Rock-Art and the History of Puritjarra Rock Shelter ...

Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 68, 2002, pp. 103-124

Rock-Art and the History of Puritjarra Rock Shelter, Cleland Hills, Central Australia By A. Rosenfeld 1 and M.A. Smith2

Elaborate, religiously sanctioned relationships between people and place are one of the most distinctive features of Aboriginal Australia. In the Australian desert, rock paintings and engravings provide a tangible link to the totemic geography and allow us to examine both changes in the role of individual places and also the development of this system of relationships to ·land. In this paper we use rock-art to examine the changing history of Puritjarra rock shelter in western central Australia. The production of pigment art and engravings at the shelter appears to have begun by c. 13,000 BP and indicates a growing concern by people with using graphic art to record their relationship with the site. Over the last millennium changes in the surviving frieze of paintings at Puritjarra record fundamental changes in graphic vocabulary, style, and composition of the paintings. These coincide with other evidence for changes in the geographic linkages of the site. As Puritjarra's place in the social geography changed, the motifs appropriate for the site also changed. The history of this rock shelter shows that detailed site histories will be required if we are to disentangle the development of central Australian graphic systems from the temporal and spatial variability inherent in the expression of these systems.

Central Australian art will be familiar to anyone who has looked at the stunning contemporary acrylic paintings from the region (Amadio & Kimber 1988; Anderson & Dussart 1988; Bardon 1979). The art of the region also has a special place in the; history of ideas about palaeolithic art. Soon after the antiquity of palaeolithic rock-art in Europe was recognised, Salomon Reinach ( 1903) turned to the rich ethnography from central Australia to understand the religious significance of the art of hunter-gatherers (Stirling 1896; Spencer & Gillen 1899). Although the. possibility of a magical or totemic role for palaeolithic art had tentatively been mooted as early as 1876 by Benadin (Reinach 1913) it was the detailed and systematic accounts of Spencer and Gillen that convinced Reinach that the cave art of western Europe was totemic and concerned with the maintenance or

1 Tamlin Lot 1, Forest Home Road, Rothdowney, QLD 4287, Australia. [email protected] 2 National Museum of Australia, GPO Box 1901, Canberra, ACT2601, Australia. [email protected]

Received: February 2002; Accepted: April 2002

mcrease of species. Emile Durkheim gave central Australian designs prominence in his study of elementary religious beliefs and rites (1915), though he focused on tjuringa rather than rock-art (tjuringa are sacred boards with painted or incised motifs). Neither Reinach nor his contemporaries appreciated the strong link between people and place inherent in Australian. graphic systems or that central Australian art and iconography might itself have a long history. Much hunter-gatherer archaeology could be described as an investigation of history-in-a-locale. However, Lewis Binford argued for a more explicit 'archaeology of place', recognising that in order to understand 'the organisation of past cultural systems', archaeologists need to understand 'the organisational relationships among places' (Binford 1982). In Australian archaeology, this approach has particular· resonance because elaborate, religiously sanctioned relationships between people and place are one of the most distinctive features of Aboriginal Australia. To reconstruct how the Australian system of codifying relationships between people and laltd developed we need to begin by reconstructing the history of individual places. In the Australian desert, rock paintings and engravmgs provide a tangible link to the totemic

103

THE PREHISTORIC SOCIETY

geography and allow us to examine both changes in the role of individual places and also the development of this system of relationships to land (Rosenfeld 2002). In this paper we use rock-art to examine the changing history of Puritjarra rock shelter in western central Australia. This shelter contains an exceptionally large and varied assemblage of rock-art for this region, and provides an opportunity to formally examine sequence and composition in a body of rock-art at a single site. The place of Puritjarra within the wider context of central Australian rockart is examined in Rosenfeld (2002), and for a discussion of the diversity and nature of rock-art in Australia see for instance Layton ·(1992) and Rosenfeld (1997). This study is also intended as a contribution to an historical portrait of a key desert site, using the paintings, stencils, and engravings to complement other studies, of the lithic assemblage (Smith in press), ochres (Smith et al. 1998), environmental evidence (Bowdery 1998; Smith et al. 1995), chronology (Smith et al. 1997), grindstones and plant use, and the recent Aboriginal history of the rock shelter.

REGIONAL CONTEXT

Puritjarra Rock Shelter Puritjarra is a large rock shelter located in the Cleland Hills (Fig. 1 ), in the western part o( central Australia, 350 km west of Alice Springs. This site preserves one of the longest archaeological sequences available within the Australian arid zone, spanning the last 32,000 years (Jones 1987; Smith 1987; Smith et al. 1997; for other early sites see O'Connor et al. 1998; Thorley 1998). Puritjarra also contains the largest assemblage of paintings and stencils in the Cleland Hills as well as a small series of pecked rock engravings and incised grooves. The rock shelter is situated at the foot of a small (15 m high) sandstone escarpment and faces out onto sand plain and dune field supporting spinifex hummock grassland and low shrubs. Morphologically the site is a large open rock shelter formed in Ordovician/Devonian Mereenie sandstone, with a level sandy floor of c. 400m 2 (Figs 2 & 3). Murantji rock hole, a large semipermanent (possibly spring-fed) rock hole lies c. 2.5 km north of the rock shelter. Alalya, a large rock hole which only holds water intermittently, is situated at the northern end of the Hills (Fig. 1).

Using the radiocarbon chronology (Smith et al. 1997) the occupational history of the rock shelter can be briefly summarised as follows: the site was occupied by c. 32,000 BP and use of the shelter continued throughout the late Pleistocene, indicating that a small, probably highly mobile population was able to survive through the extreme aridity in this region at the height of the last glacial. The level of occupation increased substantially after c. 7500 BP, and increased again during the last millennium after the introduction of specialised grindstones for the exploitation of grass and acacia seeds. These changes in site use probably reflect progressive growth of the human population of this region. More information about the occupation history of the rock shelter is available in Smith (1989; 1996; in press) and Smith et al. (1998). All radiocarbon determinations quoted below are uncalibrated ages.

The Cleland Hills engravings Rock-art sites occur widely throughout the Cleland Hills, but are usually quite small, often with just a few red ochre hand stencils, or small panels of engravings or incised grooves. The only other locality in the Hills with a large assemblage of rock-art is Alalya. Alalya (Thomas Reservoir) attracted attention more than 30 years ago because of the remarkable engraved faces at this site (Edwards 1968). Robert Edwards visited Alalya in 1967 and 1970, in two widely publicised desert expeditions to investigate the pecked engravings (Edwards 1970). He recorded 387 engravings, mainly bird, emu, and macropod tracks and plain or concentric circles, as well as a panel of paintings, including red ochre emu tracks and plain circles in yellow ochre. Because of the deep weathering of the engraved surfaces, Edwards suggested the petroglyphs might date to the late Pleistocene (1968; 1971). While the age of the Alalya petroglyphs remains unknown, a petroglyph tradition of similar general characteristics is now known to be widespread and to have persisted for a very long period of time up to the recent past (Rosenfeld 1991; Rosenfeld & Mumford 1996). Edwards was shown the Puritjarra rock shelter by Timmy Tjugadai Tjungurrayi, his guide during the 1970 expedition, and noted the deeply patinated pecked circles on several of the large boulders buried in the silty floor of the rock shelter. He recognised that this provided an opportunity to relate the petroglyphs to stratified archaeological deposits (the only site in

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5. A. Rosenfeld & M.A. Smith

ROCK-ART, PURITJARRA ROCK SHELTER, CENTRAL AUSTRALIA

Fig. 1 Map of the Cleland Hills, Central Australia, showing places mentioned in the text

the Hills where this can be done) but was unable to return to carry out this work. This is a theme we will pick up later in this paper.

Aboriginal history In western central Australia there was a major reorientation of Aboriginal settlement between 1885 and 1930 as local Kukatja and Pintupi people responded both to a series of severe droughts and the presence of European pastoralists. By 1900 the Cleland Hills were

in a frontier zone between pastoral country, in the main central Australian ranges to the east, and Aboriginal groups in the spinifex country and the Ehrenburg ranges to the west. Pintupi/Kukatja people continued to use Puritjarra rock shelter as a camp until sometime in the 1920s and 1930s and the cultural geography, songs, and traditions of the area are part of the contemporary lives of people living at the Haasts Bluff settlement and associated outstations. The rich historical record for the period 1850-1970 will be explored in a separate paper.

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THE PREHISTORIC SOCIETY ROCK-ART AT PURITJARRA

The entire wall of Puritjarra rock shelter forms a large painted frieze, 2 m high and c. 40 m long, making this the largest rock-art site in the Cleland Hills. But the full extent of the paintings at Puritjarra is not obvious at a glance because a film of dust has accumulated on rock surfaces obscuring much of the older rock-art. The most prominent paintings today are large bichrome white and grey emu tracks, up to 0.8 m high, in the centre of the shelter (Fig. 3). Long lines of macropod tracks in red ochre meander across the rock face (Fig. 4 ). The eye is also drawn to a small bright panel of white paintings, mainly bird tracks and circles, that represents the most recent phase of painting at the site (Fig. 5). Closer examination shows that there is a complex sequence of painted panels with more than 400 individual paintings or stencils present (Table 1). Hand stencils in red ochre are the most common single element in the frieze. The paintings mainly consist of plain circles and macropod and bird tracks. The latter are nearly all arranged in long track lines, meanders, or clusters, forming 'story' panels. And mahy of these 'story' panels have been repainted in

approximately the same position on the rock face at least once. The rock engravings that caught the attention of Edwards are on several large boulders embedded in the floor of the rock shelter. Roof fall and the collapse of part of the rear wall have combined to form a pile of large boulders in the centre of the shelter floor. Four of these boulders have plain pecked circles on their upper surfaces (Fig. 2, blocks A, B, D, and E). Two also have incised grooves. This small series of petroglyphs is supplemented by (a) a single intaglio pecked emu track on a rock slab at the southern end of the shelter (Fig. 2, F), (b) a cluster of pecked pits/dots nearby on the shelter wall (G), and (c) a small number of engraved bird tracks in two small rock shelters immediately south of Puritjarra shelter.

RECORDING METHODS

Motif counts During a field season in 1988, Ann Robb and Giles Hamm carried out a quantitative survey of the rockart to determine whether a more detailed study would

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Fig. 2 Puritjarra rock shelter, showing position of art panels, engraved boulders, and excavation trenches

106

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Fig. 3 The 1988 excavations at Puritjarra, showing the morphology of the shelter wall, the central section of the rock-art frieze (panels 4-6), and the cluster of engraved boulders in the centre of the shelter (at left). The most prominent paintings in the rock shelter are the large bi-chrome emu tracks which can be seen on the wall just above these boulders

be worthwhile. T his involved a count of motifs (individual graphic elements and objects or hand stencils) and compositions (ordered arrangements of several graphic elements) in the shelter and provided us with an initial estimate of the size and composition of the rock-art corpus (Tables 1 & 2). This was followed in 1990 by the more detailed study of the rock-art which is presented here. At different times, both Edwards and Gunn have advocated quantitative analysis of central Australian rock-art as a means of building a comparative regional data set (Edwards 1971; Gunn 1995; 2000). Comparative quantitative analyses have a long history in Australian rock-art studies and have provided valuable insights, but we feel their potential is limited by difficulties in the definition of motif classes and in determining the relevant unit of analysis (eg,

Rosenfeld 1991, 139; 1992, 235-7). For instance, macropod tracks may occur singly, in pairs, or as a series of tracks in an alignment. Because of these problems we present quantitative data on the

TABLE 1: COMPOSITION OF THE ROCK-ART FRIEZE AT PURITJARRA.

Hand stencils Hand prints Artefact stencils Paintings Total

by Composition

by Graphic element

N(%) 279(68) 47(11) 6(1) 79(19) 411(100)

N(%) 279(46) 47(8) 6(1) 279(46) 611(100)

Data are motif counts. Paintings are counted in two ways: by composition and number of individual graphic elements.

107


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paintings in two ways. The first is a count of individual motifs, taking no account of their arrangement in 'story' panels, track meanders or other forms of composition (Table 1). The second treats each composition as a unit, regardless of whether it contains one or thirty elements (Table 3). Design analysis and superposition The second stage of the work involved a detailed analysis of composition and superpsition within the rock-art. To record the art the shelter wall was divided heuristically into panels (Fig. 2), determined

TABLE 2: HAND STENCILS AND PRINTS AT PURITJARRA: BY HANDEDNESS AND AGE OF INDIVIDUAL.

Hand stencils Hand prints Total

Hand stencils Hand prints Total Data are counts.

N

Right hand

Left hand

Indeterminate

279 47 326

38 9 47(14%)

147 24 171(52%)

94 14 108(33%)

N

Adult

Child

Indeterminate

279 47 326

173 19 192(59%)

74 21 95(29%)

32 7 39(12%)

according to the concentration of rock-art and the occurrence of natural boundaries formed by marked discontinuities in the surface. Each panel was located with reference to a survey tape laid out along the shelter wall at ground level. The rock-art coordinates quoted below refer to distances from south to north along this line. To the extent that these panels delimit sets of paintings of similar colour, technique, and scale, they were probably also conceptually used as panels for the execution of these paintings. A scaled down composite drawing of each panel was later constructed from photographs and annotated field sketches. The composite drawings shown in Figures 4-6 are not intended to be comprehensive. Few hand stencils are shown because of the large number of stencils at the site, and their lack of formal variation. A more serious omission are the thin charcoal and white line drawings that form the most recent phase of rock-art at the site. Because of their apparently unstructured nature, these were initially thought to be recent graffiti. However, subsequent field work by Rosenfeld has shown that charcoal and other dry pigment drawings are .widespread and diverse and are potentially of great interest in the study of post contact continuity and change in the rock-art of the region (eg. Smith & Rosenfeld 1992). Analysis of a body of this material in the George Gill ranges has now demonstrated that the designs are underscored by structural principles that belie their superficial appearance (Frederick 1999).

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Terminology Most motifs found in the rock-art of Central Australia are either formal motifs (ie, non-figurative), or resemble bird and animal tracks. Overtly representational depictions of human or animal forms are rare in Central Australia, and do not occur at Puritjarra. In Table 3 we list motifs that recur in the paintings at Puritjarra. Nancy Munn (1986) has pointed out that, in structural terms, central Australian art operates more as a visual language than as an emblematic graphic system with the proviso that motifs and compositions can take on a range of meanings depending upon circumstance. Therefore, we use a terminology for describing rock-art in Central Australia (Rosenfeld 1990), which both distinguishes between graphically distinct forms, and takes into account the structural principles of composite forms. For instance, track motifs are classified according to form and their

arrangement or combination. Similarly, formal elements that can occur in isolation - such as arc, circle, and line - are treated as basic design elements for graphically more complex motifs. In this way hierarchical motif classes are obtained that also encode the principles of their graphic construction. Comparative analyses of motif classes can then be made on the basis of these design principles rather than solely on visual similarities of the final forms. For tracks, we retain broad categories of bird, macropod, and possum track, since these are unambiguously used in contemporary Aboriginal practice. Track motifs occur in isolation, in clusters, or more usually in alignments indicating movement of the animal. The direction of the tracks is usually clear, except for very schematic track designs such as dots or dashes. Where the direction can be identified, lines of tracks tend to move up a rock face, or horizontally across it, rather than down to ground level. For

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109


schematic track motifs, such as dashes, the direction of paint application can sometimes be reconstructed: these finger-paintings are often rounded at one end and jagged at the other end. If one assumes that the tracks are painted sequentially to mimic and depict the movement of an animal, as in contemporary sand drawings, the intended direction of travel would be opposite to the direction of pigment application. The distinction between track alignments and the usually more detailed isolated track motifs is important because it appears to reflect different levels of symbolic reference (Rosenfeld 2002). While alignments focus attention on narrative aspects, isolated track motifs elicit stronger iconic or emblematic interpretations focusing on the animal and its symbolic values. Throughout this paper we use the term 'formal motif' for non-figurative designs and for isolated, emblematic bird or macropod tracks (ie, excluding narrative track lines and overtly representational motifs).

TABLE 3: RECURRING MOTIFS IN PAINTINGS AT PURITJARRA

Category

Number(%)

Tracks Macro pod Bird Track clusters, lines or

33 (44%)

2 meanders'~[

Formal motifs: basic forms Sinuous line Arc Circles§ Y-shape Formal motifs: composite forms Bi-chrome track silhouettes Other silhouettes Linked circles Circle with enclosure Line and arc Line and spur

8 23 23(29%)

3 4 14 2 23(28%)

HAND STENCILS AND PRINTS

Hand stencils and prints are the most abundant motifs at the site. Robb and Hamm identified 4 7 handprints, 279 hand stencils, and many other faint traces of stencils. Most hand stencils are in red ochre (Table 4), but white pigment was also used. The handprints are also predominantly red, but yellow ochre was used for children's handprints. Both adults and children appear to have made hand stencils and prints. Nearly one third of all stencils and prints (95) are of children's hands (Table 2). However, the handprints are generally small, and seem to have often been a children's activity. All the yellow handprints appear to be those of children. Where handedness can be identified, assuming that it was the palm that was placed on the rock surface, most stencils and prints show the left hand (L/R ratio = 3.6:1), presumably because the right hand was used during application of the pigment (Table 2). Although hand stencils occur throughout the frieze, there is a tendency for clusters of closely spaced hand stencils to occur in shallow recesses or on projecting panels. Sometimes these show repeated stencilling of the same hand. For instance, seven stencils of the same hand are arrayed on a small arch at the northern end of the rock shelter (Panel 7). A cluster of children's yellow handprints under a small overhang in the southern sector of the shelter probably also represents a single painting episode (Panel 3 ). There is some superpositioning of hand stencils and considerable variation in their state of preservation, including some very clear, presumably recent stencils. White or yellow pigment is usually uppermost in superposition sequences. There are a few instances of red stencils superposed over white pigment, but none of red over yellow. Some stenciling may have occurred in discrete bursts of activity but we found this difficult to quantify.

9

2 2 2 6 2

These data provide only a broad indication of frequency of motifs. Counts are by composition rather than graphic element. All motifs are monochrome, except the composite motifs which may be bi-chrome. lj[ Includes arrangements of macropod (11) and possum tracks (1). § Includes plain circles, concentric circles and conjoined circles.

PAINTINGS

Wherever the technique can still be identified, all the painted motifs at Puritjarra are freehand paintings made with a finger - or perhaps a simple brush such as that found on the surface of the site (Fig. 7). The main features of each panel are described below, to illustrate the richness of the frieze and the potential variability in placement and composition of designs. 110



Further details are available from the authors as supplementary data.

Panel 1 (0.0-6.2 m) The main feature of this panel is a long track meander (Fig. 4). The tracks consist of repeated sets of two short, broad parallel finger strokes of red pigment, often separated by a single stroke as if representing the hind legs and tail track of a large macropod. The line of tracks spirals out of a crack in the rock (2.40 m) and meanders more or less horizontally along much of this panel. The tracks in dark red pigment appear to have been placed over an earlier and longer track meander, as some tracks in a paler red partly underlie these track motifs. These also begin near the crack in the rock and then continue in a wide high arc to drop down towards ground level at 5.20 m. At 5.50 m a short track line, a series of parallel dashes with a continuous central line, winds upwards on the wall. Panella (6.2-10.0 m) This panel contains a small frieze of white paintings of circles and bird tracks (Fig. 5), along the edge of the children's recess (see Panel 3 below). These are

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painted in a distinctive thick greyish white pigment that adheres poorly to the rock and is flaking in places. The paintings include seven circular motifs. Two are double concentric circles and two of the larger circles each enclose a 3-pronged bird track. The bird tracks are single or in clusters between and alongside the circles, but are not in track alignments. Traces of older white pigment occur as amorphous patches between and partly underlying these motifs, suggesting that an earlier frieze of white paintings existed on this panel, in much the same position as the present one. These earlier motifs are no longer decipherable. On the rock face above the white paintings are two red track meanders, running horizontally along the rock face. Some finger painted strokes of a paler red are partly overlain by the darker red pigment of the lower meander, but the full extent of this earlier meander is no longer decipherable. The different pigments, however, indicate distinct episodes of execution for the same dash track meander motif. There is very little overlap between the white paintings and red pigment, but one white circle clearly overlies a red track (6.2 m).

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