Murujuga Marni


Book Description

"This monograph presents a model of the artistic traditions and associated petroglyph production, suggesting five major phases for the Dampier Archipelago, and providing insights into a world that existed for Indigenous Australians over many thousands of years.".




Murujuga


Book Description

A fascinating case study of the archaeological site at Murujuga, Australia Located in the Dampier Archipelago of Western Australia, Murujuga is the single largest archaeological site in the world. It contains an estimated one million petroglyphs, or rock art motifs, produced by the Indigenous Australians who have historically inhabited the archipelago. To date, there has been no comprehensive survey of the site's petroglyphs or those who created them. Since the 1960s, regional mining interests have caused significant damage to this site, destroying an estimated 5 to 25 percent of the petroglyphs in Murujuga. Today, Murujuga holds the unenviable status of being one of the most endangered archaeological sites in the world. José Antonio González Zarandona provides a full postcolonial analysis of Murujuga as well as a geographic and archaeological overview of the site, its ethnohistory, and its considerable significance to Indigenous groups, before examining the colonial mistreatment of Murujuga from the seventeenth century to the present. Drawing on a range of postcolonial perspectives, Zarandona reads the assaults on the rock art of Murujuga as instances of what he terms "landscape iconoclasm": the destruction of art and landscapes central to group identity in pursuit of ideological, political, and economic dominance. Viewed through the lens of landscape iconoclasm, the destruction of Murujuga can be understood as not only the result of economic pressures but also as a means of reinforcing—through neglect, abandonment, fragmentation, and even certain practices of heritage preservation—the colonial legacy in Western Australia. Murujuga provides a case study through which to examine, and begin to reject, archaeology's global entanglement with colonial intervention and the politics of heritage preservation.




Global Perspectives for the Conservation and Management of Open-Air Rock Art Sites


Book Description

Global Perspectives for the Conservation and Management of Open-Air Rock Art Sites responds to the growth in known rock art sites across the globe and addresses the need to investigate natural and human-originated threats to them as well as propose solutions to mitigate resulting deterioration. Bringing together perspectives of international research teams from across five continents, the chapters in this book are divided into four discrete parts that best reflect the worldwide scenarios where conservation and management of open-air rock art sites unfolds: 1) ethics, community and collaborative approaches; 2) methodological tools to support assessment and monitoring; 3) scientific examination and interventions; and 4) global community and collaborative case studies innovating methodologies for ongoing monitoring and management. The diverse origin of contributions results in a holistic and interdisciplinary approach that conciliates perceived intervention necessity, community and stakeholders’ interests, and rigorous scientific analysis regarding open-air rock art conservation and management. The book unites the voices of the global community in tackling a significant challenge: to ensure a better future for open-air rock art. Moving conservation and management of open-air rock art sites in from the periphery of conservation science, this volume is an indispensable guide for archaeologists, conservators and heritage professionals involved in rock art and its preservation.




Heritage Destruction, Human Rights and International Law


Book Description

This book brings together prominent scholars in the fields of international cultural heritage law and heritage studies to scrutinise the various branches of international law and governance dealing with heritage destruction from human rights perspectives, both in times of armed conflict as well as in peace. Importantly, it also examines cases of heritage destruction that may not be intentional, but rather the consequence of large-scale infrastructural development or resource extraction. Chapters deal with high profile cases from Europe, North Africa, The Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, with a substantial afterword on heritage destruction in Ukraine.




On the Ecology of Australia’s Arid Zone


Book Description

This book will appeal to an international audience as well as be irresistible to local readers. Anyone working or with an interest in Australia’s arid zone should need ready access to this book. There is no equivalent publication out there at the moment, and this book has many authoritative chapters, richly illustrated with colourful material. The challenge of this book was to assemble current knowledge on particular topics and concepts, and principles relating to them. It is also forward-looking by identifying where there are gaps or inadequacies in knowledge, and where future research needs to be directed. Lead authors were encouraged to take such an approach; they had the opportunity to involve any author they considered appropriate. The final product shouldbe a fabulous resource, also for university courses, especially at MSc level.




The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea


Book Description

65,000 years ago, modern humans arrived in Australia, having navigated more than 100 km of sea crossing from southeast Asia. Since then, the large continental islands of Australia and New Guinea, together with smaller islands in between, have been connected by land bridges and severed again as sea levels fell and rose. Along with these fluctuations came changes in the terrestrial and marine environments of both land masses. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea reviews and assembles the latest findings and ideas on the archaeology of the Australia-New Guinea region, the world's largest island-continent. In 42 new chapters written by 77 contributors, it presents and explores the archaeological evidence to weave stories of colonisation; megafaunal extinctions; Indigenous architecture; long-distance interactions, sometimes across the seas; eel-based aquaculture and the development of techniques for the mass-trapping of fish; occupation of the High Country, deserts, tropical swamplands and other, diverse land and waterscapes; and rock art and symbolic behaviour. Together with established researchers, a new generation of archaeologists present in this Handbook one, authoritative text where Australia-New Guinea archaeology now lies and where it is heading, promising to shape future directions for years to come.




Histories of Australian Rock Art Research


Book Description

Australia has one of the largest inventories of rock art in the world with pictographs and petroglyphs found almost anywhere that has suitable rock surfaces – in rock shelters and caves, on boulders and rock platforms. First Nations people have been marking these places with figurative imagery, abstract designs, stencils and prints for tens of thousands of years, often engaging with earlier rock markings. The art reflects and expresses changing experiences within landscapes over time, spirituality, history, law and lore, as well as relationships between individuals and groups of people, plants, animals, land and Ancestral Beings that are said to have created the world, including some rock art. Since the late 1700s, people arriving in Australia have been fascinated with the rock art they encountered, with detailed studies commencing in the late 1800s. Through the 1900s an impressive body of research on Australian rock art was undertaken, with dedicated academic study using archaeological methods employed since the late 1940s. Since then, Australian rock art has been researched from various perspectives, including that of Traditional Owners, custodians and other community members. Through the 1900s, there was also growing interest in Australian rock art from researchers across the globe, leading many to visit or migrate to Australia to undertake rock art research. In this volume, the varied histories of Australian rock art research from different parts of the country are explored not only in terms of key researchers, developments and changes over time, but also the crucial role of First Nations people themselves in investigations of this key component of their living heritage.




Crafting Country


Book Description

Based on ten years of surveys and excavations in Nyiyaparli country in the eastern Chichester Ranges, north-west Australia, Crafting Country provides a unique synthesis of Holocene archaeology in the Pilbara region. The analysis of about 1000 sites, including surface artefact scatters and 19 excavated rock shelters, as well as thousands of isolated artefacts, takes a broad view of the landscape, examining the distribution of archaeological remains in time and space. Heritage compliance archaeology commonly focuses on individual sites, but this study reconsiders the evidence at different scales – at the level of artefact, site, locality, and region – to show how Aboriginal people interacted with the land and made their mark on it. Crafting Country shows that the Nyiyaparli ‘crafted’ their country, building structures and supplying key sites with grindstones, raw material and flaked stone cores. In so doing, they created a taskscape of interwoven activities linked by paths of movement.




From the Edge


Book Description

In March 1797, five British sailors and 12 Bengali seamen struggled ashore after their longboat broke apart in a storm. Their fellow-survivors from the wreck of the Sydney Cove were stranded more than 500 kilometres southeast in Bass Strait. To rescue their mates and to save themselves the 19 men must walk 700 kilometres north to Sydney. That remarkable walk is a story of endurance but also of unexpected Aboriginal help. From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories recounts four such extraordinary and largely forgotten stories: the walk of shipwreck survivors; the founding of a 'new Singapore' in western Arnhem Land in the 1840s; Australia's largest industrial development project nestled amongst outstanding Indigenous rock art in the Pilbara; and the ever-changing story of James Cook's time in Cooktown in 1770. This new telling of the central drama of Australian history ;the encounter between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, may hold the key to understanding this land and its people.




Animals, Plants and Afterimages


Book Description

The sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction is one of the most pervasive issues of our time. Animals, Plants and Afterimages brings together leading scholars in the humanities and life sciences to explore how extinct species are represented in art and visual culture, with a special emphasis on museums. Engaging with celebrated cases of vanished species such as the quagga and the thylacine as well as less well-known examples of animals and plants, these essays explore how representations of recent and ancient extinctions help advance scientific understanding and speak to contemporary ecological and environmental concerns.