At last! A book showcasing the Aboriginal rock art of Western Australia's Burrup Peninsula. Western Australia contains some of the oldest, most prolific, and most spectacular rock art in the world. Some of the art probably dates from about 40,000 years ago, and much dates from around the last ice age which peaked 20,000 years ago. On the Australian Heritage-listed Burrup Peninsula and surrounding islands there are an estimated one million motifs carved into the rocks. This lavishly illustrated 516-page book has more than 600 images of this amazing art.

Rock art is one of the most visible and geographically widespread of cultural expressions, and it spans much of the period of our species' existence. Rock art also provides rare and often unique insights into the minds and visually creative capacities of our ancestors and how selected rock outcrops with distinctive images were used to construct symbolic landscapes and shape worldviews. Equally important, rock art is often central to the expression of and engagement with spiritual entities and forces, and in all these dimensions it signals the diversity of cultural practices, across place and through time. Over the past 150 years, archaeologists have studied ancient arts on rock surfaces, both out in the open and within caves and rock shelters, and social anthropologists have revealed how people today use art in their daily lives. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art showcases examples of such research from around the world and across a broad range of cultural contexts, giving a sense of the art's regional variability, its antiquity, and how it is meaningful to people in the recent past and today - including how we have ourselves tended to make sense of the art of others, replete with our own preconceptions. It reviews past, present, and emerging theoretical approaches to rock art investigation and presents new, cutting-edge methods of rock art analysis for the student and professional researcher alike.

Kimberley art: strong in country and law - Kimberley languages - Figurative art of the North-west and Central Kimberley - Paddy Jaminji and the Gurirr Gurirr - The East Kimberley aesthetic - Art of Fitzroy Crossing - Art of Balgo - Kimberley art and material culture - Materials and techniques of the contemporary Kimberley artist.

Fieldwork carrried out 1962-1966; Painting techniques, hand stencils, paint application, painting baler shell, cave paintings at Mamadai restored in part; Origin of Wandjina paintings, power of Wandjinas, behaviour, rituals, conception beliefs, gifts to the Wandjinas, legend of Wodjin, description of painting at Wanalirri; Stone arrangement & battle ground Tunbai Dispersed Wandjinas, sites at Brockmans Cave, Bundjin-moro, Bunggudmana & the owl, Morol, Pindjauri, story of Wadanda at Karendjin; Sea Wandjinas, Indonesian contact, burial practices, legends of Langgi paintings; Paintings & engravings found by G. Grey; Kaiara spirits & children, weather power, sites at Chalangdal, Wurwai, Warabi, West Montalivet Is., Warangala, paintings of European sailors & ships Bigge Is.; archaic art form in Bradshaws figures, legends of Koion & grasshopper, radiocarbon dating of charcoal shows age of stone leaf-shaped spear head depicted in paintings; Kakadja painting Cape Voltaire, Djuari figures, route taken by the dead, legend of Warulu & Ungamin at Djilgu; Unusual engraving Sturt Creek; Animals in human form St. George Basin, Kuri Bay, Doubtful Bay area; Snake mythology Forrest R., Gibb R. Station, Ulu figures & ritual killings Windjina Gorge, Mt. Barnett, Djilgu; Moiety, conception & cult totems; Honey bee legend Secure Bay; Fish, lizards, animals including dingoes Oscar-Napier Ranges; Method of tree carving, boab nuts; Rock engravings Prudhoe Is. & Carpenters Gap; Gurangara figures Ord R. & Linesmans Creek Range; Future of painting, cause of damage; Methods of preservation; Bibliography; Photographer Ray Penrose.

Dating back to at least 50,000 years ago, rock art is one of the oldest forms of human symbolic expression. Geographically, it spans all the continents on Earth. Scenes are common in some rock art, and recent work suggests that there are some hints of expression that looks like some of the conventions of western scenic art. In this unique volume examining the nature of scenes in rock art, researchers examine what defines a scene, what are the necessary elements of a scene, and what can the evolutionary history tell us about storytelling, sequential memory, and cognitive evolution among ancient and living cultures?

Ontologies of Rock Art is the first publication to explore a wide range of ontological approaches to rock art interpretation, constituting the basis for groundbreaking studies on Indigenous knowledges, relational metaphysics, and rock imageries. The book contributes to the growing body of research on the ontology of images by focusing on five main topics: ontology as a theoretical framework; the development of new concepts and methods for an ontological approach to rock art; the examination of the relationships between ontology, images, and Indigenous knowledges; the development of relational models for the analysis of rock images; and the impact of ontological approaches on different rock art traditions across the world. Generating new avenues of research in ontological theory, political ontology, and rock art research, this collection will be relevant to archaeologists, anthropologists, and philosophers. In the context of an increasing interest in Indigenous ontologies, the volume will also be of interest to scholars in Indigenous studies. Chapter 14 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9780429321863/ontologies-rock-art-oscar-moro-abad%C3%ADa-martin-porr?context=ubx&refId=3766b051-4754-4339-925c-2a262a505074

San rock paintings, scattered over the range of southern Africa, are considered by many to be the very earliest examples of representational art. There are as many as 15,000 known rock art sites, created over the course of thousands of years up until the nineteenth century. There are possibly just as many still awaiting discovery. Taking as his starting point the magnificent Linton panel in the Iziko-South African Museum in Cape Town, J. D. Lewis-Williams examines the artistic and cultural significance of rock art and how this art sheds light on how San image-makers conceived their world. It also details the European encounter with rock art as well as the contentious European interaction with the artists’ descendants, the contemporary San people.

"Keeping the Wanjinas Fresh: Sam Woolagoodja and the Enduring Power of Lalai is the story of the people of the Wanjinas and their unbroken living cosmology of Lalai - the Dreaming - manifest most memorably in the dazzling giant Wanjina designed by Donny Woolagoodja for the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics." "It is also the story of Sam Woolagoodja, who was responsible for repainting the sacred Wanjinas in many of the rock shelters that dot the Kimberley landscape, and was among the first to paint the sacred stories on bark and board for Worrorra children living far from their homelands. Keeping the Wanjinas Fresh traces the journey that brought Donny to rekindling the tradition of freshening the Wanjinas. Thirty-two full colour plates feature Sam's and Donny's paintings and the work of other major Mowanjum artists."--BOOK JACKET.