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Rocks of ages: millenniums in pictures

20 September 2008 - Rarely seen by white people, the Northern Territory's Djulirri rock art tells a stunning story of life among Aborigines and of their contacts with an outside world. James Woodford and photographer Rick Stevens joined a scientific expedition.

Hidden in Arnhem Land's remote Wellington Range is a maze of tortured sandstone and an enormous overhang hiding one of the world's most important rock art panels.

The Djulirri rock shelter's 1500 stunning paintings are a record of all that makes people marvellous and terrifying, a spectacular narrative spanning almost the entire history of ancient and modern humanity - the indigenous equivalent of Manning Clark's six-volume history of Australia.

Some of its motifs are more than 15,000 years old, while others tell of the interaction with different races, with Macassan sailor traders from Sulawesi, in what is now the Indonesian archipelago, to missionaries, to a World War II-era ship and an early biplane, a rifle, a car and bicycle.

With its depictions of immense technological change, violence, culture clashes and burgeoning ideas from the outside world, it may well be the longest, continuously updated historical record on the planet.

And yet the Djulirri shelter has rarely been seen by white people.

"This is one of the most fantastic sites anywhere in the world," says Paul Tacon of Griffith University, an archaeology professor participating in the first full recording and assessment of the motifs in north-west Arnhem Land, the top end of the Northern Territory.

"I would rank it in the top five sites that I have ever been to. There is layer upon layer of past art. It is as if everything that has passed these people by has been portrayed in that shelter. This site needs immediate and strong heritage protection to ensure its values are not lost."

I was privileged, along with the photographer Rick Stevens, to be among the small scientific party that last week visited the site, which more than anything demonstrates the power of artistic effort and storytelling. One cannot stand there and not be awed by such creativity.

George Chaloupka was the first non-indigenous rock art expert known to have seen the shelter. He was escorted there in the 1970s by Aboriginal elders. But the exact location was lost until an archaeological doctoral student, Daryl Guse, of the Australian National University found it again in 1998.

Guse, Tacon, Sally May, also of Griffith University, and Alistair Paterson of the University of Western Australia are conducting the site assessment in collaboration with a traditional owner, Ronald Lamilami. Last week, with Tacon and others, we explored a nearby ridge and a honeycomb network of rock shelters, and Tacon was surprised to discover the Djulirri shelter is part of an immense complex of ancient art, with many thousands of beautifully preserved paintings previously unknown to science. May described the new-found site as a cathedral surrounded by art.

Altogether, in the past fortnight, researchers have surveyed and documented more than 100 new sites in the Wellington Ranges.

All of these rock paintings are already imperilled; vulnerable to an imminent wave of tourists and miners, wildfires and feral animals.

The study is part of a national archaeological effort, funded by the Federal Government's Australian Research Council and aimed at understanding early interactions between Aboriginal people and the outside world.

In Arnhem Land, researchers are focusing on dealings between Macassans and Aboriginal communities, a coming together thought to have been driven by Chinese demand for the sea cucumber delicacy, trepang. Tacon, Guse and their team are challenging the view that Macassans and Aboriginal people began trade about 1720; the researchers believe it may have begun centuries earlier.

The paintings explode the widespread view that Aboriginal people were cut off from the rest of the world for thousands of years and that the British were the first important arrivals. Macassans established villages at two known sites in northern Australia. For as long as people have had boats, Australia's northern border has probably been porous.

The 28 ships painted at Djulirri, along with the 81 recorded vessels from across the recently expanded study area, suggest Aboriginal people had an intimate knowledge of an array of foreign boats.

The researchers also know from oral history that tourism was not one way - Aboriginal people travelled to and from Sulawesi. The most recent Djulirri paintings are believed to be about 60 years old. "Djulirri is like a library or an archive where we can go back and see the log books and diary entries about what happened here in the past.," Lamilami says.

Even the floor is amazing, covered with objects so pristine and spectacular as to take your breath away. Stone axes, human remains, wooden artefacts, a buffalo thigh bone and shards of glass worked into tools are scattered everywhere. A collapsed wooden platform covers a large area; everywhere there are grinding stones.

And then you look up.

On Djulirri's walls are ancient anatomical depictions of a kangaroo and an emu. A closer look reveals a faded rainbow serpent, a likely contemporary of Egypt's pyramids.

Visitors' eyes are quickly drawn to a fleet of ships painted with astonishing grace and detail. One is a caricature of a ship and its crew and looks like it might have come straight from the pages of Dr Seuss. But it is revealing because it includes interior detail of the hull that could only have been obtained by an Aboriginal person onboard. Horseshoes are depicted hanging inside another hull, raising the intriguing question of whether they helped crew these boats.

There are boxing scenes and missionaries, including a priest with a clerical collar, sea captains, a crocodile many metres long, a long boat with a harpooned whale, even writing in beeswax. Near the end of the shelter is a poignant Amen.

Disturbingly, many images portray terrible conflict between Aboriginal people. Guse says the fact that many depict spearings is perhaps indicative of the cultural change that followed the arrival of missionaries.

There is no doubt Djulirri is at the epicentre of art illustrating contact with the outside world.

With each day of surveying, more remarkable sites were found. Some have no illustration of contact with outsiders but contain older-style motifs and depictions of animals now extinct from the area - thylacines (Tasmanian tigers) and Tasmanian devils included.

Many sites are incredibly well preserved.

One striking figure has upright hair and stands beside a huge boomerang. Its beauty is retained, its meaning lost.

Near another location, where sailing ships, buffalo and other depictions signal contact with Macassans, the team climbed a large rock outcrop and found, at the entrance to a shelter, a fist-sized chunk of red ochre, as if the artist had left just hours earlier. On the ground was a large mother-of-pearl shell, the kind collected in bulk and traded with Macassans.

Guse noticed on the ceiling images of what rock-art specialists call "sickness figures", disturbing human forms with lumpy joints. As we took in these strange paintings, Guse exclaimed: "There's a burial down there."

In a crack between boulders we could see a skull, then thigh bones. Far below were another five burials - three men and a woman in one rock shelter, an adolescent in a hole nearby. Guse and Paterson wondered aloud what might have happened. The remains could not be touched or examined but there was no obvious sign of violent injury.

"To have a bundle of four bodies that otherwise look like healthy individuals indicates some high level of mortality. What were these people suffering from?"
Guse asks.

The burials are challenging to our eyes, and the sickness figures unsettling. But after millenniums of human comings and goings, perhaps it is the place, and not visitors, which senses deja vu. Paterson says: "We are just the last in a whole bunch of people who have visited this coast."

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

The rock art that redraws our history

by James Woodford

20 September 2008 - HIDDEN in rugged ranges in north-west Arnhem Land, a spectacular treasure-trove of Aboriginal rock art is set to rewrite the history of Australia.

In a find that has stunned archaeologists and anthropologists, a vast wall of about 1500 paintings chronicles the history of Aboriginal contact with outsiders, from Macassan prows and European sailing ships to 19th-century steamships and a World War II battleship.

Alongside exquisite rock art more than 15,000 years old are paintings that capture some of the 19th and 20th centuries' most important technological innovations - a biplane, bicycle, car and rifle - as well as portraits of church ministers, sea captains and traders.

This indigenous version of a history book rivals anything similar in the world and holds the key to Australia's ancient and modern history, according to scientists who have just returned from an expedition to the Djulirri rock shelter in the Wellington Range. The Griffith University archaeologist Professor Paul Tacon, one of five scientists who travelled to Djulirri, said it was of international significance, unprecedented in artistic and technical merit and telling a new story of contact between Aboriginal people and the world.

Contrary to the popular view that indigenous Australians were isolated on their island continent, waves of other seafaring visitors arrived long before British settlement.
For hundreds of years there may have been an export economy in northern Australia driven by the Chinese appetite for trepang, or sea cucumber.

While it has long been known that Macassans traded with Aboriginal people, the accepted date for this was in the early 18th century. The team of scientists believes it may have begun centuries earlier.

"This rock art dismantles the popular identity of Australia being a nation first visited by the British," said Dr Alistair Paterson, of the University of Western Australia, also on the expedition. "It goes against the idea of the Bicentennial and convicts."

The first rock art expert known to have seen the shelter was George Chaloupka in the 1970s. But the exact location was lost until a doctoral student at the Australian National University, Daryl Guse, relocated it by working with a local Aboriginal elder, Ronald Lamilami.

Apart from conducting the first full recording of the Djulirri art, the team of researchers discovered thousands of other rock paintings previously unknown to science.

Their trip was the first part of a three-year national program to uncover the archaeology of first contact with Aboriginal people around Australia. But the researchers fear that, without urgent government support, the Arnhem Land sites could be severely damaged. Tourism is rapidly expanding in the Wellington Range, says a Griffith University archaeologist, Dr Sally May, and one of the most important rock art sites, known as Malarrak, is being severely degraded by visitors.

Mining companies are also sweeping into the area. The range is a prime site for uranium and other exploration. Mr Lamilami wants an indigenous ranger program established to ensure the sites are properly managed.

see: http://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2008/national/indigenous-rock-art/index.html

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

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