Rock Art and Regionalisation in North Queensland Prehistory.
B. DAVID & D. Chant, 1995.
Rock Art and Regionalisation in North Queensland Prehistory.
Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 37 (2).
This monograph addresses aspects of continuity and change in the prehistory of one region of Aboriginal Australia, southeast Cape York Peninsula. It is divided into two major Sections, the first of which summarises results of archaeological excavations. The authors here aim to characterise changes evident in the archaeological record across the region. Do these changes represent real socio-cultural trends, or are they merely the products of post-depositional taphonomic processes? It is concluded that unprecedented socio-cultural changes took place 3500 to 2500 years BP, involving increases in stone artefact, bone and ochre deposition rates and sedimentation rates within individual sites in all regions of north Queensland. In addition, new site types began to be created and used, with implications for novel settlement-subsistence strategies. Major increases in cave painting activity are also evident at this time.
Taking the above as a starting point for the second Section, the authors ask if these cultural changes also involved noticeable modifications to the structure of past socio-cultural networks. This question is addressed by investigating the distribution of rock-art conventions through time and across space. It is concluded that during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, rock-art conventions were relatively homogeneous across space, whereas during the mid to late Holocene they were highly regionalised. This regionalisation is evident in at least two geographical levels: first, there is a strong north-south division, with rock-art to the north of the Walsh-Mitchell Rivers being predominantly figurative, executed in infill or outline and infill predominantly in one or two colours, with white rarely used. To the south, the paintings are almost always monochrome, predominantly linear, overwhelmingly consist of non-figurative and track designs, and frequently white in colour. The changeover between these two geographical blocs is sudden, showing no evidence of clinal change.
Second, this broad spatial division is also internally differentiated. Within each of the north and south zones, smaller stylistic subregions are apparent. In the Princess Charlotte Bay and Flinders Island Group, moth-butterfly designs and zoomorphs with crescent heads predominate. In the Koolburra Plateau, echidna-human therianthropes are common. At Laura, a broad range of conventions was used, but to the immediate south, between the Palmer and Mitchell Rivers, there is a limited range of motif forms dominated by infilled anthropomorphs showing no evidence of internal elaboration. Macropods are totally absent from this area. At Bare Hill (Davies Creek), relatively small anthropomorphs with upturned arms are common. To the south, the Rookwood-Mungana-Chillagoe region contains large numbers of radiating lines and grids. Grid patterns are common at Ngarrabullgan, while at Lawn Hill to the west of the study region non-figurative designs contain numerous sinuous lines unlike those found further to the east.
The authors conclude that social networks became strongly regionalised during the mid to late Holocene. A social model is presented to explain this process of regionalisation. This model is based on the conviction that social and cultural systems are historical products - social practice is seen as in a continuous state of becoming, and result from socio-political processes which are themselves both products and producers of the past. It is suggested that the mid to late Holocene witnessed a regionalisation of socio-cultural and territorial networks in southeast Cape York Peninsula and beyond. This process of regionalisation involved major changes in the configuration of social landscapes, involving a relative closure of territorial structures after 3500 and 2500 years BP. The archaeologically observable social transformations imply that social interaction became more formalised as a means of dispute management in the face of increasing populations and population densities.