Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:43:21.408Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Top Down Under: New Insights into the Social Significance of Superimpositions in the Rock Art of Northern Kimberley, Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2019

Ana Paula Motta Open the ORCID record for Ana Paula Motta [Opens in a new window]
Ana Paula Motta*
Affiliation:
Centre for Rock Art Research and Management, Discipline of Archaeology, University of Western Australia, M257, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley WA 6009, Australia Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Rock-art researchers have long acknowledged the importance of discerning superimposition sequences as a means for exploring chronology. Despite their potential for reconstructing painting events and thus informing on a site's production sequences, the social significance of superimpositions and their associated meanings have been little explored. In the Kimberley Region of northwestern Australia, interpretations of superimpositions as an analytical lens have often lingered on the ‘negative’ connotations of this practice (e.g. to destroy supernatural power embedded in previous paintings and/or to show cultural dominance). As a result, it has been proposed that the overpainting of previous images was tantamount to defacing, leading to the proposition that new images constituted a form of vandalism of older art. In this paper, a sample of rock-art sites from the northwestern and northeastern Kimberley is analysed with the aim of grounding the study of superimpositions in more nuanced practices, leading researchers to contemplate the role they played among populations within the same area. It is argued here that superimpositions brought together past and present experiences that served to reinforce the links between contemporary art production and the inherited landscape.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 479 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Balme, J., Davidson, I., McDonald, J., Stern, N. & Veth, P.M., 2009. Symbolic behaviour and the peopling of the southern arc route to Australia. Quaternary International 202, 59–68.Google Scholar
Bapty, I. & Yates, T., 1990. Introduction: archaeology and post-structuralism, in Archaeology After Structuralism: Post-structuralism and the practice of archaeology, eds. Bapty, I. & Yates, T.. London: Routledge, 1–32.Google Scholar
Baracchini, L. & Monney, J., 2018. Past images, contemporary practices: reuse of rock art images in contemporary San art of Southern Africa, in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art, eds. David, B. & McNiven, I.J.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1043–66.Google Scholar
Barry, M. & White, J.P., 2004. ‘Exotic Bradshaws’ or Australian ‘Gwion’: an archaeological test. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 37–44.Google Scholar
Barthes, R. 1977. Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana.Google Scholar
Battiss, W.W., 1939. The Amazing Bushman. Pretoria: Red Fawn Press.Google Scholar
Blundell, V.J., 1980. Hunter-gatherer territoriality: ideology and behaviour in northwest Australia. Ethnohistory 27(2), 103–17.Google Scholar
Blundell, V. & Woolagoodja, D., 2012. Aboriginal culture and identity: the Wanjina paintings of northwest Australia, in A Companion to Rock Art, eds. McDonald, J. & Veth., P.M. New York (NY): Wiley-Blackwell, 472–87.Google Scholar
Boyd, C.E. & Cox, K., 2016. The White Shaman Mural: An enduring creation narrative in the rock art of the Lower Pecos. Austin (TX): University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Brady, L.M. & Gunn, R.G., 2012. Digital enhancement of deteriorated and superimposed pigment art: methods and case studies, in A Companion to Rock Art, eds. McDonald, J. & Veth, P.M.. New York (NY): Wiley-Blackwell, 627–43.Google Scholar
Brentjes, B., 1969. African Rock Art. London: Dent.Google Scholar
Bwasiri, E.J. & Smith, B.W., 2015. The rock art of Kondoa District, Tanzania. Azania 50(4), 437–59.Google Scholar
Capitan, L. 1925. Les figurations des Grottes Quaternaires, in Actes du Congrès International d'Histoire des Religions tenu à Paris en Octobre 1923. Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 319.Google Scholar
Carden, N. & Prates, L., 2015. Pinturas rupestres en un espacio funerario: el caso del sitio Cueva Galpón (noroeste de Patagonia). Magallania 43(1), 117–36.Google Scholar
Cardoso, D. & Bettencourt, A.M.S., 2015. Arte ‘esquemática’ de ar livre na bacia do ave (Portugal, No Iberico): Espacialidade, contexto, iconografia e cronologia. Estudos do Quaternario 13, 32–47.Google Scholar
Chippindale, C. & Taçon, P.S.C, 1993. Two old painted panels from Kakadu: variation and sequence in Arnhem Land rock art, in Time and Space: Dating and spatial considerations in rock art research: Papers of symposia F and E, AURA Congress Cairns 1992, eds. Steinbring, J., Watchma, A., Faulstich, P. & Taçon, P.S.C.. (Occasional AURA Publication 8.) Melbourne: Australian Rock Art Research Association, 32–56.Google Scholar
Clarke, J. 1978. Rock Patination and the Age of Aboriginal Engravings at Dampler, W.A. Perth: Department of Aboriginal Sites, Western Australian Museum.Google Scholar
Clegg, J., 1987. Style and tradition at Sturt's Meadows. World Archaeology 19, 236–55.Google Scholar
Connerton, P., 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Crichton Merrill, S.O., 2011. Graffiti at heritage places: vandalism as cultural significance or conservation sacrilege? Time and Mind: the Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture 4(1), 59–76.Google Scholar
David, B., Taçon, P.S.C., Delannoy, J.J., & Geneste, J.M. (eds.), 2017. The Archaeology of Rock Art in Western Arnhem Land, Australia. (Terra Australis 47.) Canberra: ANU epress,.Google Scholar
Davis, W., 1984. Representation and knowledge in the prehistoric rock art of Africa. The African Archaeological Review 2, 7–35.Google Scholar
Donaldson, M., 2012. Kimberley Rock Art: Mitchell Plateau Area. Mount Lawley: Wildrocks Publications.Google Scholar
Fredell, A., Kristiansen, C.K. & Criado Boado, F. (eds.), 2010. Creating an Archaeological Matrix of Late Prehistoric Rock Art. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Graziosi, P., 1960. Palaeolithic Art. London: Faber.Google Scholar
Gunn, R.G., 2017. Art of the Ancestors: Spatial and Temporal Patterning in the Rock Arts of Nawarla Gabarnmang, a mMajor Jawoyn Cultural Site on the Arnhem Land Plateau. Unpublished PhD thesis, Monash University.Google Scholar
Gunn, R.G., Ogleby, C.L., Lee, D. & Whear, R.L., 2010. A method to visually rationalise superimposed pigment motifs. Rock Art Research 27, 131–6.Google Scholar
Harman, J., 2008. Using decorrelation stretch to enhance rock art images. Paper originally presented at the American Rock Art Research Association Annual Meeting 2005. http://www.dstretch.com/AlgorithmDescription.htmlGoogle Scholar
Harper, S.N., 2017. Inside the Outline: Understanding Inclusive and Exclusive Identity in Marapikurrinya (Port Hedland) Rock Art. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Western Australia.Google Scholar
Harris, E. & Gunn, R., 2018. The use of Harris matrices in rock art research, in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art, eds. David, B. & McNiven, I.J.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 911–26.Google Scholar
Hogarth, M. & Dayton, L., 1997. By whose hand? Good Weekend: The Age Magazine, 21, 12–21.Google Scholar
Hollmann, J.C., 2015. Allusions to agriculturalist rituals in Hunter-gatherer rock art? eMkhobeni Shelter, Northern uKhahlamba-Drankensberg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. African Archaeological Review 32, 505–35.Google Scholar
Jones, A., 2005. Lives in fragments? Personhood and the European Neolithic. Journal of Social Archaeology 5, 193–24.Google Scholar
Kaiser, D.A. & Keyser, J.D., 2008. Symbolic superimposition: overlapping Shield Bearing Warriors at Bear Gulch. American Indian Rock Art 34, 37–59.Google Scholar
Keyser, J.D., 1987. A graphic example of petroglyph superimpositioning in the North Cave Hills. Archaeology in Montana 28(2), 44–56.Google Scholar
Laming, A., 1959. Lascaux. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Lemkin, R., 1933. Acts Constituting a General (Transnational) Danger Considered as Offences Against the Law of Nations. www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/madrid1933-english.htm (accessed 9 May 2017).Google Scholar
Leroi-Gourhan, A., 1967. Treasures of Prehistoric Art. New York (NY): Harry N. Abrams.Google Scholar
Levine, M.H., 1957. Prehistoric art and ideology. American Anthropology 49, 949–64.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J.D., 1972. The syntax and function of the Giant's Castle rock paintings. The South African Archaeological Bulletin 27, 49–65.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J.D., 1974. Superpositioning in a sample of rock paintings from the Barkly East District. South African Archaeological Bulleting 29, 93–103.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J.D., 1992. Vision, Power, and Dance: The genesis of a southern African rock art panel. Amsterdam: Museum voor Anthroplogie en Praehistorie.Google Scholar
Loubser, J.H.N., 1993. A guide to the rock paintings of Tandjesberg. Navorsinge van die Nasionale Museum, Bloemfontein 9, 345–84.Google Scholar
Loubser, J.H.N., 1997. The use of Harris diagrams in recording, conserving, and interpreting rock paintings. International Newsletter on Rock Art 18, 14–21.Google Scholar
Lucas, G., 2005. The Archaeology of Time. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mathew, J., 1894. The cave paintings of Australia, their authorship and significance. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 23, 42–52.Google Scholar
Maynard, L., 1977. Classification and terminology in Australian rock art, in Form in Indigenous Rock Art: Schematisation in the art of Aboriginal Australia and prehistoric Europe, ed. Ucko, P.J.. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 387–402.Google Scholar
Maynard, L., 1979. The archaeology of Australian Aboriginal art, in Exploring the Visual Art of Oceania, ed. Mead., S. Honolulu (HI): University Press of Hawaii, 83–110.Google Scholar
McCarthy, F.D. 1964. The archaeology of the Capertee Valley, New South Wales. Records of the Australian Museum 26, 197–246.Google Scholar
McCarthy, F.D., 1967. Australian Aboriginal Rock Art. Sydney: Australian Museum.Google Scholar
McDonald, J. & Veth, P.M., 2013. The archaeology of memory: the recursive relationship of Martu rock art and place. Anthropological Forum 23(4), 367–86.Google Scholar
McNiven, I.J. 2011. The Bradshaw debate: lessons learned from critiquing colonialist interpretations of Gwion Gwion rock paintings of the Kimberley, Western Australia. Australian Archaeology 72, 35–44.Google Scholar
McNiven, I.J. & Russell, L., 1997. ‘Strange paintings’ and ‘mystery races’: Kimberley rock-art, diffusionism and colonialist constructions of Australia's Aboriginal past. Antiquity 71, 801–9.Google Scholar
McNiven, I.J. & Russell, L., 2005. Appropriated Pasts: Indigenous peoples and the colonial culture of archaeology. Lanham (MD): Altamira.Google Scholar
Monney, J., 2003. L’élaboration des chronologies de référence dans le domaine de l'art rupestre: une approche théorique, in ConstellaSion: Hommage à Alain Gallay, eds. Besse, M., Stahl Gretsch, L. & Curdy., P. Lausanne: Cahiers d'archéologie romande, 417–45.Google Scholar
Morphy, H., 2012. Recursive and iterative processes in Australian rock art: an anthropological perspective, in A Companion to Rock Art, eds. McDonald, J. & Veth., P. New York (NY): Wiley-Blackwell, 625–43.Google Scholar
Morwood, M.J., 1996. ‘Bradshaws: Ancient paintings of north-west Australia’ by Grahame L. Walsh. Australian Archaeology 43, 47–8.Google Scholar
Morwood, M.J. & Hobbs, D.R., 2000. The archaeology of Kimberley art, in Bradshaw Art of the Kimberley, ed. Walsh., G.L. Brisbane: Takarakka Nowan Kas Publications.Google Scholar
Morwood, M.J., Walsh, G.L. & Watchman, A., 2010. AMS Radiocarbon ages for beeswax and charcoal pigments in north Kimberley rock art. Rock Art Research 27(1), 3–8.Google Scholar
Motta, A.P., 2016. Embodiment and Personhood: (Re)assessing the Role of Superimpositions of Figurative Depictions among Gwion Gwion and Static Polychrome Rock Art Styles from the Kimberley Region. Unpublished MSc dissertation, University College London.Google Scholar
Motta, A.P., Porr, M. & Veth, P.M., in press. Recursivity in Kimberley rock art production, Western Australia, in Memory and Landscapes – Approaches to the study of landscapes as places of memory, eds. Horn, C., Wollentz, G., Haug, A. & di Maida., G. Oxford: Archaeopress.Google Scholar
Mowaljarlai, D., Vinnicombe, P., Ward, G. K. & Chippindale, C., 1988. Repainting of images on rock in Australia and the maintenance of Aboriginal culture. Antiquity 62, 690–96.Google Scholar
O'Connor, S., Balme, J., Fyfe, J., et al. , 2013. Marking resistance? Change and continuity in the recent rock art of the southern Kimberley, Australia. Antiquity 87, 539–54.Google Scholar
Ouzman, S., Veth, P., Myers, C., Heaney, P. & Kenneally, K., 2018. Plants before animals? Aboriginal rock art as evidence of ecoscaping in Australia's Kimberley, in The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology and Rock Art, eds. David, B. & McNiven, I.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 469–80.Google Scholar
Pager, H., 1971. Ndedema. Graz: Akademische Druck.Google Scholar
Pager, H., 1976. The rating of superimposed rock paintings. Almogaren 5–6, 205–18.Google Scholar
Pearce, D.G., 2010. The Harris matrix technique in the construction of relative chronologies of rock paintings in South Africa. South African Archaeological Bulletin 65(192), 148–53.Google Scholar
Pearce, D.G. & George, L., 2011. An unusual case of overpainting in an Eastern Cape Province rock art site, South Africa. South African Archaeological Bulletin 66(194), 173–7.Google Scholar
Porr, M., 2018. Country and relational ontology in the Kimberley, northwest Australia: implications for understanding and representing archaeological evidence. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 28(3), 395–409.Google Scholar
Pilavaki, S., 2016. Turning into stone: rock art and the construction of identities in ancient Thrace, in An archaeology of Prehistoric Bodies and Embodied Identities in the Eastern Mediterranean, eds. Mina, M., Triantaphyllou, S. & Papadatos., Y. Oxford: Oxbow, 104–9.Google Scholar
Redmond, A. 2002. ‘Alien abductions’, Kimberley Aboriginal rock-paintings, and the speculation about human origins: on some investments in cultural tourism in the northern Kimberley. Australian Aboriginal Studies 2, 54–64.Google Scholar
Roberts, R., Walsh, G.L., Murray, A., et al. , 1997. Luminescence dating of rock art and past environments using mud-wasp nests in northern Australia. Nature 387(6634), 696–9.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, E. & Goodwin, A.J.H., 1953. Cave Artists of South Africa. Cape Town: Balkema.Google Scholar
Ross, J., Westaway, K., Travers, M.E., Morwood, M. & Hayward, J., 2016. Into the past: a step towards a robust Kimberley rock art chronology. PLoS ONE 11(8), 1–33.Google Scholar
Russell, T., 2000. The application of the Harris Matrix to San rock art at Main Caves North, Kwazulu-Natal. The South African Archaeological Bulletin 55, 60–70.Google Scholar
Sauvet, G. & Sauvet, S., 1979. Fonction sémiologique d l'art pariétal animalier franco-cantabrique. Bulletin de la Société préhistorique francaise 76(10/12), 340–54.Google Scholar
Travers, M.E., 2015. Continuity and Change: Exploring Stylistic Transitions in the Anthropomorphic Figures of the Northwest Kimberley Rock Assemblages and the Varying Contexts of Rock Art Production. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of New England, Australia.Google Scholar
Travers, M. & Ross, J. 2016. Continuity and change in the anthropomorphic figures of Australia's northwest Kimberley. Australian Archaeology 82(2), 148–67.Google Scholar
Trezise, P.J., 1971. Rock Art of South-east Cape York. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Ucko, P.J. & Rosenfeld, A. 1967. Palaeolithic Cave Art. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar
UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), 1954. The Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, Hague, 14 May. The Hague: UNESCO.Google Scholar
van Tilburg, J.A. & Lee, G., 1987. Symbolic stratigraphy: rock art and the monolithic statues of Easter Island. World Archaeology 19(2), 133–49.Google Scholar
Veth, P., Myers, C., Heaney, P. & Ouzman, S., 2017. Plants before farming: the deep history of plant-use and representation in the rock art of Australia's Kimberley region. Quaternary International. doi.org/10.1016.jquaint.2016.08.036Google Scholar
Walsh, G.L., 1994. Bradshaws: Ancient rock painting of north-west Australia. Geneva: Bradshaw Foundation.Google Scholar
Walsh, G.L., 2000. Bradshaw Art of the Kimberley. Carnarvon Gorge (QLD): Takarakka Nowan Kas Publications.Google Scholar
Walsh, G.L. & Morwood, M.J., 1999. Spear and spearthrower evolution in the Kimberley Region, N.W. Australia: evidence from rock art. Oceania 34(2), 45–58.Google Scholar
Watchman, A., Walsh, G.L., Morwood, M. & Tuniz, C., 1997. AMS radiocarbon age estimates for early rock paintings in the Kimberley, N.W. Australia: preliminary results. Rock Art Research 14, 18–26.Google Scholar
Welch, D., 1990. The Bichrome Art period in the Kimberley, Australia. Rock Art Research 7(2), 110–23.Google Scholar
Welch, D., 1993a. Early naturalistic human figures in the Kimberley, Australia. Rock Art Research 10, 24–37.Google Scholar
Welch, D., 1993b. Stylistic change in the Kimberley rock art, Australia, in Rock Art Studies: The post stylistic era, or, where do we go from here? Papers presented in Symposium A of the 2nd AURA Congress, Cairns 1992, eds. Lorblanchet, M. & Bahn, P.. Oxford: Oxbow, 99–113.Google Scholar
Welch, D., 2015. Aboriginal Paintings of Drysdale River National Park, Kimberley, Western Australia. (Australian Aboriginal Culture Series 10.) Coolalinga: David M. Welch.Google Scholar
Wellmann, K.F., 1979. A quantitative analysis of superimpositions in the rock art of the Coso Range, California. American Antiquity 44(3), 546–56.Google Scholar