Finding Grasses in the Rock Art of Balanggarra Country, Kimberley, Northwest Australia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Archaeobotany, Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The floristic complexity of native Australian grasslands means they are a haven for biodiversity, and have provided a range of subsistence, material, and sociocultural resources for Indigenous peoples. Disentangling the ways in which people engaged with these environments is a complex task, and has, to date, relied on the limited examples of grass materials in archaeobotanical assemblages, and residue studies of grinding patches. This paper examines a unique and relatively unstudied form of past human-grass engagement, expressed in the rock art of Balanggarra Country, northwest Australia, where native grasses were coated with pigment and printed onto rockshelter surfaces. These motifs, termed grass prints, are associated with the oldest dated rock art in the Kimberley and embody a history of complex environmental engagements. Drawing on iconographic analysis and experimental archaeology, this paper argues that grass prints were created through repeated impacts using culturally significant grass species, including Themeda triandra and Oryza rufipogon, leaving behind highly detailed and morphologically attributable prints. Grass prints reveal micro-morphological details that demonstrate a repeated emphasis on the seeding inflorescences of grasses, suggesting native grasses may have played a more significant role in forager-environment relationships during the post-LGM period in the Kimberley than previously thought.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Advances in Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Archaeobotany, Part II   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41502.0