‘Who do you want to kill?’ Affectual and relational understandings at a sorcery rock art site in the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia

Abstract

This article explores the affectual and relational contexts in which rock art is embedded through an exploration of the encounters, reactions, and responses to a well‐known sorcery rock art site known as Kurrmurnnyini in northern Australia's southwest Gulf country. These encounters with a culturally powerful place, and the emotions derived from people's personal memories and experiences of Kurrmurnnyini and its sorcery‐infused rock art, are vital to establishing an understanding of contemporary perceptions of what is clearly more than an ‘archaeological site’. We contend that by turning our attention to the often‐overlooked affectual and relational dimensions of rock art and the contexts in which it is found, researchers place themselves in a better position to access and become aware of the agency and affect of graphic imagery as well as the significance these powerful images and places hold for people today.

Affective Interventions and ‘the Hegemonic Other’ in Runestones from Västergötland and Södermanland, Sweden

“…The study of affect within archaeology has generally been restricted to senses or emotions (e.g. Harris & Sørenson 2010;Brady & Bradley 2016), and how these are connected to, for instance, memory work (e.g. Hamilakis 2013).…”

A rare miniature and small-scale stencil assemblage from the Gulf of Carpentaria: replication and meaning in Australian rock art

“…When Bradley began his ethnographic research in the region, senior Yanyuwa men spoke of the power of drawing and painting. In describing this power, the men were referencing narnu-bulabula (also known as wirlkin )—a powerful and highly feared form of site-specific sorcery that involves the production of rock art (paintings, stencils, prints and beeswax in its traditional form—affixed to, and left on, a rock surface) at Kurrmurnnyini (Gudanji Country) and Nangkuya (Marra Country) (see Brady & Bradley 2016). Men with the correct kin-based relationships to these sites were able to create motifs to attack the life force of a selected victim.…”

Nalangkulurru, the Spirit Beings, and the Black‐Nosed Python: Ontological Self‐Determination and Yanyuwa Law in Northern Australia's Gulf Country

“…One of the greatest challenges for this project has been the need to abandon the conventional discourse of “rock art.” In fact, we have had to become extremely careful in our use of the term “rock art,” for Yanyuwa declare that the Ancestral Beings and spiritual presences (e.g., images of hands and feet belonging to spiritual beings known as ngabaya , linear patterns and geometric shapes made by ngabaya, and images known to have been made by recently deceased individuals) seen on and in rock surfaces are not “rock art” or “art,” nor are they “paintings.” In other instances, such as sorcery‐based images, these are made by people but they too are tied to complex ontological frameworks that have their origins in the Dreaming (e.g., Brady and Bradley 2016). How, then, do we best write of them while acknowledging and being in ethical relation with an Indigenous ontology?…”