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KEYWORDS: Ethnography - Patterning - Gulf of Carpentaria - Interpretation - Yanyuwa
Abstract. In 2010 the first collaborative rock art recording project was initiated in the Sir Edward Pellew Islands in northern Australia's Gulf Country. A total of twenty-two sites containing 408 images were recorded from three islands (South West, Black Craggy and Watson) and analysed using formal and informed methods. Preliminary analyses reveal some geographical patterning occurring at the site level and at the individual motif level. Whilst these archaeologically-observed patterns highlight the distribution of rock art across Yanyuwa island country, Yanyuwa interpretations and statements concerning one distinctive motif and two small-scale patterns provide crucial insights into how they understand the place of rock art on their country. By focusing on motifs as 'images of relatedness' that are embedded in a network of relationships that are the basis of Yanyuwa Law and kinship, this paper examines the complexities associated with how archaeologists might interpret patterning in the rock art record. We argue that rock art motifs are not a static representation of something but instead are important images that continue to express and generate concepts of relatedness and which ultimately lead to discussions of a non-human-centred landscape that is premised on attributions of intentionality, obligation, responsibility and reciprocity.
Introduction
Northern Australia is home to some of the most well-known and recognised rock art regions in the world (e.g. the Kimberley, Kakadu National Park/western Arnhem Land, southeast Cape York Peninsula, and the Torres Strait islands). Over the last several decades this area has produced a wealth of archaeological and ethnographic information about rock art including the establishment of regional chronological frameworks (e.g. Chaloupka 1993; Cole et al. 1995; Chippindale and Taçon 1998; David and Chant 1995), rock art regionalisation (e.g. David and Lourandos 1998; Taçon 1993), identification and symbolism of specific motifs (e.g. Arndt 1962; Crawford 1968; Mulvaney 1992; Taçon 1989), links between myths, motifs and landscape (Capell 1972; Elkin 1952: 249; Flood 2004: 189-191), and more recently the discovery of the oldest dated pigment art on the continent (David et al. 2013). However, there are many other rock art regions across northern Australia that have yet to form the focus of in-depth investigation. One of these is the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria region...