Investigating the Anthropic Construction of Rock Art Sites Through Archaeomorphology: the Case of Borologa, Kimberley, A
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Investigating the Anthropic Construction of Rock Art Sites Through Archaeomorphology: the Case of Borologa, Kimberley, Australia Jean-Jacques Delannoy 1,2 & Bruno David 2,3 & Kim Genuite 1 & Robert Gunn 3 & Damien Finch 4 & Sven Ouzman 5 & Helen Green 4 & Peter Veth 5 & Sam Harper 5 & Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation 6 & Robert J. Skelly 3 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Archaeologists usually see, and understand, rock shelters as taphonomically active, but pre-existing, physical structures onto which people undertake a variety of actions including rock art. Our aim in this paper is not only to document the changes undergone by rock shelters but also to identify traces of anthropic actions that have intentionally led to these changes. Recent research in northern Australia provides empirical evidence that for thousands of years, Aboriginal peoples altered the physical shape of rock shelters by removing masses of rock to create alcoves, restructure internal spaces and create stoneworked furniture. Through archaeomorphological research, this paper presents evidence from Borologa in Australia’s Kimberley region, where hard quartzite monoliths were shaped and engaged as architectural designs by Aboriginal people prior to painting many surfaces, making us rethink what have traditionally been distinguished as natural versus cultural dimensions of archaeological landscapes and rock art sites. Keywords Archaeomorphology . Kimberley . Landscape architecture . Rock art . 3D
modelling
Introduction Like stone artefacts and other items of material culture, rock art offers insights into past cultural practices and their patterns and trends. Rock art has two great advantages over
* Jean-Jacques Delannoy jean–jacques.delannoy@univ–smb.fr * Bruno David [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Delannoy et al.
most other types of artefacts. First, its malleability and symbolism offer enhanced possibilities for an archaeology of cognition. Second, its fixity on rock allows for an archaeology of place, for a phenomenological archaeology of how people are connected in places. Yet despite being anchored on rock, by itself, the rock art only offers a partial avenue of enquiry into relations between people and the locations in which the art was undertaken. For rock art to be adequately informed on cultures of emplacement, we also need to venture beyond the art onto the place itself. Place is the where “on which the concrete things of a given landscape repose: where ‘things’ may be humanly constructed” (Casey 2001, p. 418). For such a place-based (in Casey’s term “placial”) archaeology to occur, and as previously argued by a number of researchers across the world (e.g., Bradley 1997; Chippindale and Nash 2004; Gjerde 2010; Meirion Jones et al. 2011), we need to go beyond a myopic focus on the art, sundered from its surroundings, and look both more closely and more broadly at its physical settings. Here, we present an archaeology of the
