Hostname: page-component-669899f699-b58lm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-26T01:57:21.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Western Desert Iconography: Rock art mythological narratives and graphic vocabularies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Jo McDonald  and
Peter Veth
Jo McDonald*
Affiliation:
The University of Western Australia
*
Josephine McDonald, Centre for Rock Art Research and Management, Archaeology M405, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia Email: jo.mcdonald@uwa.edu.au
Get access

Abstract

The travels of the ancestral beings known as Wati Kutjarra (two lizard-men) are central to Western Desert cosmology. The results of their actions, markings and transmogrified forms are often seen in socially ‘open’ domains and cover and connect features over huge tracts of land. On the central Canning Stock Route of Western Australia there are detailed ethnographic records and ongoing observances of Wati Kutjarra by custodians at a number of ranges and water holes where pigment rock art occurs in shelters. At these same locales archaeological excavations have yielded ochres and occupational deposits which suggest these places have acted as aggregation locales through long periods of time. In this paper we explore the dynamics and genesis of socially constituted desert iconography through time.

Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 58 , Issue 3: Cross-Cultural Art History in a Polycentered World , August 2011 , pp. 7 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2012

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Balme, J, Davidson, I, McDonald, J, Stern, N, Veth, P (2009) ‘Symbolic Behaviour and the Peopling of the Southern Arc Route to Australia’, Quaternary International, 202: 59–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berndt, R (1964) ‘The problem of Interpretation and the Significance of the Engravings of Depuch Island’, pp. 64–67. Special Publications of the West Australian Museum 2. Perth: wa Museum.Google Scholar
Brown, S (1987) ‘Toward a Prehistory of the Hamersley Plateau, Northwest Australia’, Occasional Papers in Prehistory, 6. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Conkey, M W (1980) ‘The Identification of Hunter-Gatherer Aggregation Sites – the Case of Altamira’, Current Anthropology, 21(5): 609–630.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, I M (1964) ‘The Engravings of Depuch Island’, in Ride, W D L, Neumann, A (eds) Depuch Island. Special Publications of the West Australian Museum 2. Perth: wa Museum.Google Scholar
Dix, W (1977) ‘Facial Representations in Pilbara Rock Engravings’, in Ucko, P J (ed.) Form in Indigenous Art: Schematisation in the Art of Aboriginal Australia and Prehistoric Europe, pp. 227–285. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Edwards, R (1968) ‘Prehistoric rock engravings at Thomas Reservoir, Cleland Hills, western central Australia’, Records of the South Australian Museum 15: 647–670.Google Scholar
Franklin, N R (2004) Explorations of Variability in Australian Prehistoric Rock Engravings. Oxford: John and Erica Hedges.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gamble, C S (1982) ‘Interaction and Alliance in Palaeolithic Society’, Man 17(1): 92–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, R A (1977) Puntutjarpa Rockshelter and the Australian Desert Culture. New York: Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History.Google Scholar
Jo McDonald Cultural Heritage Management Pty Ltd. (2005) Desktop assessment of Scientific Values for Indigenous Cultural Heritage on the Dampier Archipelago, Western Australia. Canberra: Report to the Department of Environment & Heritage.Google Scholar
Jo McDonald Cultural Heritage Management Pty Ltd. (2006) A study of the distribution of rock art and stone structures on the Dampier Archipelago. Canberra: Report to the Department of Environment & Heritage.Google Scholar
Lorblanchet, M (1992) ‘The Rock Engravings of Gum Tree Valley and Skew Valley, Dampier, Western Australia: Chronology and functions of the sites’, in McDonald, J, Haskovec, I (eds) State of the Art: Regional Rock Art Studies in Australia and Melanesia, pp. 39–59. Melbourne: aura.Google Scholar
McCarthy, F D (1961) ‘The Rock Engravings of Depuch Island, Northwest Australia’, Records of the Australian Museum 25: 121–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McConvell, P (1996) ‘Backtracking to Babel: The chronology of Pama-Nyungan expansion in Australia’, Archaeology in Oceania 31(3): 125–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonald, J J (2005) ‘Archaic Faces to Headdresses: The changing role of rock art across the arid zone’, in Veth, P M, Smith, M, Hiscock, P (eds) Desert Peoples: Archaeological Perspectives, pp. 116–141. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonald, J J (2008) Dreamtime Superhighway: An analysis of the Sydney Basin rock art and prehistoric information exchange. Canberra: anu EPress.Google Scholar
McDonald, J J, Veth, P M (2006) ‘Rock Art and Social Identity: A Comparison of Graphic Systems Operating in Arid and Fertile Environments in the Holocene’, in Lilley, I (ed.) Archaeology of Oceania: Australia and the Pacific Islands. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
McDonald, J J, Veth, P M (2007) ‘Pilbara and Western Desert Rock Art: Style Graphics in Arid Landscape’, in Bloom, M, Giorgi, P, Pietroboni, G (eds) Rock Art in the Frame of the Cultural Heritage of Humankind, xxii Valcamonica Symposium, pp. 327–334. Capo di Ponte: Edizioni del Centro.Google Scholar
McDonald, J J, Veth, P M (2008) ‘Rock-art of the Western Desert and Pilbara: Pigment dates provide new perspectives on the role of art in the Australian arid zone’, Australian Aboriginal Studies 2008(1): 4–21.Google Scholar
McDonald, J J, Veth, P M (2009) ‘Dampier Archipelago Petroglyphs: Archaeology, scientific values and National Heritage Listing’, Archaeology in Oceania, 44 suppl.: 49–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonald, J J, Veth, P (2011) ‘Information Exchange amongst Hunter-Gatherers of the Western Desert of Australia’, in Whallon, R., Lovis, W. A., Hitchcock, R. K. (eds) The Role of Information in Hunter-Gatherer Band Adaptations, pp. 221–234. Los Angeles: The Costen Institute of Archaeology Press of UCLA.Google Scholar
Marwick, B (2009) ‘Change or Decay? An interpretation of Late Holocene archaeological evidence from the Hamersley Plateau, Western Australia’, Archaeology in Oceania, 44 suppl.: 16–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard, L (1977) ‘Classification and Terminology in Australian Rock Art’, in Ucko, P J (ed.) Form in Indigenous Art. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Mulvaney, K (2009) ‘Dating the Dreaming: Extinct fauna in the petroglyphs of the Pilbara région, Western Australia’, Archaeology in Oceania, 44 suppl.: 40–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munn, N (1973) Walbiri Iconography. Ithaca: Cornell UP.Google Scholar
O’Connor, S, Veth, P, Campbell, C (1998) ‘Serpent's Glen: A Pleistocene archaeological sequence from the Western Desert’, Australian Archaeology 46: 12–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Grady, G N (1966) ‘Proto-Ngayarda phonology’, Oceanic Linguistics 5: 71–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Grady, G N, Laughren, M (1997) ‘Palyuku is a Ngayarta Language’, Australian Journal of Linguistics 17(2): 129–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, K (1975) ‘Petroglyphs and Associated Aboriginal Sites in the North-west of Western Australia, Archaeology and Physical Anthropology in Oceania 10(2): 152–160.Google Scholar
Palmer, K (1977) ‘Myth, Ritual and Rock Art’, Archaeology and Physical Anthropology in Oceania 12(1): 38–50.Google Scholar
Peterson, N (1976) ‘The Natural and Cultural Areas of Aboriginal Australia: A preliminary analysis of population groupings with adaptive significance’, in Peterson, N (ed.) Tribes and Boundaries in Australia, pp. 50–71. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies/ Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Petri, H, Schultz, A S (1951) ‘Felsgravierungen aus Nordwest-Australien’, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie 76: 70–93.Google Scholar
Rosenfeld, A (1991) ‘Panaramitee: Dead or alive?’, in Bahn, P, Rosenfeld, A (eds) Rock Art and Prehistory: Papers presented to Symposium g of the aura Congress. Darwin 1988, pp. 136–144. Oxford: Oxbow Books.Google Scholar
Sackett, J R (1990) ‘Style and Ethnicity in Archaeology: The case for isochrestism’, in Conkey, M, Hastorf, C (eds) The Uses of Style in Archaeology, pp. 32–43. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.Google Scholar
Smith, C E (1989) Designed Dreaming: Assessing the relationship between style, social structure and environment in Aboriginal Australia. Unpublished BA (Hons) Thesis. Armidale: University of New England.Google Scholar
Smith, M A, Williams, A, Turney, C, Cupper, M L (2008) ‘Human-environment Interactions in Australian Drylands: Exploratory time-series analysis of archaeological records’, The Holocene 18(3): 397–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tindale, N B (1974) Aboriginal Tribes of Australia. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Tonkinson, R (1974) The Jigalong Mob: Aboriginal Victors of the Desert Crusade. Menlo Park, CA: Cummings Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Tonkinson, R (1978) The Mardudjara Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australias Desert. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Turner, J (1981) Murujuga: A spatial analysis of the engraved rock art of Withnell Bay. Unpublished BA (Hons) thesis. Perth: Department of Anthropology, University of Western Australia.Google Scholar
Veth, P M (1993) Islands in the Interior: The Dynamics of Prehistoric Adaptations within the Arid Zone of Australia. Ann Arbor, Michigan: International Monographs in Prehistory.Google Scholar
Veth, P M (2000) ‘Origins of the Western Desert Language: Convergence in linguistic and archaeological space and time models’, Archaeology in Oceania 35(1): 11–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veth, P M (2005a) ‘Cycles of Aridity and Human Mobility: Risk minimisation among late Pleistocene foragers of the Western Desert, Australia’, in Veth, P, Smith, M, Hiscock, P (eds) Desert Peoples: Archaeological Perspectives, pp. 100–115. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veth, P M (2005b) ‘Between the Desert and the Sea: Archaeologies of the Western Desert and Pilbara Region, Australia’, in Smith, M, Hesse, P (eds) 23S: Archaeology and Environmental History of the Southern Deserts. Canberra: National Museum of Australia.Google Scholar
Veth, P (2006) ‘Social Dynamism in the Archaeology of the Western Desert’, in David, B, McNiven, I J, Barker, B (eds) The Social Archaeology of Indigenous Societies, pp. 242–253. Canberra: Australian Aboriginal Studies Press.Google Scholar
Veth, P, Hiscock, P, Williams, A (2011) ‘Are Tulas and ENSO linked in Australia?’, Australian Archaeology 72: 7–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veth, P, Smith, M A, Bowler, J, Fitzsimmons, K E, Williams, A, Hiscock, P (2009) ‘Excavations at Parnkupirti, Lake Gregory, Great Sandy Desert: OSL ages for occupation before the Last Glacial Maximum’, Australian Archaeology 69: 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vinnicombe, P (1987) Dampier Archaeological Project: Resource document, survey and salvage of Aboriginal sites, Burrup Peninsula, Western Australia. Perth: WA Museum, Department of Aboriginal Sites.Google Scholar
Vinnicombe, P (2002) ‘Petroglyphs of the Dampier Archipelago: Background to Development and Descriptive Analysis’, Rock Art Research 19(1): 3–27.Google Scholar
Wiessner, P (1989) ‘Style and changing relations between individual and society’, in Hodder, I (ed.) The Meanings of Things: Material Culture and Symbolic Expression, pp. 56–63. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Wobst, H M (1977) ‘Stylistic Behaviour and Information Exchange’, in Cleland, C E (ed.) For the Director: Research Essays in honour of J. B. Griffen, pp. 317–342. Ann Arbor: Anthropological Papers, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Worms, E A (1954) ‘Prehistoric Petroglyphs of the Upper Yule River, North-Western Australia’, Anthropos, 49: 1067–1088.Google Scholar
Wright, B J (1968) Rock Art of the Pilbara Region, North-west Australia. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Wright, B J (1977) ‘Schematisation in the Rock Engravings of North-western Australia’, in Ucko, P J (ed.) Form in Indigenous Art: Schematisation in the art of Aboriginal and Prehistoric Europe, pp. 110–116. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar