ABSTRACT
We write from an ontological premise that there are other ways to know and understand the “archaeological record” and “rock art” that are devoid of Western ontology, and there have been for ...many millennia. In this article, we consider one specific Indigenous place and its associated visual elements, what might be commonly referred to as “rock art.” This place, Nalangkalurru, is replete with meaning, grounded in a well‐founded and understood logic and reason. Nalangkalurru belongs to the Yanyuwa people of the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria region, northern Australia. By adopting methodological openness, we take a journey of steadied nondistraction oriented towards the Yanyuwa ontology that is in place. When viewing the visual elements of Nalangkalurru, which include Ancestral Beings that are visually present on the cave's large rock surface, Yanyuwa have resolutely declared that this “is not a painting.” We explore what this comment means and expand the discussion to consider the nature of rock art research, when “rock art” is not “rock art.” These insights inspire a reflective discussion on the ways Yanyuwa, and Indigenous ontologies more broadly, unsettle and aid the ontological turn. ontology, rock art, colonialism, Indigenous, Australia
RESUMEN
Escribimos desde una premisa ontológica que hay otras formas de conocer y entender el “registro arqueológico” y el “arte rupestre” que están desprovistas de la ontología occidental, y lo han estado por muchos milenios. En este artículo, consideramos un lugar indígena específico, y sus elementos visuales asociados, que pueden ser referidos comúnmente como “arte rupestre”. Este lugar, Nalangkalurru, está repleto de significado, basado en una lógica y razón bien fundamentadas y entendidas. Nalangkalurru pertenece a los Yanyuwa del Golfo sudoeste de la región de Carpentaria, norte de Australia. Al adoptar la apertura metodológica, hacemos un viaje de no distracción estable orientado hacia la ontología Yanyuwa que está en su lugar. Cuando mirando los elementos visuales de Nalangkalurru, que incluyen Seres Ancestrales que están visualmente presentes en la superficie grande rocosa de la cueva, los Yanyuwa han declarado resueltamente que esta “no es una pintura”. Exploramos lo que este comentario significa y expandimos la discusión para considerar la naturaleza de la investigación del arte rupestre, cuando el “arte rupestre” no es “arte rupestre”. Este conocimiento inspira una discusión reflexiva sobre las formas en que las ontologías Yanyuwa e indígenas más ampliamente, desestabilizan y ayudan al giro ontológico. ontología, arte rupestre, colonialismo, indígenas, Australia
This paper presents a palynological analysis of sediments from Walanjiwurru 1, a rockshelter located in the Country of the Marra Aboriginal people at Limmen National Park in the Northern Territory ...(Australia). Analysis seeks to test rockshelter sediments as a framework for research in an environmentally difficult location, and to explore how the palaeoecological record may capture the diversity of people-nature relationships over time in the Northern Territory. The Walanjiwurru 1 pollen record provides an approximate 500-year insight into the rockshelter’s surrounding landscape. Two plant communities demonstrate local presence across this time frame—foremost a drier eucalypt woodland, and a wetter fringing
Melaleuca
dominated habitat, each with an integrated series of monsoonal forest taxa. With only subtle shifts in vegetation, the Marra’s consistent maintenance of relations with their landscape is observable, and this is discussed in relation to the Walanjiwurru 1’s archaeology and regional European settler colonialism. Charcoal recovery from Walanjiwurru 1 is derived from in situ campfires, making it difficult to conclude on the response of plant types and vegetation communities to long-term landscape burning. Future palaeoecological research off-site from the rockshelter has therefore been recommended.
"…ngabaya painted all this, you know when we were kids we
would come here and look and sometimes the paintings would change,
they were always changing." Annie a-Karrakayny
Fully illustrated, Jakarda ...Wuka (Too Many
Stories) draws on a combined 70+ years of collaborative
research involving Yanyuwa Elders, anthropologists, and an
archaeologist to tell a unique story about the rock art from
Yanyuwa Country in northern Australia's southwest Gulf of
Carpentaria.
Australia's rock art is recognised globally for its antiquity,
abundance, distinctive motifs and the deep and abiding knowledge
Indigenous people continue to hold for these powerful symbols.
However, books about Australian rock art jointly written by
Indigenous communities, anthropologists, and archaeologists are
extremely rare.
Combining Yanyuwa and western knowledge, the authors embark on a
journey to reveal the true meaning of Yanyuwa rock art. At the
heart of this book is the understanding that a painting is not just
a painting, nor is it an isolated phenomenon or a static
representation. What underpins Yanyuwa perceptions of their rock
art is kinship, because people are kin to everything and everywhere
on Country.
Jakarda Wuka highlights the multidimensional nature of
Yanyuwa rock art: it is an active social agent in the landscape,
capable of changing according to different circumstances and
events, connected to the epic travels and songs of Ancestral Beings
(Dreamings), and related to various aspects of Yanyuwa life such as
ceremony, health and wellbeing, identity, and narratives concerning
past and present-day events.
In a time where Indigenous communities, archaeologists, and
anthropologists are seeking new ways to work together and better
engage with Indigenous knowledges to interpret the "archaeological
record", Jakarda Wuka delivers a masterful and profound
narrative of Yanyuwa Country and its rock art.
This project was supported by the Australian Research Council
and the McArthur River Mine Community Benefits Trust.*
The 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence began with the 4 September 2010, Mw7.1 Darfield earthquake and includes up to ten events that induced liquefaction. Most notably, widespread liquefaction ...was induced by the Darfield and Mw6.2 Christchurch earthquakes. The combination of well-documented liquefaction response during multiple events, densely recorded ground motions for the events, and detailed subsurface characterization provides an unprecedented opportunity to add well-documented case histories to the liquefaction database. This paper presents and applies 50 high-quality cone penetration test (CPT) liquefaction case histories to evaluate three commonly used, deterministic, CPT-based simplified liquefaction evaluation procedures. While all the procedures predicted the majority of the cases correctly, the procedure proposed by Idriss and Boulanger (2008) results in the lowest error index for the case histories analyzed, thus indicating better predictions of the observed liquefaction response.
For close to six decades, ethnoarchaeology has studied the present to better understand the past. However, if understanding the past is paramount, then what of the wishes and interests of those with ...whom we collaborate in the present? This situation raises questions such as who is ethnoarchaeology for, and how might its outcomes be valuable to both researchers and collaborators? We address these issues by focusing on the space in which researchers operate, namely the 'gap' between archaeological and Indigenous conceptualizations of the world, and propose methodological openness to help achieve new ways of thinking about ethnoarchaeology. Drawing on our experiences conducting rock art research in Australia and the American Southwest, we describe the complexities that emerged during conversations with Yanyuwa and Zuni elders and how they have helped bridge the methodological 'gap' and enrich our research and understanding of rock art.
Studies of introduced subject matter in rock-art assemblages typically focus on themes of cross-cultural interaction, change and continuity, power and resistance. However, the economic frameworks ...guiding or shaping the production of an assemblage have often been overlooked. In this paper we use a case study involving a recently recorded assemblage of introduced subject matter from Marra Country in northern Australia's southwest Gulf of Carpentaria region to explore their production using a hybrid economy framework. This framework attempts to understand the nature of the forces that shape people's engagement with country and subsequently how it is being symbolically marked as adjustments to country occur through colonization. We argue that embedding these motifs into a hybrid economy context anchored in the pastoral industry allows for a more nuanced approach to cross-cultural interaction studies and adds another layer to the story of Aboriginal place-marking in colonial contexts. This paper aims to go beyond simply identifying motifs thought to represent introduced subject matter, and the cross-cultural framework(s) guiding their interpretation, and instead to direct attention to the complex network of relations that potentially underpin the production of such motifs.
This paper considers themes of species maintenance and place engagement in Yanyuwa country, northern Australia. It traces the complexity of interpretations and relational contexts involved in places ...that are commonly – and we argue – misleadingly, referred to as increase and magic sites. Examining one specific place, at which people carry out maintenance rituals, we explore the complex bonds that unite Yanyuwa with the geography that is the Ancestral Hill Kangaroo. Not content with the classificatory habit of declaring actions either increase oriented or hunting magic, this research more fully explicates the relational substance of places that play a key role in ecological health. This is achieved by asking how might the profundity of a place of relational importance, such as a maintenance site, be better understood and written of in ways that convey an Indigenous ontology and epistemology?
This article is dedicated to a close examination of how stories of Indigenous place meaning come to light, and the pathways by which they travel, both physically (as tangible expressions) and ...intellectually (as intangible expressions). It offers a reflection on the epistemic habits that render these stories audible, visual, and otherwise sensual in the context of one Indigenous Australian community. Appreciating the communicative pathways that exist in place, and which reveal the nature of place, is what motivates an ethnographic commitment to Indigenous knowledge in reading meaning in place. We conclude that opening up both anthropology and archaeology to plurality in “knowing the place world” illuminates a “poetics of fit” for certain people in certain places, highlighting the extent to which place has its own empirical order, and identity, which, with certain epistemic habits, may be read, felt, and known.
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