Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-19T03:04:54.927Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Beswick Creek Cave six decades later: change and continuity in the rock art of Doria Gudaluk

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2016

Claire Smith*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Sturt Road, Bedford Park, SA 5042, Australia
Inés Domingo Sanz
Affiliation:
ICREA, Seccio de Prehistòria i Arqueologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Carrer de Montealegre 6–8, Barcelona 08001, Spain
Gary Jackson
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Sturt Road, Bedford Park, SA 5042, Australia
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: claire.smith@flinders.edu.au)

Abstract

The rock art of Doria Gudaluk (Beswick Creek Cave) in the Northern Territory of Australia has previously provided a valuable lesson in the difficulties of definitive interpretation without local knowledge. Now, newly recorded motifs at the site—some only visible with digital enhancement—highlight the dangers of relating stylistic changes to the replacement of different cultures. When considered in the context of local history, developments in the rock art of Doria Gudaluk during the second half of the twentieth century can be understood as the result of new cultural collaborations between incoming groups and older, local communities.

Type
Research
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Australian Human Rights Commission. 1997. Bringing them home. Report of the national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.Google Scholar
Blundell, G., Chippindale, C. & Smith, B. (ed.). 2011. Seeing and knowing: understanding rock art with and without ethnography. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast.Google Scholar
Bradley, R. 1997. Rock art and the prehistory of Atlantic Europe: signing the land. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Breuil, H. 1952. 400 siècles d'art pariétal. Paris: Max Fourny.Google Scholar
Childe, V.G. 1929. The Danube in prehistory. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Clegg, J. 1978. Mathesis pictures: mathesis words. Unpublished MA dissertation, University of Sydney.Google Scholar
Clegg, J. 1987. Style and tradition at Sturt's Meadows. World Archaeology 19: 236–55.10.1080/00438243.1987.9980037Google Scholar
Conkey, M.W. 1987. Interpretative problems in hunter-gatherer regional studies: some thoughts on the European Upper Palaeolithic, in Soffer, O. (ed.) The Pleistocene Old World: regional perspectives: 6377. New York: Plenum.10.1007/978-1-4613-1817-0_5Google Scholar
David, B. 2002. Landscapes, rock art and the dreaming: an archaeology of preunderstanding. London: Leicester University Press.Google Scholar
David, B., Barker, B., Petchey, F., Delannoy, J.-J, Geneste, J.-M., Rowe, C., Eccleston, M., Lamb, L. & Whear, R.. 2013. A 28,000 year old excavated painted rock from Nawarla Gabarnmang, northern Australia. Journal of Archaeological Science 40: 2493–501.10.1016/j.jas.2012.08.015Google Scholar
Davidson, G. 1981. A reassessment of cave painting sites in southern Arnhem Land. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Newsletter 16: 3644.Google Scholar
Domingo Sanz, I. 2008. From the form to the artists: changing identities in Levantine rock art (Spain), in Domingo Sanz, I., Fiore, D. & May, S.K. (ed.) Archaeologies of art: time, place and identity: 99129. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast.Google Scholar
Domingo Sanz, I. 2012. A theoretical approach to style in Levantine rock art, in McDonald, J. & Veth, P. (ed.) A companion to rock art: 306–22. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.10.1002/9781118253892.ch18Google Scholar
Domingo Sanz, I. & May, S.K.. 2008. La pintura y su simbología en las comunidades de cazadores-recolectores de la Tierra de Arnhem (Territorio del Norte, Australia), in Salazar, J., Domingo Sanz, I., Azkárraga, J. & Bonet, H. (ed.) Mundos tribales. Una visión etnoarqueológica: 7891. Valencia: Museu de Prehistoria.Google Scholar
Domingo Sanz, I., Fiore, D. & May, S.K.. 2008. Archaeologies of art: time, place and identity in rock art, portable art and body art, in Domingo Sanz, I., Fiore, D. & May, S.K. (ed.) Archaeologies of art: time, place and identity: 1528. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast.Google Scholar
Elkin, A.P. 1952. Cave paintings in southern Arnhem Land. Oceania 22: 245–55.10.1002/j.1834-4461.1952.tb00181.xGoogle Scholar
Eriksson, A., Betti, L., Friend, A.D., Lycett, S.J., Singarayerd, J.S., Von Cramon-Taubadel, N., Valdes, P.J., Ballouxe, F. & Manica, A.. 2012. Late Pleistocene climate change and the global expansion of anatomically modern humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 109: 16089–94.10.1073/pnas.1209494109Google Scholar
Farbstein, R. & Svoboda, J.. 2007. New finds of Upper Palaeolithic decorative objects from Předmostí, Czech Republic. Antiquity 81: 856–64.10.1017/S0003598X00095958Google Scholar
Franklin, N. 1984. Of !macropods and !men: an analysis of the simple figurative styles. Unpublished BA (Hons) dissertation, University of Sydney.Google Scholar
Gell, A. 1998. Art and agency: an anthropological theory. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Goldhahn, J. & Fuglestvedt, I.. 2012. Engendering North European rock art: bodies and cosmologies in stone and bronze age imagery, in McDonald, J. & Veth, P. (ed.) A companion to rock art: 237–60. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.10.1002/9781118253892.ch14Google Scholar
Gunn, B. & Whear, R.L.. 2007. Tangtangjal cave revisited. The Artefact 30: 1628.Google Scholar
Hays-Gilpin, K. 2012. Engendering rock art, in McDonald, J. & Veth, P. (ed.) A companion to rock art: 199213. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hodder, I. 1989. The meanings of things: material culture and symbolic expression. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Layton, R. 1991. The anthropology of art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lenssen-Erz, T. 2008. Space and discourse as constituents of past identities: the case of Namibian rock art, in Domingo Sanz, I., Fiore, D. & May, S.K. (ed.) Archaeologies of art: time, place and identity: 2950. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast.Google Scholar
Leroi-Gourhan, A. 1968. The evolution of Paleolithic art. Scientific American 218 (2): 5870.10.1038/scientificamerican0268-58Google Scholar
Lewis, D. 1988. The rock paintings of Arnhem Land, Australia: social, ecological and material culture change in the post-glacial period (British Archaeological Reports British series 415). Oxford: Archaeopress.Google Scholar
Macintosh, N.G.W. 1952. Paintings at Beswick Creek Cave, Northern Territory. Oceania 22: 256–74.10.1002/j.1834-4461.1952.tb00182.xGoogle Scholar
1977. Beswick Creek Cave two decades later: a reappraisal, in Ucko, P.J. (ed.) Form in indigenous art: 191–97. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Maddock, K. 1970. Imagery and social structure at two Dalabon rock art sites. Anthropological Forum 2: 444–63.10.1080/00664677.1970.9967246Google Scholar
May, S.K. 2008. Collecting cultures: myth, politics, and collaboration in the 1948 Arnhem Land expedition. Walnut Creek (CA): Altamira.Google Scholar
May, S.K. & Domingo Sanz, I.. 2010. Making sense of scenes. Rock Art Research 27 (1): 3542.Google Scholar
Maynard, L. 1979. The archaeology of Australian Aboriginal art, in Mead, S.M. (ed.) Exploring the visual art of Oceania: 83110. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaiʻi.Google Scholar
Mellars, P. & French, J.C.. 2011. Tenfold population increase in western Europe at the Neandertal-to-modern human transition. Science 333: 623–27.10.1126/science.1206930Google Scholar
Merlan, F. 1989. The interpretive framework of Wardaman rock art: a preliminary report. Australian Aboriginal Studies 2: 1424.Google Scholar
Mizoguchi, K. 2015. The archaeology of Japan: from the earliest rice farming villages to the rise of the state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Moro Abadía, O. & Gonzáles Morales, M.R.. 2007. Thinking about style in the ‘post-stylistic era’: reconstructing the stylistic context of Chauvet. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 26: 109–25.10.1111/j.1468-0092.2007.00276.xGoogle Scholar
Morphy, H. 1989. Introduction, in Morphy, H. (ed.) Animals into art: 117. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Morphy, H. 1991. Ancestral connections: art and an Aboriginal system of knowledge. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pigeaud, R.R. 2007. Determining style in Palaeolithic cave art: a new method derived from horse images. Antiquity 81: 409–22.10.1017/S0003598X00095272Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. 1992. Archaeology, genetics and linguistic diversity. Man (NS) 27: 445–78.10.2307/2803924Google Scholar
Rigaud, S., d'Errico, F. & Vanhaeren, M.. 2015. Ornaments reveal resistance of North European cultures to the spread of farming. PLoS ONE 10: e0121166.10.1371/journal.pone.0121166Google Scholar
Roberts, A., Campbell, I., Franklin, N. & The Mannum Aboriginal Community Association. 2015. The use of natural features in the rock art of Ngaut Ngaut (Devon Downs), South Australia. Rock Art Research 32 (2): 233–38.Google Scholar
Roberts, R.G., Jones, R. & Smith, M.A.. 1990. Thermoluminescence dating of a 50,000 year-old human occupation site in northern Australia. Nature 345: 153–56.10.1038/345153a0Google Scholar
Ross, J. & Davidson, I.. 2006. Rock art and ritual: an archaeological analysis of rock art in arid Central Australia. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 13: 305–41.10.1007/s10816-006-9021-1Google Scholar
Rowe, J.H. 1966. Diffusionism and archaeology. American Antiquity 31: 334–37.10.2307/2694735Google Scholar
Smith, C. 1992. Jungayi. Caring for country. Video documentary.Google Scholar
Smith, C. 2004. Country, kin and culture: survival of an Australian Aboriginal community. Adelaide: Wakefield.Google Scholar
Smith, C. 2008. Panache and protocol in Australian Aboriginal art, in Domingo Sanz, I., Fiore, D. & May, S.K. (ed.) Archaeologies of art: time, place and identity: 215–41. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast.Google Scholar
Taçon, P.S.C., Mulvaney, K., Ouzman, S., Fullagar, R., Carlton, P. & Head, L.. 2003. Changing ecological concerns in the rock-art subject matter of north Australia's Keep River region. Before Farming 2003 (3): 114.10.3828/bfarm.2003.3.4Google Scholar
Whitley, D. 2011. Introduction to rock art research. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast.Google Scholar