It’s all a bit retro: Investigating early phase rock art on the Dampier Archipelago, Northwest Australia.

Summary

Murujuga, located off the northwest coast of Australia, possesses one of the largest and most vibrant open air rock art galleries on the planet. On Murujuga, low erosion rates, durable geology, and growing evidence from the wider region has allowed for archaeological contextualization of rock art into deep time; giving researchers the opportunity to investigate both the changing social dynamics of groups and the stimuli for this change over thousands of years.

The main objective of this paper is to report on the findings from research undertaken over the past three years within the ARC funded Dynamics of the Dreaming Project investigating how early cultural lifeways on Murujuga are evident in the associated rock art phases; and to examine shifting social geographies during periods of extreme social and environmental pressure. Through the tethering of a stylistic analysis focused on rock art motifs associated with early phase rock marking on Murujuga, with archaeological, social, and chronological indices this paper aims to illustrate and discuss how rock art evolved and was mobilized within the natural and social landscape throughout time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Methodology and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14637