SEMINAR: ARCHAEOLOGY SEMINAR SERIES

The Pilbara is one of the major rock art areas of Australia, and the foremost region for petroglyphs. The Dampier Archipelago stands out in this region for its high-density rock art assemblages, and extreme heterogeneity of rock art motifs. Now a coastal area, the Archipelago was an inland range until about 8,000 years ago. Dampier Archipelago rock art provides an exceptional locale for researching changes in a dynamic landscape: how these changes are reflected in the rock art, and how the relationships between rock art and the landscape are configured.

My research is focused on the rock art assemblages in Happy Valley, southern Murujuga (Burrup Peninsula), where I am studying the spatial relationships of the rock art motifs. I aim to identify patterns in the rock art that determine the location of motifs, their association with other rock art motifs, and the rules that determine where the rock art is located in the landscape.

I will be presenting the first step in the series of spatial analyses to be undertaken on data obtained from the annual Happy Valley rock art field school. This entails the classification of all the recorded rock art motifs with an appropriate taxonomy, and determining which variables of the rock art motifs will be represented with GIS software. This stage in the research will provide initial insights into the patterns and rules that govern the placement of rock art motifs at Happy Valley.