Boundaries, Relationality, and Style Provinces in Australian Rock Art

Abstract

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.

Resistance and remembering through rock art: Contact‐period rock art in Wardaman country, Northern Australia

“…outlined and infilled; with cross‐hatched internal decoration etc.). Spatial patterns and chronological sequences in design conventions can then be explored (see Conkey, 2018; Kelly & Brady, 2021). While many such studies have been undertaken both in Australia and internationally, there has recently been an increasing focus on Indigenous ontological and epistemological approaches to “rock art” (Moro Abadía & Porr, 2021; Brady & Bradley, 2014; Brady & Kearny, 2016; David, 2002; Kelly & Brady, 2021; Kelly et al ., 2021; Porr & Bell, 2012; Porr, 2019; see also, Alberti, 2016; Jones, 2017).…”

“…Spatial patterns and chronological sequences in design conventions can then be explored (see Conkey, 2018; Kelly & Brady, 2021). While many such studies have been undertaken both in Australia and internationally, there has recently been an increasing focus on Indigenous ontological and epistemological approaches to “rock art” (Moro Abadía & Porr, 2021; Brady & Bradley, 2014; Brady & Kearny, 2016; David, 2002; Kelly & Brady, 2021; Kelly et al ., 2021; Porr & Bell, 2012; Porr, 2019; see also, Alberti, 2016; Jones, 2017). In Australia, these developments in the “archaeology of rock art” were informed by and followed similar developments in the “anthropology of art”, such as by Nancy Munn (1973) among the Warlpiri, and especially by Howard Morphy (e.g.…”