‘Contact’ Rock Art and Strings of Tradition in Western Arnhem Land, Australia

Emily Miller1*, Joakim Goldhahn1, Paul Tacon2, Luke Taylor3, Sally K. May3, and Joey Nganjmirra4

Contact rock art has often been classified as motifs of introduced materials such as firearms, watercraft, buildings, aircraft, and introduced animal species that were brought in over the last 200 years with British colonisation. Recently, developments such as the painted hands from Awunbarna, and the use of laundry blue have become focus points for research. However, much of the rock art from the last 200 years, the ‘contact’ period, is of motifs rooted in cultural tradition and continuation of cultural practices and beliefs. This paper explores how working with Indigenous Knowledge holders supports the identification of these motifs in the rock art, including anthropomorphs linked to ceremony, and exploring the possibility of the links between the rock art motifs and bark paintings. This highlights the continuing nature of Indigenous knowledge and culture in western Arnhem Land and the need to consider more than introduced motifs when thinking about contact rock art.