The radiocarbon dates indicate that some localities were reoccupied multiple times. Even so, the focus of making petroglyphse. was mainly within the zone of mean tide to the above outwash area, which gradually was replaced by emerging rock surfaces due to postglacial rebound. As such, the time spans of the zones are gradually becoming younger, but one must be especially critical if “translating” minor altitudinal differences into temporal differences. A discussion of the spatial relationships of the boat figures and the shore-displacement indicate that the petroglyphs might be divided into more periods than earlier suggested.
Chapter 3
Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø
Charlotte Brysting Damm is professor of archaeology at the Department of Archaeology, History, Religious Studies and Theology at the Arctic University of Norway, in Tromsø. She works predominantly with northern prehistoric hunter-fishers, with particular emphasis on interregional networks, multicultural interaction, as well as ritual and cosmology.
The increasing number of Stone Age rock art sites across northern Fennoscandia invites studies of variation in topography and motivations between locations both between and within regions. Even a preliminary overview suggest significant differences between regions, which in turn must indicate differences in perceptions and practices at the major sites. In addition the variation in topography, choice of panel location and / or execution within each region suggest different practices and perhaps different spiritual associations at different kinds of sites.
Chapter 4
Snowscapes of Rock Art: Seasons and Seasonality of Stone Age Rock Art in Northernmost Europe [+–] 97-112
Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research
Jan Magne Gjerde is Researcher in Archaeology at the High North Department in Tromsø at NIKU (Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research). Gjerde has a PhD in Stone Age rock art of Fennoscandia with extensive fieldwork in Finland, Norway, NW-Russia and Sweden. Gjerde has in the last years published several papers on Fennoscandian Stone Age rock art. He also led the large-scale Stone Age excavations at Tønsnes, Northern Norway in 2011 and 2012. Gjerde is currently working on the project “Stone Age Demographics: Multi-scale exploration of population variation and dynamics” (2017-2021) funded by the Norwegian Research Council.
Natural temporal changes in the landscape were of vital importance to hunter-fisher- gatherers in the circumpolar area. The natural surroundings, activities and ways of living of the hunter-fisher-gatherers would have changed dramatically with the seasons of the year. These changes are represented in the rock art by depictions of ‘seasonal’ or migrating animals, indicating the time of year. The majority of the Stone Age rock art sites would have been accessible throughout the year. Those in the tidal zone and near rapids would have been free of snow during the winter months, while paintings on vertical rock cliffs would have been exposed and even more visible and accessible in winter. Based on comprehensive fieldwork in Fennoscandia, studying rock art sites and their locations, I argue that temporal changes in nature have implications for the documentation and interpretation of the Stone Age rock art and rock art sites of northernmost Europe, as well as Stone Age landscapes and geographical knowledge.
Chapter 5
Tromsø Museum – The University Museum, UIT – The Arctic University of Norway
Marianne Skandfer is Professor of Archaeology at the Arctic University Museum at UiT –The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø. Her research interest focus is on hunter-gatherer knowledge acquisition and transmission, specifically on prehistoric technology transmission and resource management including human–animal socialities. She initiated the LARM project, and has published several papers on, among other subjects, early ceramic technology, material culture and identity, and human–animal relations in northern, prehistoric, hunter-gatherer societies. She is currently primary investigator in a project looking at demography and settlement in Stone Age northern Norway.
On the Stone Age rock carving panels at Jiepmaluokta, Alta, Norway, more than one third of all the known figures, over one thousand, are classified as reindeer. A recent comparative study of Fennoscandian rock carvings suggests that variation in amounts of different animals depicted at each site refers to differences in relations between people and the specific local environment, including local species (Gjerde 2010). Taking this as a starting point, it is suggested that the Jiepmaluokta panels refer to meetings between humans and animals, here primarily reindeer. The depictions are interpreted as expressions of a hunter-gatherer ontology with close human-animal relations. This paper is based in part on a dialogue at the site regarding the depictions of reindeer figures between a Sámi reindeer owner with summer grazing for his herd in the Alta region as well as being a scholar of traditional reindeer knowledge, and the archaeologist author.
Chapter 6
The Management of the Kåfjord Rock Art Site [+–] 129-144
World Heritage Rock Art Centre – Alta Museum, Norway
Martin K. Hykkerud is an archaeologist currently working as section manager at the World Heritage Rock Art Centre – Alta Museum. He works with all aspects of rock art, but especially the issue of rock art conservation.
The site of Kåfjord, located just a few kilometers north-west of the World Heritage Rock Art Centre – Alta Museum, holds a very special place in the world of rock art. It contains some of the most intriguing imagery of the Alta rock art corpus, and is remarkable both for its size and for its surrounding landscape. However, Kåfjord is also the most vulnerable of the Alta sites. Discovered only four decades ago, it contains a number of weak-points and loose stones, and its bedrock canvas suffers to a great extent from cracking and exfoliation. A recent project, started by Alta Museum in collaboration with the Directorate for Cultural Heritage and Tromsø Museum, has been developing techniques to measure how fast different forms of deterioration are happening at Kåfjord, and, if possible, to identify their causes. The project’s aim is to evaluate the effects of factors such as vegetation, lichen, freezing water, water seepage, extreme weather, and visitation. This paper will discuss some of the findings of the project, with hopes of inspiring researchers and conservationists working at sites with similar challenges.
Chapter 7
Seasons and Landscape in North European Hunter-Gatherer Rock Art: The Case of Salmon at Honnhammar, Central Norway [+–] 145-162
University of Bergen, Norway
Trond Eilev Linge works as an archaeologist at the University Museum of Bergen, University of Bergen, where he is primarily working as project leader for various archaeological excavations. Besides rock art his research interests are the Nordic Stone Age and Bronze Age.
The paper explores the relations between rock art, landscape and seasonality through examples of painted salmon at Honnhammar in central Norway. The salmon is a rather rare species in the fauna of north European rock art, but is central at two of the sites at Honnhammar as well as on a few other localities in northern Europe. It will be argued that an understanding of the species’ occurrence in the landscape throughout the different seasons of the year is essential in understanding the rock art. The salmon’s life cycle makes its appearance in the fjords and rivers highly seasonal. Ethnography from North West America give a glimpse into how the relation between humans and salmon might have affected ritual and ceremonial life as well as myth.
Chapter 8
University of Oslo
Ingrid Fuglestvedt holds a PhD from the University of Bergen. She is lecturing at the University of Oslo, and is a scholar of Stone Age archaeology. The technology of the Early Mesolithic and perceptions of remote landscapes in the age of pioneering has been the focus of her research, as well as the study of body and gender in Stone Age and rock art studies. Another strand of interest is Mesolithic ontologies and how they are expressed in rock art. Fuglestvedt has directed the research project Meetings Make History. Rock art and lands of identity in Mesolithic Northern Europe, funded by the Norwegian Research Council.
This chapter presents the concept of the ‘moteme’ as a key to understanding Late Mesolithic rock art on the Scandinavian Peninsula (i.e. today’s Norway and Sweden). Motemes are defined as specific motif types that thematise different stages of the ‘hunting cycle’. Inspired by Claude Lévi-Strauss’s concept of the ‘mytheme’, motemes imbue and express the metaphoric connection – and the ambiguous opposition – between communities of humans and communities of elk (or other large cervids). Motemes have been reproduced and ‘repeated’ throughout the study area, with some variation in composition. Motemes have also been subject to ‘transformations’. Motemic repetitions, variations and transformations are regarded as both devices for, and products of, the intellectuality of the Mesolithic mind. As such, the motifs in question are examples of ‘wild thinking’ – of the ‘free play of thought’ made manifest in rock art.
Chapter 9
Evidence for Animal Sacrifices in Front of the Rock Painting of Kotojärvi, Southeastern Finland [+–] 175-192
University of Helsinki
Antti Lahelma is a senior lecturer in archaeology at the Department of Cultures, University of Helsinki, Finland. His core expertise lies in the study of prehistoric identity, cultural production, and worldview particularly in the northern circumpolar area – topics that are also covered in his recent book titled ‘Northern Archaeology and Cosmology: a Relational View’ (Routledge, 2019) written together with Vesa-Pekka Herva.
In 2011, an underwater excavation took place in front of the rock painting site of Kotojärvi in south-east Finland. The excavation, arranged by the author, yielded well-preserved unburnt bones belonging to elk and various bird species, dating to the Early Metal Period, between ca. 1800 cal. BC and ca. 700 cal. BC. They are believed to be broadly contemporary with the rock paintings, and are therefore likely to relate to ritual activities carried out at the site. Indeed, the animal species and body parts found include fragments of elk skulls and the bones of diving birds, which reflect the cosmological ideas of ancient Finno-Ugric and circumpolar peoples. The excavation is discussed in detail in this chapter. It has, in spite of technical difficulties and the issue of modern site disturbance, shone new light on the nature and dating of the Kotojärvi finds, which remain unique in Northern Europe.
Chapter 10
Hunting Land in Rock Art of Northern Fennoscandia [+–] 193-201
Russian Academy of Sciences
Eugen Kolpakov is senior researcher in the Palaeolithic Department at the Institute for the Material Culture History Russian Academy of Sciences in St.Petersburg.
The rock carvings of Northern Fennoscandia were created by hunter-gatherers. However, the number of different species depicted in hunting scenes is extremely small. Elk, reindeer and brown bear predominate, although geese, swans and beavers are depicted at the sites of Vyg and Kanozero. Each site has its own tradition when it comes to the representation of hunting. The differences between these traditions are too significant to suggest that creators at different sites were influenced by one another.
Chapter 11
Russian Academy of Sciences
Nadezhda Valentinovna Lobanova is a Senior Researcher of the Archaeological Department, Institute of Language, Literature and History of Karelian Research Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences. Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia, Russian Federation. Research interests: epoch of Neolithic in the North-West of Russia, rock art of Karelia and Northern Fennoscandia. Recent publications. 2 monographs: Petroglyphs of Onega Lake. Moscow, 2015, Archaeological monuments in the vicinity of Onega Lake petroglyphs (with V.F. Filatova). Moscow, 2015
This paper clarifies the age of petroglyphs found at Lake Onega and the White Sea coast, in the Republic of Karelia, north-west Russia. Based on a detailed analysis of the natural and cultural contexts of the monuments, and on the recent dating of all Stone and Iron Age cultural types in Karelia, the author substantiates a common chronological framework for the Karelian rock art, and attempts to track the main stages of its development. The aim is to better understand the petroglyph era of Karelia, and the nature and dynamics of the region’s coeval natural processes.
Chapter 12
Prehistoric Deep-sea Exploitation: Visual Clues of the Rock Art of the White Sea and Alta [+–] 218-228
University of Cambridge
Dr Liliana Janik is Assistant Director of Research, Deputy Director of the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre and Fellow of Girton College, University of Cambridge.She leads research projects in Japan and Russia. She specialises in prehistoric art: rock art, sculpture, and neuroaesthetic approaches to art, as well as heritage of the landscape.
The antiquity of deep-sea hunting in the northern hemisphere is evidenced by historical and ethnographic records. However, the chronological depth of such practices is still being discussed. To try and establish when marine hunting and fishing started, this paper examines the visual indicators of such practices in the prehistoric rock art of northern Europe, focusing on the deep-sea hunting of beluga whales, the fishing of halibut, and the use of harpoons, floats and lines-and-hooks. The examples presented suggest that North European prehistoric communities practised deep-sea hunting over 7,000 years ago, in Alta, Norway, and the White Sea region of Russia.
Chapter 13
University of Southampton
Andrew Meirion Jones is Professor of Archaeology, University of Southampton, UK. He has taught and written extensively on the archaeology of art, particularly prehistoric rock art. His most recent book include An Animate Landscape (2011), The Archaeology of Art. Materials, Practices, Affects (2018) and Making a Mark. Image and process in Neolithic Britain and Ireland (2019).
Durham University
Marta Díaz-Guardamino is Lecturer in Archaeology at Durham University, UK. Her research interests are in European prehistory and proto-history, archaeological theory, and digital technologies. She has studied prehistoric rock art, monumental sculpture and portable art from Iberia, Britain and Ireland. Her most recent books include The Lives of Prehistoric Monuments in Iron Age, Roman and Medieval Europe (2015) and Making a Mark. Image and process in Neolithic Britain and Ireland (2019).
The visual imagery of Neolithic Britain and Ireland is spectacular. While the art of Irish passage tombs is well-understood, the imagery of decorated portable artefacts is not. This paper reports on the early stages of the ‘Making a Mark’ project (2013–2018), which used cutting-edge digital imaging techniques, including Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) and structure-from-motion-photogrammetry, to examine Neolithic decorated artefacts made from chalk, stone and antler, from southern and eastern England. For the first time, digital analysis revealed the existence of practices of erasure and reworking. This paper compares the imagery of decorated portable artefacts, and the practices used to create them, with Neolithic passage tombs and open-air rock art sites.
Chapter 14
The Cultural Understanding of Sound in Rock Art Landscapes: The Limits of Interpretation [+–] 244-265
University of Barcelona
Margarita Díaz-Andreu is ICREA Research Professor at the Departament de Història i Arqueologia, Universitat de Barcelona. She is interested in the prehistoric archaeology, rock art and acoustics of Western Europe. She is also concerned with heritage, history of archaeology and the politics of identity in archaeology. She has undertaken fieldwork in rock art landscapes in Europe and Latin America. In the last few years she has focused on the relevance of acoustics as a factor for the production, location and active use of rock art sites and landscapes. She is the Principal Investigator of the ERC Artsoundscapes project (2018-2013).
University of Barcelona
Tommaso Mattioli is Senior Researcher (ERC project Artsoundscapes) at the Departament de Història i Arqueologia, Universitat de Barcelona. He is an archaeologist (PhD) working on prehistoric rock art, geophysical prospecting, GIS, landscape archaeology and archaeoacoustics. His research particularly focusses on post-Palaeolithic rock art of Mediterranean Europe by ‘balancing’ the application of contrastable scientific methods and the study of symbolic aspects of past material culture and landscapes. From 2014 to 2016 he has been a Marie Curie IEF Postdoctoral Senior Researcher at the University of Barcelona with the proyect “SONART:the sound of rock art” in which he investigated causal links between the placement of decorated sites and the acoustic properties of rock art landscapes.
Independent Scholar
Michael Rainsbury is an independent rock art researcher whose interests focus mainly on British, Australian and north African rock art. He was associated with the Breaking Through Rock Art Recording project in the U.K. and has undertaken field work in Britain, north-west Australia and the Sahara. His PhD (2009) dealt with regionalism in north Kimberley rock art. In the last few years he has published on historical recordings of Australian rock art made in the nineteenth and early twentieth century
This article provides an overview of information gathered from ethnographic accounts regarding how premodern groups around the world understand sound in rock art landscapes. The data has been divided into three main sections: sounds related to the production of rock art, sounds produced by lithophones and sonorous landscapes, and sounds produced by spirits believed to inhabit the rocks. The article ends with a reflection on the possibilities and limitations of archaeoacoustic interpretation in the Western Mediterranean – an area in which there are no informed sources.
Chapter 15
Birds and Blurred Boundaries: Communities of Practice and the Problem of Regions in San Rock Art [+–] 266-283
KwaZulu-Natal Museum
Ghilraen Laue completed her PhD on regional difference in southern African rock art in 2019. She was previously a research officer at the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand. She is currently Curator of Human Sciences (Special Collections) at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum, South Africa, where she is also deputy editor of Southern African Humanities, an interdisciplinary journal. Her research is focused on rock art and materiality, principally in the Groot Winterhoek Mountains and the Maloti-Drakensberg.
Regional differences in southern African San rock art have long been noted, but defining them has met with little success. The interpretative approach that has dominated research in the last four decades has focused on similarities across space and through time, rather than emphasising differences. This paper considers the question of regionality in rock art, and explores how the concepts of communities and constellations of practice can be used to reconceptualise regional differences. These two concepts are applied to motifs of flight and transformation in three areas of San rock art.
Chapter 16
Rethinking Variability in Rock Art in the Northern Cape, South Africa: Empirical and Theoretical Considerations [+–] 284-301
Sol Plaatje University, South Africa.
David Morris is head of archaeology at the McGregor Museum, and Extraordinary Professor, School of Humanities, Sol Plaatje University, in Kimberley, South Africa. His research is focused on rock art in the Northern Cape Province, including the engraving site of Driekopseiland. His interests embrace the archaeological record of the region in general and development of public archaeology inter alia at Wildebeest Kuil and Wonderwerk Cave. His publications include the co-authored Karoo rock engravings (with John Parkington and Neil Rusch, 2008) and co-editorship of Working with rock art (with Ben Smith and Knut Helskog, 2012).
No two rock art sites, nor indeed any two individual engravings or paintings, are ever the same. In the Northern Cape, South Africa, the dynamism in rock art expression is palpable through both time and from place to place. Conventionally, scholars discern stylistic or cultural threads in temporal or regional traditions in the rock art, lately variously hybridized; and the resultant schemes are the stuff of on-going discussion. Empirical problems, notably dating, persist and impede resolution in debates about spatial and temporal patterning. While clearly it is critical to continue tackling the empirical issues and constraints, this chapter suggests that theoretical considerations are equally crucial. Case studies based on sites in the Northern Cape and an assessment of theoretical insights from Tarde serve in modelling the mechanisms of repetition and innovation in rock art making through time and place to argue, after Ingold, that process, rather than social or cultural entities, is the driving force resulting in the observed variability.
Chapter 17
Image and Identity: Modelling the Emergence of a ‘New’ Rock Art Tradition in Southern Africa [+–] 302-319
KwaZulu-Natal Museum, South Africa
Geoffrey Blundell in Principal Curator of the Human Science Department, KwaZulu-Natal Museum, South Africa. His research interests include the use of rock art as a historical resource, rock art as resistance, and the politics of exhibiting archaeology.
Ghilraen Laue is curator and rock art specialist in the Human Sciences Department of the KwaZulu-Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Her research interests are in interpretation and regional differences in southern African San rock art.
Ghilraen Laue is curator and rock art specialist in the Human Sciences Department of the KwaZulu-Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Her research interests are in interpretation and regional differences in southern African San rock art.
Research into the rock art of southern Africa has tended to make links between traditions that are not ‘San’ and some putative ethnic identity. At best, these research efforts lean towards essentialism; at worst, they end up making simplistic correlations between material culture and cultural identity. Scholars rarely attempt the complex issue of how image and identity are intertwined. By considering rock paintings that are different to ‘San’ imagery, from Nomansland in the south-eastern mountains of South Africa, and by situating those images within a historical context, I argue that it is possible to model the entanglement between image and identity for at least some parts of southern Africa.
Chapter 18
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Silvia Tomášková is the Drucie French Distinguished Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. Her research interests are history and theory of anthropology and archaeology, knowledge construction about the distant past and the politics of prehistory. She currently works in the Northern Cape of South Africa and is the author of Wayward Shamans: The Prehistory of an Idea. University of California Press. (2013)
The majority of analyses of ancient petroglyphs, regardless their location, have focused on the content of the images, seeking traces of meaning, social practices, belief systems, or long-distance travel. By contrast this project in the Northern Cape pays attention to the material aspect and production techniques of prehistoric engravings. Recent theoretical debates on the materiality of practice emphasize how manufacture is embedded in social worlds and simultaneously creates subjects who shape the social realm. My investigation of the details of image manufacture at Wildebeest Kuil aims to attend to production, specifically time investment and levels of skill, necessary to make a petroglyph. The central research question is: can we recognize apprenticeship, learning and mastery by studying the techniques of image making? The broader frame of the project addresses the interpretation of a range of skills of making petroglyphs, and whether we can make inferences about the social context of learning and mastery in prehistoric contexts.
Chapter 19
Desert Rock Art: Social Geography at the Local Scale [+–] 338-359
University of Western Australia
Jo McDonald is the Director of the Centre for Rock Art Research + Management at the University of Western Australia and holds the Rio Tinto Chair of Rock Art. Her PhD research in the Sydney Basin contextualized rock art production of engraving and pigment sites the sandstone country of the Sydney Bsain. She has studied the rock art of the Western Desert and Dampier Archipelago (Murujuga) for the last two decades, completing an ARC Future Fellowship focused on arid zone rock art in Australia and the USA. Jo has recently been the Lead Chief Investigator (CI) for the Murujuga: Dynamics of the Dreaming ARC Linkage Project, and is a CI on the Deep History of Sea Country ARC Project. She is currently working on rock art dating across the arid zone, and is developing a project with Aboriginal communities from the Western Desert and Pilbara coast on inter-generational and cross-cultural knowledge exchange.
Australia’s 50,000-year-old desert occupation chronology is matched by a deep-time style sequence. Discontinuities in symbolic repertoire (i.e. stylistic change) – and the changing placement of these graphic vocabularies – demonstrate how desert people have mapped their enacted and perceived social geographies through time. Focusing on the production of rock art within a single Western Desert Range locale, this paper explores, for the first time, the structure of this inscribed landscape at the local scale, throughout the deep-time sequence. This paper recognizes a shift in social geography, but also a shift in signaling intent. The continued use of some locations through multiple phases indicates how peoples’ relationships to these landscapes have retained importance despite discontinuities in signaling intent, while the recursive use of deep-time art production into contemporary Jukurr (Dreamings) suggests that social geography is not only about marking location, but also refers to a continuation of landscape activation in arid-zone understandings of place.
Chapter 20
Griffith University
Prof Paul S.C. Taçon FAHA FSA is an ARC Australian Laureate Fellow (2016-2021), Chair in Rock Art Research and Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. He also directs Griffith University’s Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit (PERAHU) and leads research themes in the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research and Griffith’s Research Centre of Human Evolution. He has conducted archaeological and ethnographic fieldwork since 1980 and has over 89 months field experience in remote parts of Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, southern Africa, Thailand, the Philippines and the USA. Prof Taçon co-edited The Archaeology of Rock-art with Dr Christopher Chippindale and has published over 260 academic and popular papers on rock art, material culture, colour, cultural evolution and identity. In 2015, he co-authored a book that outlines a new strategy for the conservation of world rock art and in late 2016 an edited book with Liam Brady, Relating to rock art in the contemporary world: navigating symbolism, meaning and significance (University Press of Colorado). In 2017 he co-edited a major volume on the archaeology of Arnhem Land rock art. In December 2016 Prof Taçon was awarded the top award at the annual Australian Archaeological Association conference, the Rhys Jones Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Australian Archaeology. He also received the 2016 Griffith University Vice-Chancellor’s Research Excellence Award for Research Leadership.
Rock art conservation requires a holistic approach and should be maintained continuously. It is not simply using science to understand weathering processes that affect the art directly, but importantly involves other factors such as social, cultural and tourism concerns. These aspects need to be dovetailed so that information gained in one study can be disseminated to all other components. This idea underpins the Rock Art Protection Research Program that began in 2011. It has eight guiding principles: (1) Direction by, and involvement of, Indigenous owners and local communities; (2) Intellectual property and protocols for documentation; (3) Ethics and standards for conservation practice; (4) Ongoing communication and collaboration; (5) Raising public and political awareness; (6) Creating effective rock art management systems; (7) Training and support for conservation practice; (8) Realising community benefits. The overall aim of the research program is to collaboratively develop new, innovative ways to conserve and manage the rock art of northern Australia and beyond with and for the benefit of Indigenous peoples and local communities. In the process, new knowledge about rock art and its conservation will be obtained and Indigenous communities will be empowered.
Chapter 21
Bonding and Bounding in Australian Rock Art: The Panaramitee Tradition and Simple Figurative Styles [+–] 376-392
University of Western Australia
Dr Natalie Franklin is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Centre for Rock Art Research and Management, University of Western Australia in Perth, and in the Archaeology Department of Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, and an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Social Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane. She has a BA (Hons) degree in Anthropology from the University of Sydney and a PhD in Archaeology from La Trobe University, Melbourne. Natalie has focus on Australian prehistoric rock engravings. She has published widely in national and international journals, and edited or authored a number of books on rock art. These include the 2004 monograph Explorations of Variability in Australian Prehistoric Rock Engravings, published by British Archaeological Reports, and all 5 volumes in the series Rock Art News of the World, published by Oxbow Books and Archaeopress between 1996 and 2016, where she has co-edited the last 3 volumes. Dr Franklin also has over 25 years experience in cultural heritage management in Queensland, which has included developing management plans for rock art sites in partnership with Aboriginal custodians.
The Panaramitee tradition is a corpus of mostly track and non-figurative rock engravings found throughout Australia, with most sites occurring in the arid zone, while by contrast, the Simple Figurative represents a diverse group of rock painting and engravings styles that are mostly figurative in nature and occur in resource-rich areas. This paper discusses the results of multivariate analyses of Panaramitee tradition rock engravings and Simple Figurative paintings and engravings. It finds that there are similarities, regional differences and differential diversity in motif content within the Panaramitee, and regional differences and some similarities in the Simple Figurative. The results are interpreted within a demographic, social and symbolic framework that has been proposed for the late Pleistocene archaeological record in Australia. They reflect: for the Panaramitee tradition, spatial similarities and differences within the widespread links forged by ritual Dreaming tracks that sometimes spanned the continent, and the need for local identity signaling behaviour in a societal context of group aggregation in Australia’s arid zone; and, for the Simple Figurative styles, differences in territoriality and boundary maintenance, which can also be explained within a societal and environmental context.
Chapter 22
Desert Varnish and the Marine Transgression: A Chronological Indicator for Murujuga Rock Art [+–] 393-410
University of Western Australia
Dr Ken Mulvaney, Principal Advisor Cultural Heritage, Rio Tinto, Dampier 6713, Australia; Centre for Rock Art Research and Management, University of Western Australia, Perth 6009, Australia
During the Dampier Archaeological Project (1980–1982), 9,244 petroglyphs were recorded. A study including 1,358 of these petroglyphs was conducted, in an effort to identify patterns relating to a mineral coating, or desert varnish, that is present in a relatively small percentage of the images (20 percent). Many more petroglyphs truncate the coating (34 percent). It was found that particular motif subjects were covered with the varnish, namely macropods, elaborate non-figurative designs, and certain types of anthropomorphic motifs, while marine subjects and different anthropomorphic forms cut through the varnish. Despite not being able to determine when the varnish may have formed, the subject dichotomy suggests that the early phases of the rock art predate the formation of the Dampier Archipelago around 7,000 BP, with a later production period occurring when a marine ecosystem became established.
Chapter 23
University of Barcelona
Leslie F Zubieta is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (PostDoc) in the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Barcelona. She is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Rock Art Research + Management at the University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia and at the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She acted as the Project Leader of the Port Hedland Rock Art Conservation Project. Her current research focuses on exploring rock art relationships to the transmission of knowledge, memory, acoustics and identity.
University of Western Australia
Jo McDonald is the Director of the Centre for Rock Art Research + Management at the University of Western Australia and holds the Rio Tinto Chair of Rock Art. Her PhD research in the Sydney Basin contextualized rock art production of engraving and pigment sites the sandstone country of the Sydney Bsain. She has studied the rock art of the Western Desert and Dampier Archipelago (Murujuga) for the last two decades, completing an ARC Future Fellowship focused on arid zone rock art in Australia and the USA. Jo has recently been the Lead Chief Investigator (CI) for the Murujuga: Dynamics of the Dreaming ARC Linkage Project, and is a CI on the Deep History of Sea Country ARC Project. She is currently working on rock art dating across the arid zone, and is developing a project with Aboriginal communities from the Western Desert and Pilbara coast on inter-generational and cross-cultural knowledge exchange.
Aboriginal peoples’ connection to their ancestral homelands is recognised by Federal Law through a legal process known as ‘Native Title’. The first successful Native Title claim in the 1990s invalidated the dogma of terra nullius – that Australia was an empty land before European colonisation. Despite the positive consequences resulting from this recognition, the legal and regulatory processes still pose many challenges for native title holders, contemporary Aboriginal communities and researchers working with Aboriginal knowledge holders. Maintaining authenticity, for both communities and the rock art sites for which they are custodians, in the post-native title era is highly complex. This paper discusses some of these issues in northwest Australia based on our experiences during the development of a conservation management plan for the Port Hedland rock engraving sites.
Chapter 24
University of Exeter
Jamie Hampson is a Senior Lecturer in the Humanities Department at the University of Exeter. He has a PhD and an MPhil in archaeology from the University of Cambridge, and BA (Honours) in history from the University of Oxford. Jamie works primarily on rock art, identity, and heritage projects in western Australia, southern Africa, and the Greater Southwest USA. His most recent book is Rock Art and Regional Identity: a Comparative Perspective.
Many indigenous groups in North America had – and sometimes still have – ritual specialists who negotiated a tiered cosmos (in one form or another). An analysis of this provides an effective framework for addressing the meanings and motivations behind Trans-Pecos pictographs and petroglyphs. This chapter sheds light on this hermeneutic framework, but also considers the nuances within the Trans-Pecos rock art corpus, and what we mean when we talk about rock art ‘regions’.
Chapter 25
University of California, Berkeley
Robert J. David is an independent archaeological contractor and Research Affiliate of the Archaeological Research Facility at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his PhD in Anthropology. His research interests include North American rock art, and he has published several papers in peer-reviewed journals on the rock art of the Klamath Basin in southern Oregon. He is a member of the Klamath Tribes and currently lives in Chiloquin, Oregon where he continues his research.
University of California, Berkeley
Margaret W. Conkey is the Class of 1960 Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research has focused on interpretation in rock art and visual culture, especially of the Upper Paleolithic of Europe; on the study of gender and the feminist practice of archaeology; on landscape archaeologies, and on issues of mobility, “home”, and the social practice of hunter-gatherers of late Upper Paleolithic southwest Europe. She is currently a Co-director of excavations at the Magdalenian period open air site of Peyre Blanque in the Ariège of France.
We address ‘differences’ in rock art production at the Klamath Basin in Oregon/California, USA. Rock art designs are not distributed uniformly across the landscape, even at the level of a given motif. Taking one widespread motif – the nucleated concentric circle – as a key symbol, we show how it varies across settlement sites, special-use areas and frequently-used areas, and how its symbolic significance differs according to the context in which it appears. This landscape context model suggests that within-group variation is better understood in terms of what Richard Wilk has called ‘common difference’, rather than ‘stylistic differences’.
End Matter
Index [+–] 459-475
Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research
Jan Magne Gjerde is Researcher in Archaeology at the High North Department in Tromsø at NIKU (Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research). Gjerde has a PhD in Stone Age rock art of Fennoscandia with extensive fieldwork in Finland, Norway, NW-Russia and Sweden. Gjerde has in the last years published several papers on Fennoscandian Stone Age rock art. He also led the large-scale Stone Age excavations at Tønsnes, Northern Norway in 2011 and 2012. Gjerde is currently working on the project “Stone Age Demographics: Multi-scale exploration of population variation and dynamics” (2017-2021) funded by the Norwegian Research Council.
World heritage rock art centre – Alta Museum, Norway
Mari Strifeldt Arntzen is an archaeologist at the World Heritage Rock Art Centre, Alta Museum in Norway
Rock art is a global phenomenon with an enormous variation in shapes and figures and the research interest is wide and inclusive. The volume aims to explain differences observed in rock art through time and space, synchronically or diachronically. Differences can for example be in form, content, space (macro and micro), where explanations might relate to a large variety of factors such as political, societal, beliefs and rituals. Issues connected with authenticity and presentation where efforts and choices taken to preserve and present rock art are indeed many sided and complex are discussed. The wide-range papers in this volume are by scholars from across the globe with different perspectives on differences in Rock Art. This volume will be of interest to students, archaeologists and researchers from related disciplines.
