Jo McDonald

Rock art in arid landscapes: Pilbara and Western Desert petroglyphs

Abstract This paper develops a testable model for understanding rock art within archaeological phases of the arid northwest Pilbara and Western Desert bioregions. It also presents the first multivariate analysis of foundational recording work undertaken almost 50 years ago, and deploys more recently recorded assemblages from the Burrup Peninsula (Murujuga) and the Western Desert. It establishes a framework for testable hypotheses about how art production in these adjacent bioregions through deep-time reflects information systems, emergent territoriality, group identity and signalling behaviour against a backdrop of climatic oscillations, including the LGM (23–18 ka), Antarctic Cold Reversal (14.5–12.5 ka) and intensification of ENSO (3.8–2 ka). The Pilbara piedmont has clearly defined gorges with major water sources; the Western Desert has uncoordinated drainage punctuated by well-watered but subdued ranges. We argue that rock art has been used to negotiate social identity in both contexts since each was first colonised. The role that art may have played in the formation of social networks in these different landscapes through time is the key focus of this paper. We hypothesise that the episodic use of art as signalling behaviour in the Australian arid zone can be linked to behavioural correlates and major archaeological phases with discrete signatures that can be tested from myriad sites.

Dating of Bush Turkey Rockshelter 3 in the Calvert Ranges establishes Early Holocene Occupation of the Little Sandy Desert, Western Australia

Abstract Systematic excavation of occupied rockshelters that occur in ranges along the Canning Stock Route of the Western Desert has seen the establishment of both a Pleistocene signal (c.24ka BP) as well as the fleshing out of a Holocene sequence. Recent dating of a perched rockshelter in the Calvert Ranges, east of the Durba Hills, has provided a Holocene record filling in previous occupational gaps from the Calvert Ranges. The extrapolated basal date of the site is in the order of 12,000 BP. Assemblages from this site illustrate repeated occupation through the Holocene with a notable shift in raw materials procured for artefact production and their technology of manufacture in the last 1000 years. Engraved and pigment art is thought to span the length of occupation of the shelter. The site illustrates a significant increase in the discard of cultural materials during the last 800 years, a trend observed at other desert sites. Much of the pigment art in this shelter seems likely to date to this most recent period.

The Great Mackerel Rockshelter Excavation: Women in the Archaeological Record?

Several excavations have been conducted at the Mackerel Beach site for exploring the gender differences that were observed in the culture of prehistoric population. The various experiments that were conducted and the findings that were derived out of the study are all discussed in the article.

Murujuga, Northwestern Australia: When Arid Hunter-Gatherers Became Coastal Foragers

ABSTRACT The Dampier Archipelago (Murujuga) in northwestern Australia is a rich rock art province located in an arid-maritime cultural landscape. The archipelago juts into the Indian Ocean just north of the Tropic of Capricorn. When people started inscribing this rugged granophyre landscape it was an inland range more than 100 km from the coast. Murujuga rock art is contextualized by a 47,000-year-old occupation sequence from the Pilbara, a model for stylistic change, and a predictive model that envisages how people may have adapted to this eventual seascape. Initial testing of an outer island suggests that highly mobile coastal foragers took advantage of interior ranges across the Abydos Plain as sea levels rose after the Last Glacial Maximum. This article describes for the first time evidence for Australias earliest domestic stone structures (dated to between 8063 and 7355 cal BP) and tests the predictive model. Rosemary Island is an inscribed landscape that reveals the emergence of an arid island and provides insights into the dynamics of mobile arid hunter-fisher-gatherers in the early Holocene. It adds to the body of Australian evidence for island abandonment with insulation, but with minimal evidence for subsequent (re)colonization.

Lithic artefact distribution in the Rouse Hill Development Area, Cumberland Plain, New South Wales

Abstract For several years systematic test excavations have been conducted in the open landscape of the Rouse Hill Development Area (RHDA), as part of development impact mitigation projects. Data on artefact distribution and density from these projects are combined here to identify patterns which might signal Aboriginal people’s preferences for artefact discard in their landscape. Topographic and stream order variables correlate with artefact density and distribution. High artefact density concentrations may have resulted from larger numbers of artefact discard activities and/or from intensive stone flaking. Highest artefact densities occur on terraces and lower slopes associated with 4th and 2nd order streams, especially 50–100m from 4th order streams. Upper slopes have sparse discontinuous artefact distributions but artefacts are still found in these landscape settings. As artefacts are found in all tested areas and site boundaries are not identified, most of the RHDA could be regarded as a cultural landscape.

The Archaeology of Memory: The Recursive Relationship of Martu Rock Art and Place

Bob Tonkinson’s anthropological work in the Western Desert provides archaeologists with a unique insight into the totemic geography of the Martu. Part of his explication of the long-distance relationships that Martu maintain with remote homelands and sacred sites involved crayon drawings which showed the travels and actions of the Wati Kutjarra around the Jilakurru Ranges. These drawings, made remotely 300 km from the country being described, have been mobilised to assist in the interpretation of rock art distributed around these Ranges. In this paper we explore the recursivity of graphic vocabulary and highlight how the interplay of anthropological and archaeological approaches can provide a much richer and nuanced explanatory framework to understand the role of art in Western Desert culture.

The Discovery Of A Heat Treatment Pit On The Cumberland Plain, Western Sydney

The recent test excavation programme at Rouse Hill (McDonald and Rich 1993; McDonald et al. in press) located a pit which appears to have been used for heat treating silcrete. The pit has been dated to 1070±60 BP (Beta-66451).

Contemporary meanings and the recursive nature of rock art: Dilemmas for a purely archaeological understanding of rock art

Jo McDonald is the Director of the Centre for Rock Art Research and Management at the University of Western Australia, and holds the endowed Rio Tinto Chair in Rock Art Studies. She was Principal Investigator on the Canning Stock Route Project (rock art and Jukurrpa) and is an ARC Future Fellow, comparing desert rock art in Australia and North America. She has published widely on information-exchange theory, gender, and rock art management, and has been involved in national and World Heritage nominations for rock art provinces. jo.mcdonald@uwa.edu.au

Pilbara rock art: Laser scanning, photogrammetry and 3D photographic reconstruction as heritage management tools

Recording techniques such as laser scanning, photogrammetry and photographic reconstruction are not new to archaeology. However as technology evolves and becomes more readily available such methods are being more regularly employed within a cultural heritage management context, often by people with little experience in using these technologies for heritage applications. For most cultural heritage management practitioners, the awe and lure of technology and the ease with which it can bring archaeology to life can distract from the end game of managing the site on the ground. This paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of laser scanning, photogrammetry and photographic reconstruction in recording, managing and interpreting rock art sites with an emphasis on its practical applications to the field of heritage management. Using a case study from West Angelas in the East Pilbara region of Western Australia, we will examine how these technologies assist in the practical management of heritage sites, and the significant outputs achieved for Aboriginal stakeholder groups in remote access to, and the interpretation of indigenous heritage sites.

Karnatukul (Serpent’s glen): A new chronology for the oldest site in Australia’s Western Desert

The re-excavation of Karnatukul (Serpent’s Glen) has provided evidence for the human occupation of the Australian Western Desert to before 47,830 cal. BP (modelled median age). This new sequence is 20,000 years older than the previous known age for occupation at this site. Re-excavation of Karnatukul aimed to contextualise the site’s painted art assemblage. We report on analyses of assemblages of stone artefacts and pigment art, pigment fragments, anthracology, new radiocarbon dates and detailed sediment analyses. Combined these add significantly to our understanding of this earliest occupation of Australia’s Western Desert. The large lithic assemblage of over 25,000 artefacts includes a symmetrical geometric backed artefact dated to 45,570–41,650 cal. BP. The assemblage includes other evidence for hafting technology in its earliest phase of occupation. This research recalibrates the earliest Pleistocene occupation of Australia’s desert core and confirms that people remained in this part of the arid zone during the Last Glacial Maximum. Changes in occupation intensity are demonstrated throughout the sequence: at the late Pleistocene/Holocene transition, the mid-Holocene and then during the last millennium. Karnatukul documents intensive site use with a range of occupation activities and different signalling behaviours during the last 1,000 years. This correlation of rock art and occupation evidence refines our understanding of how Western Desert peoples have inscribed their landscapes in the recent past, while the newly described occupation sequence highlights the dynamic adaptive culture of the first Australians, supporting arguments for their rapid very early migration from the coasts and northern tropics throughout the arid interior of the continent.