Although notions of resistance are not new in rock art research concerning cross‐cultural colonial encounters, this study shows how multiple dimensions of Indigenous resistance can be explored through a multidisciplinary analysis of rock art in northern Australia. The study explores the intersections between introduced “Western” and pre‐existing “traditional” motifs in rock art near Yingalarri waterhole in Wardaman Country, Northern Territory, analysing the visual conventions and superimpositions with an eye towards Wardaman epistemological engagements with rock art and experiences of colonial occupation. These intersections reveal further dimensions of Wardaman responses to colonial occupation, including the negotiation of shifting inter‐regional relationships and engagements with Country as well as the continued emphasis on inherited artistic practices. The study also explores the continuing role that rock art, and its interpretation, plays in Indigenous colonial resistance. Wardaman discussions of introduced motifs documented during the 1988–1991 Earthwatch project brought the paintings out of the past, giving them contemporary significance via kinship connections and narratives of survival that challenge colonial efforts to erase Indigenous experiences of early colonial contact and occupation. The paper contributes to archaeological understandings of inter‐regional connections between northern Australian rock art regions and rock art production and discussion as a means for Aboriginal resistance and remembrance after the arrival of Europeans.

Identifying style provinces is a popular topic of enquiry in Australian rock art research. At the core of these studies is the focus on the style or manner of depiction of motifs as a key indicator for determining patterns of motif similarity and difference, and their corresponding spatial distribution. In identifying spatial continuities and discontinuities based on a formal analysis of rock art motifs fixed in place, researchers sometimes limit their ability to understand the relational dimensions associated with past and present graphic systems more broadly. This chapter reviews and critiques the formal, style-based methods of delineating discontinuities in rock art as boundaries and uses Nancy Williams’s work on Yolngu boundaries as a framework to further build on research into spatial discontinuities in rock art as flexible, intersecting, and fluid. In doing so, the authors also draw attention to the role of relational understandings and decorative portable objects in characterizing intersecting style-based discontinuities. Using two case studies from northern Australia, they demonstrate how the spatial and social boundaries expressed in rock art are often much more complex than originally envisaged.

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