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The introduction of new animals into huntergatherer societies produces a variety of cultural responses. This article explores the role of rock art in western Arnhem Land, Australia, in helping to mediate contact-period changes in Indigenous society in the nineteenth century. The authors explore etic and emic perspectives on the 're-emergence' of water buffalo into Aboriginal cultural life. Merging archaeological analysis, rock art and ethnographic accounts, the article demonstrates how such artworks were used as a tool for maintaining order in times of dramatic social change. The results of this research have significant implications for understanding how cultural groups and individuals worldwide used rock art during periods of upheaval. Keywords: Australia, Arnhem Land, water buffalo, rock art, human-animal relationships, contact, Introduction Colonial-period contact led to the introduction of exotic animal species into Indigenous hunter-gatherer societies worldwide. The appearance of these animals elicited a variety of responses. While some communities embraced [...]

This paper discusses the commencement of an Aboriginal art market focused on the production of bark paintings in Australia. It centres around Baldwin Spencer's visit to Oenpelli, today known as Gunbalanya, in 1912. During his visit, Spencer commissioned the first collection of Aboriginal bark paintings from western Arnhem Land. This paper explores how this was perceived from an Indigenous perspective through an interview conducted more than 50 years ago with one of the artists who painted for Spencer, Paddy Compass Namadbara (c. 1891/92-1978), the first artist known to have contributed to the Spencer/Cahill Collection. The interview, conducted by Lance Bennett in 1967 and presented here for the first time in English, provides evidence for how Spencer and Patrick Cahill influenced the commissioned bark paintings by Namadbara and other artists. This new information is significant for understanding the early interactive shaping of what has become an important art market in the region. Keywords: Paddy Compass Namadbara, Baldwin Spencer, bark paintings, Aboriginal art, Indigenous art, Oenpelli, Paddy Cahill, Western Arnhem Land, This paper reveals an Indigenous perspective on a decisive moment in time for the development of Aboriginal art. The account provided allows us to see Sir Baldwin Spencer and Patrick [...]

The rock art of Southeast Asia has been less thoroughly studied than that of Europe or Australia, and it has generally been considered to be more recent in origin. New dating evidence from Mainland and Island Southeast Asia, however, demonstrates that the earliest motifs (hand stencils and naturalistic animals) are of late Pleistocene age and as early as those of Europe. The similar form of the earliest painted motifs in Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia suggests that they are the product of a shared underlying behaviour, but the difference in context (rockshelters) indicates that experiences in deep caves cannot have been their inspiration. Keywords: rock art, hand stencils, painted caves, rockshelters, animal motifs, uranium-series dating, Introduction The oldest surviving rock art of Europe, northern and southern Africa, India and Australia includes naturalistic depictions of key species of animal that would have been economically and symbolically [...]

Abstract: This paper investigates contact histories in northern Australia through an analysis of recent rock paintings. Around Australia Aboriginal artists have produced a unique record of their experiences of contact [...]

The authors present and interpret rock drawings found in caves in the Lenggong Valley, Perak, Malaysia. The drawings, which begin by depicting ritually important patterned mats, and continue with images of cars, bicycles and figures with their hands on their hips, provide rare and precious insights into how the indigenous people of the area came to terms with changes that occurred as the result of the arrival of Europeans in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Keywords: Malaysia, Lenggong Valley, Gua Badak, rock art, drawings, Introduction The rock art of East Asia is not well known and often overshadowed by research from Europe, southern Africa, Australia and the Americas. However, rock art has been consistently [...]

Abstract: The earliest surviving bark-paintings from northern Australia derive from the Cobourg Peninsula but until now little was known of their circumstances of collection. We examine 28 extant or described [...]

ANTIQUITY last year reported a startlingly old series of dates from Jinmium in tropical north Australia. At Jinmium are old rock-engravings, the pecked cups or cupules that are widespread in [...]

Arnhem Land at the end of the Pleistocene Making sense of information about the human past is one of the primary goals of archaeological research. In western Arnhem Land we [...]

A brief overview of the spiritual and ancestral beings who have abodes in the rocks and caves in Australia is given that are familiar to Kuwinjku, Gagudju, Gundjeibmi and other north Australian people. However, in Australia there are many stories about spirits associated with caves and worlds within rocks, encounters with spirits and the nature of inner and underworlds.

For at least 60,000 years the Indigenous peoples of Australia have been transforming natural landscapes into culturally meaningful and relevant places in enduring, long-lasting ways. This was one of the [...]

As the title of this fascinating book implies, rock pictures are far more than neutral artefacts used by archaeologists or other researchers solely as data. They have social and political [...]

'What a lovely landscape', remarked the elderly lady to the man standing beside her, 'Where?', he replied dully. 'I don't see it.' 'Over there, over there!' she shouted but he [...]