Postcards from the outside: European-contact rock art imagery and occupation on the southern Arnhem Land plateau, Jawoyn lands

Abstract

The archaeomorphological study of Nawarla Gabarnmang in Australia's Northern Territory challenges us to think in new ways about how Aboriginal people interacted with their surroundings; here a site of everyday engagement was a place of construction that retains material traces of past engagements. At Nawarla Garbarnmang, we show through archaeomorphological research how the changing physical layout of a site can be cross-examined against the impacts of human engagements through time. While the scope and scale of activities involved the anthropogenic removal over tens of thousands of years of rock pillars below the cave's roof, other practices came and went over time, the complex sequence of rock art conventions being an apt example. These artistic transformations, much like the era of pillar clearances, are a clear example of changing cultural practices in a part of Australia where some 50,000 years of human occupation can be shown.

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