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Arnhem Land is a key region for understanding the Pleistocene colonisation of Australia, due to the presence of the oldest sites in the continent. Despite this, conventional archaeological survey has not been effective at locating additional pre-Holocene sites in the region due to a complex distribution of geomorphic units caused by sea level rise and coastal aggradation. This research uses geophysical and geomatic techniques to map the subsurface distribution of the geomorphic units in the Red Lily Lagoon region in eastern Arnhem Land. This reveals a complex Pleistocene landscape, which offers the potential to locate additional archaeological sites and so reveal more about the lifeways of the earliest Australians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two similar watercraft depicted in rock art at Awunbarna, Arnhem Land, Australia, are unlike the Macassan prahus and Western craft shown at other contact sites in northern Australia, but are sufficiently detailed to offer evidence for identification. Both craft appear to display triangular flags, pennants, and prow adornments indicating martial status. By comparing these two depictions with historically recorded watercraft from Island Southeast Asia, their probable origin is shown to have been eastern Maluku Tenggara in Indonesia. These motifs provide the first known direct archaeological evidence for ethnic diversity for the origins of mariners from Island Southeast Asia other than Makassar, Sulawesi. The rock-art depictions are representative of ceremonially decorated fighting craft used to lead trading voyages and raids, and may be linked to trade, fishing, resource exploitation, or slavery. This potentially unique identification of Moluccan watercraft in Arnhem Land rock art offers evidence of the elusive encounters between the Indigenous people of northern Australia and people from the archipelagos to the north, evidence with which to expand both the nature and context of Australia's contact narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, machine learning approaches have been used to classify and extract style from media and have been used to reinforce known chronologies from classical art history. In this work we employ the first ever machine learning analysis of Australian rock art using a data efficient transfer learning approach to identify features suitable for distinguishing styles of rock art. These features are evaluated in a one-shot learning setting. Results demonstrate that known Arnhem Land Rock art styles can be resolved without knowledge of prior groupings. We then analyse the activation space of learned features and report on the relationships between styles and arrange these classes into a stylistic chronology based on distance within the activation space. By generating a stylistic chronology, it is shown that the model is sensitive to both temporal and spatial patterns in the distribution of rock art in the Arnhem Land Plateau region. More broadly, this approach is ideally suited to evaluating style within any material culture assemblage and overcomes the common constraint of small training data sets in archaeological machine learning studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, recent climate change has resulted in prolonged droughts, massive devastating bushfires, extreme flooding, and more frequent and intense cyclones, all of which affect archaeological and historic heritage. In this paper, we report on new research on rock art at a site called Djarrng in western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. Djarrng was heavily impacted by Tropical Cyclone Monica in 2006. We have visited the site sporadically since 1992, most recently in September 2019. We also have photographs taken in 1979 and accessed others taken in 1965 and so are in a position to document change to rock art panels over a 54 year period. We discuss not only change at the site as a result of the cyclone but also more general changes to rock art imagery at Arnhem Land sites in the past two hundred years, as well as lessons learnt from natural disasters that could be important for future rock art conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of style is a widespread method for describing classes of rock art and plays a significant role in forming a chronology for Arnhem Land rock art assemblages. A longstanding issue identified in Arnhem Land rock art has been the ill-defined nature of the 'Large Naturalistic Style' (LNS) as originally proposed by rock art researcher George Chaloupka. We have re-examined the distribution, frequency and the stylistic design attributes of 163 early naturalistic macropod paintings from 88 rock art sites across the region utilising predominately legacy records. This provides us with an opportunity to re-examine Chaloupka's stylistic category of the LNS and describe and map the stylistic attributes used by Indigenous artists in the depictions of early naturalistic animal forms that occur through the Early and Middle Periods (from Pleistocene to early Holocene). We examine Chaloupka's LNS against established criteria for the definition of a style, such as whether it exhibits a specific and characteristic manner of production and if it is localised to a specific time and place. We present the first reported quantifiable dataset of design attributes for this regional art type. The results provide an opportunity to re-evaluate the temporal and spatial coherence of the Large Naturalistic Style class of rock art. Although a generalised standard depiction of naturalistic macropod forms exists in Early Period rock art, the original definition of LNS and its chronological placement in the rock art sequence is not supported. Therefore, we propose using the more generalised term 'early large naturalistic fauna' to represent this class of rock art, rather than LNS in the Arnhem Land rock art schema. This provides a platform by which future research can attempt to investigate the function of early large naturalistic fauna and the potential links of this class of rock art to group identity, ritual and religious behaviours in northern Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a previously undescribed rock art style consisting of large human figures and animals with stroke-line infill is introduced. These depictions have been named Maliwawa Figures. They are primarily found in northwest Arnhem Land and to date have been recorded at 87 sites from Awunbarna (Mount Borradaile area) to the Namunidjbuk clan state of the Wellington Range. There are solitary figures and others arranged in compositions or scenes. We describe the features of this style, its distribution, subject matter and probable age. The results of a detailed analysis of all sites are discussed and a new, refined Arnhem Land rock art chronology is presented. It is concluded that Maliwawa Figures are most likely to date between 6,000 to 9,400 years of age and to be contemporaneous with Northern Running Figures and Yam Figures found at sites to the south. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about cultural change on the inlets of the northern subcoastal plains of the Alligator Rivers region during the transition period between sea-level highstand c.8,000 BP and the establishment of freshwater wetlands (c.2,000 BP to present). The research presented here begins to fill this gap by illustrating differences in Indigenous land-use at two sites only a few kilometres apart and both dating to c.1,000 years ago. Located on the lower reaches of the South Alligator River within what is now Kakadu National Park, the earth mound Myaranji 1 and the shell midden Djindibi 1 provide a snapshot of settlement and subsistence strategies practiced on the floodplains in the late Holocene. This paper presents the analyses of the cultural materials recovered from these two open sites, including those of invertebrate and vertebrate faunal remains, shell and stone artefacts, and pigment on artefacts. Interpretation of the data suggests that occupation was relatively short-lived. Differential representation of food resources indicates that each site was occupied in different seasons. Both local manufacture and regional connectivity are suggested by ochre use and stone artefact working. Evidence from other regional sites implies a subsequent focus for settlement to the south and east. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The archaeology of Bald Rock 1, Bald Rock 2 and Bald Rock 3 at the sandstone outcrop of Maliwawa has established ∼25,000 years of Indigenous occupation in the Wellington Range, northwestern Arnhem Land. Flaked stone artefacts were found from the beginning of the sequence, with ground-edge axes, pounding and grinding technology and ochre recovered from deposits dating from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the recent contact period. Maliwawa was occupied during the LGM and other major regional environmental changes arising from post-glacial sea level rise and stabilisation along with the climatic variability of the Indonesian Australian Summer Monsoon (IASM) and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), supporting models that define Arnhem Land as a refugium. Lithic assemblages are represented by a quartz and quartzite flake abundance technological strategy, with an unusual lack of stone points observed, although other typical Arnhem Land Holocene retouched lithics are present. Raw material diversity in the late Holocene, alongside a variety of emergent pan-Arnhem Land rock art styles in the Wellington Range, supports the proposition of increasing exchange between Indigenous groups. These changes in the archaeological record signal the expansion of cultural systems throughout western Arnhem Land, documented historically and archaeologically, at the time of culture contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous excavations at Malara (Anuru Bay A), a Macassan trepang processing site in Arnhem Land, produced a substantial quantity of earthenware pottery (Macknight 1969). Earthenware pottery has also been reported and collected from Macassan sites elsewhere along the Northern Territory and Kimberley coastlines. Although several studies have been undertaken on earthenwares from Macassan sites in Australia, it was uncertain whether any included sherds from the significant Anuru Bay site. This paper details the results of the analysis of earthenware sherds recovered during a recent programme of excavation and surface collection at Anuru Bay. The earthenware was analysed in order to investigate its source and to determine whether one or more regions of manufacture were evident. Our results indicate that the sole source for all of the analysed pottery was likely south Sulawesi. It would appear that the trepang fishing fleets who camped at Malara provisioned non-perishables, such as local earthenware, at the port of Makassar prior to beginning their voyage to Marege. This strengthens claims for Makassar as the major operating port for the fleets operating in the Anuru Bay area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents selected results of an experimental study using portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) for the non-destructive analysis of rock art pigments in northern Australia. During two weeks of fieldwork in the dry season of 2011 at the Red Lily Lagoon area in western Arnhem Land, 32 rock art motifs in four rockshelter sites were analysed. A total of 640 analyses were undertaken, including of white, red, black, yellow and blue pigments from both early and contact art motifs. This paper discusses the geochemical analysis of one particular motif painted with black pigment. It was determined that processed metal lead was the most likely pigment base. Contrary to previous stylistic analysis that suggested the motif had an old age, our analysis suggests that the motif was painted within the last 200-300 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2008 researchers from the Australian National University's Archaeology and Natural History Department and Flinders University's Program in Maritime Archaeology recorded nine non-Indigenous watercraft rock art images in a rock-shelter in the Wellington Range of north western Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. During the project it was recognised that one of the missing elements of interpreting watercraft in rock art was a comprehensive analytical framework that can be tested and reproduced. The development of such a framework can be used by future researchers to begin addressing the larger issues and considerations represented in non-Indigenous watercraft depictions across Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]