Paul S. C. Tacon

The greater Awunbarna (Mount Borradaile) area of northwest Arnhem Land is part of traditional Amurdak Country situated south of the Cobourg Peninsula, in the Top End of Australia’s Northern Territo...

Both the Tasmanian devil ( Sarcophilus harrisii ) and the Tasmanian tiger ( Thylacinus cynocephalus ) are believed to have become extinct on the Australian mainland about 3000 years ago. However, until now there were only 23 known rock art depictions of the Tasmanian devil and about 150 Tasmanian tiger paintings and petroglyphs, mostly at rock art sites in northern Australia. In this article, we report recently documented images of these species from two locations in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, including two previously undescribed Tasmanian devil paintings in different styles and several thylacines. We then consider reasons why there are so many more depictions of Tasmanian tigers than devils in Australian rock art and whether either species became extinct in Arnhem Land more recently than previously thought.

Repatriation of museum materials to their originating cultures and communities remains an ongoing process, often marred by controversy but also the limited resources of communities to house vast collections of often fragile cultural heritage. Using photogrammetry and other digitisation methods to make museum materials remotely available does not replace repatriation but these digital simulacra can become the anchors for immersive and interactive virtual reality environments to provide communities with alternative and powerful platforms for cultural engagement. The ease with which large collections of museum materials can be digitised with photogrammetry and the growing capabilities of standalone virtual reality headsets to render complex models and environments enables immersive experiences of museum collections to be brought directly to remote communities like Gunbalanya in Australia’s tropical north. Trials of these virtual experiences in Gunbalanya based on a more than one hundred-year-old bark painting collection at the Melbourne Museum have demonstrated the strong emotional reactions immersive and interactive cultural virtual reality experiences can produce, bringing about both fun and nostalgic reflection. Constructing these virtual experiences also challenges conceptions of scientific authenticity in archaeological digital reconstructions of the past, particularly where inclusion of Indigenous ontologies is necessary to produce a truly authentic cultural experience.

In our globalized world access to rock art sites is unprecedented. But despite awareness campaigns, education about the universal value of rock art, global media attention and the efforts of those who manage rock art sites, purposeful damage to rock art imagery and the landscapes it is a part of continues at an alarming rate. There are many reasons for this, including ignorance, indifference, iconoclasm, racism, political motivations, and economic priorities. It also has been observed that ‘marks attract marks’ so for some people there is a compulsion to leave one’s own mark at rock art sites because previous people have done so. Indeed, new graffiti at rock art sites, unless quickly removed, can soon lead to a growing number of incidents. To further complicate things, Indigenous interactions with rock art sites can sometimes lead to new mark making construed by others as a form of vandalism. After summarizing why rock art is important in today’s globalized digital world, the history of purposeful damage to rock art sites is briefly reviewed before recent case studies from Australia and elsewhere are discussed. New strategies for preventing graffiti and vandalism at rock art sites, are then outlined. It is concluded that our global rock art heritage needs to be valued as a part of living culture rather than archaeological artefact in order to best conserve it for future generations.

Gua Sireh, located in western Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo), is known for its rock art. The cave houses hundreds of charcoal drawings depicting people, often with headdresses, knives and other accoutrements. Here, we present direct radiocarbon dates and pigment characterizations from charcoal drawings of two large (>75 cm), unique Gua Sireh human figures (anthropomorphs). To our knowledge, these are the first chronometric ages generated for Malaysian rock art, providing insights into the social contexts of art production, as well as the opportunities and challenges of dating rock art associated with the Malay/Austronesian diasporas in Southeast Asia more generally. Previous archaeological excavations revealed that people occupied Gua Sireh from around 20,000 years ago to as recently as AD 1900. The site is within Bidayuh territory, and these local Indigenous peoples recall the cave’s use as a refuge during territorial violence in the early 1800s. The age of the drawings, dated between 280 and 120 cal BP (AD 1670 to 1830), corresponds with a period of increasing conflict when the Malay elites controlling the region exacted heavy tolls on the local hill tribes. We discuss rock art production at Gua Sireh in this context of frontier conflict and Bidayuh resistance.

From 1912, British anthropologist W. Baldwin Spencer and buffalo-shooter Paddy Cahill collected 163 bark paintings made by artists who also painted in rock shelters in western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. Spencer made detailed notes about the bark paintings, secret/sacred objects, and other material culture he collected and some rock art, as well as genealogies and other details of the Aboriginal people he encountered but did not record the names of the artists. In general, the names and life stories of the individuals who made most Aboriginal archaeological artefacts or ethnographic objects and paintings now in museums across the world are not known. We have recently begun to address this for western Arnhem Land contact period art and in this paper focus on an elder, Majumbu (‘Old Harry’), who made numerous rock paintings as well as at least eight of the Spencer-Cahill bark paintings. We use his work to begin a new interpretation of the importance of the Spencer-Cahill Collection in relation to land-based religion and show that knowing the names of the artists behind the collection, as well as related rock paintings, puts their work and the entire collection in new meaningful contexts.