Rock Art Modification and its Ritualized and Relational Contexts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liam M. Brady ◽  
R. G. Gunn ◽  
Joakim Goldhahn
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Relational Networks ◽  
Modification Process ◽  
The World ◽  
Surrounding Landscape ◽  
Relational Qualities ◽  
Relational Contexts

Australia has some of the most complex and extensive examples of modified rock art (e.g., superimposed, re-painted, re-drawn, re-pecked) in the world. Typically used to document style-based chronological sequences and address questions of meaning and intention, less well known are the relational networks within which these ritual modification practices are embedded. In this article we explore the ritual rock art modification relationship to further highlight the value of a ritual-based approach to access and enhance understanding of modified rock art. Central to this approach is the idea that modified motifs do not exist in isolation—their placement, the actions, rules, and structures linked to the modification process, along with the surrounding landscape, are all part of relational networks that extend across multiple social and cultural realms. By identifying key themes associated with this ritual practice, we explore relational qualities to further understand the ritual rock art relationship to broaden archaeological and ethnographic understanding of rock art.

Art and Environment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Nash
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
Intimate Relationship ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Rock Surface ◽  
The World ◽  
Surrounding Landscape

When telling stories through rock art, the artist formed an intimate relationship with the audience through the act of conveying such stories. Ethnographic evidence in many parts of the world suggests that the artist is merely a device through which stories are transmitted from rock surface to audience, whereby the artist becomes an intermediary within the act of performance through the medium of the brush, chisel, and finger, thus creating a theatre of performance. During this performance, the artist used many devices to either conceal or promote the narrative; one of the props used within this performance would have been the panel on which the art was performed, placing figures into spatial context and observing the rules of grammar. This chapter explores how early artists selected and used various rock surfaces, utilizing the rock face’s colour, texture, placement, and natural topography to mimic the surrounding landscape.

Palaeolithic Cave Art at Creswell Crags in European Context

2007 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Southern France ◽  
European Context ◽  
The World ◽  
Cave Art ◽  
Illustrated Book

Cave art is a subject of perennial interest among archaeologists. Until recently it was assumed that it was largely restricted to southern France and northern Iberia, although in recent years new discoveries have demonstrated that it originally had a much wider distribution. The discovery in 2003 of the UK's first examples of cave art, in two caves at Creswell Crags on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border, was the most surprising illustration of this. The discoverers (the editors of the book) brought together in 2004 a number of Palaeolithic archaeologists and rock art specialists from across the world to study the Creswell art and debate its significance, and its similarities and contrasts with contemporary Late Pleistocene ("Ice Age") art on the Continent. This comprehensively illustrated book presents the Creswell art itself, the archaeology of the caves and the region, and the wider context of the Upper Palaeolithic era in Britain, as well as a number of up-to-date studies of Palaeolithic cave art in Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy which serve to contextualize the British examples.

scholarly journals Speech-Breath: Mapping the Multisensory Experience in Pecos River Style Pictography

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Carolyn E. Boyd ◽  
Ashley Busby
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
The World ◽  
Application Techniques ◽  
Graphic Device ◽  
Pecos River ◽  
Lower Pecos ◽  
Multisensory Experience

Archaic period hunter-gatherers of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and Coahuila, Mexico, created complex rock art murals containing elaborately painted anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures. These figures are frequently portrayed with dots or lines emanating out of or into their open mouths. In this article, we discuss patterns in shape, color, and arrangement of this pictographic element and propose that artists used this graphic device to denote speech, breath, and the soul. They communicated meaning through the image-making process, alternating brushstroke direction to indicate inhalation versus exhalation or using different paint application techniques to reflect measured versus forceful speech. The choices made by artists in the production of the imagery reflect their cosmology and the framework of ideas and beliefs through which they interpreted and interacted with the world. Bridging the iconographic data with ethnohistoric and ethnographic texts from Mesoamerica, we suggest that speech and breath expressed in the rock art of the Lower Pecos was tied to concepts of the soul, creation, and human origins.

The Concept of Rebirth as the Christ and the Initiatory Rituals of the Bridal Chamber in theGospel of Philip

Antichthon ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 34-48
Author(s):  
Majella Franzmann
Keyword(s):  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Nag Hammadi ◽  
The World ◽  
Secret Knowledge ◽  
Bridal Chamber

In this article I begin with an outline of the connection between theological concepts related to the person of the Gnostic Christian Saviour and the ritual practice of Gnostic Christian groups. After setting the scene in this general way, I look specifically at theGospel of Philip, investigating the connection between the description of the rebirth of the Saviour at the Jordan and the rebirth of the Gnostic in the ritual of the bridal chamber.The Nag Hammadi corpus, to which theGospel of Philipbelongs, contains many texts which may be identified as Gnostic Christian, partly because of the fact that, in these texts, the key figure of the Saviour or Revealer is identified as Jesus or Christ. The work that Jesus performs in the world for the Gnostics is revelation, for the most part, rather than redemption in the sense in which mainstream Christianity identified his activity. His revelation may involve imparting secret knowledge, especially during that time prior to his final ascent into the heavenly region of light (for those texts which are closely aligned with the mainstream Christian pattern of descent and several stages of ascent for Jesus), but it must be generally categorised as activity designed to awaken the Gnostic to the insight (gnosis) which this person already possesses.

Archaeological Evidence of Domestic Sheep in the Namib Desert During the First millennium AD

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kinahan
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Indirect Evidence ◽  
Domestic Sheep ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Namib Desert ◽  
Broad Agreement ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Changing Economy ◽  
Fundamental Shift

Bones of domestic sheep dated to the early first millennium AD are described from the Dâures massif in the Namib Desert. The remains confirm earlier investigations which inferred the acquisition of livestock from indirect evidence in the rock art, suggesting a fundamental shift in ritual practice at this time. Dating of the sheep remains is in broad agreement with the dating of other finds in the same area and in southern Africa as a whole. The presence of suspected sheep bone artefacts, possibly used for ritual purposes, draws attention to the importance of livestock as more than a component of diet in the changing economy of hunter-gatherer society.

Fantastic Beings and Where to Make Them ‒ Boats as Object-Beings in Bronze Age Rock Art

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (27) ◽  
pp. 191-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fredrik Fahlander
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
The World ◽  
Change Of Perspective ◽  
Hybrid Character ◽  
Animal Part

The boat motif in Bronze Age rock art is generally assumed to represent real or symbolic boats in some form. In this paper, however, it is argued that Bronze Age rock art motifs are independent material articulations, made to do something rather than to represent. From such a perspective, the hybrid character of the boat motif as part animal, part object is conceived as a special type of entity, an object-being that has no original elsewhere. The change of perspective, from representation to articulation, and from object to being, allows for a more coherent view of Bronze Age rock art as primarily enacted imagery integrated with rock and metal as vitalist devices, aimed to affect the world.

Nurturing and Balancing the World: A Relational Approach to Rock Art and Technology from North Central Chile (Southern Andes)

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrés Troncoso ◽  
Felipe Armstrong ◽  
Francisco Vergara ◽  
Francisca Ivanovic ◽  
Paula Urzúa
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
North Central ◽  
Central Chile ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Technological Style ◽  
Art And Technology ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Anthropology Of Technology ◽  
The World

Technology has been a central theme in archaeological discussion. Different approaches have been developed in order to understand and better explain the processes that lead to the production of objects and things. The anthropology of technology has been one such effort, with its focus on technological style and the chaîne opératoire. In this paper we argue that, despite their many contributions, these approaches tend to isolate the process of production, as well as to see it as the imposition of culture over nature. Instead, we propose a relational approach to technology, one that considers the multiple participants in the social actions involved, stressing the affective qualities of the different entities participating in the process of making. We focus this discussion on the production process of rock art in North Central Chile by Diaguita communities (c. ad 1000–c. 1540), arguing that making petroglyphs was a central activity that aimed at the balancing of the world and its participants, creating a mediating space that facilitated connectedness between the multiple members of the Diaguita world, humans and other-than-humans.

Early Australian Anthropomorphs: Jabiluka's Dynamic Figure Rock Paintings

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally K. May ◽  
Iain G. Johnston ◽  
Paul S.C. Taçon ◽  
Inés Domingo Sanz ◽  
Joakim Goldhahn
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Figurative Art ◽  
The World ◽  
Rock Paintings ◽  
Body Adornment ◽  
Art And Society ◽  
Detailed Nature ◽  
Sheer Number

Early depictions of anthropomorphs in rock art provide unique insights into life during the deep past. This includes human engagements with the environment, socio-cultural practices, gender and uses of material culture. In Australia, the Dynamic Figure rock paintings of Arnhem Land are recognized as the earliest style in the region where humans are explicitly depicted. Important questions, such as the nature and significance of body adornment in rock art and society, can be explored, given the detailed nature of the human figurative art and the sheer number of scenes depicted. In this paper, we make a case for Dynamic Figure rock art having some of the earliest and most extensive depictions of complex anthropomorph scenes found anywhere in the world.

The Siting of Prehistoric Rock Art in Galloway, South-west Scotland

1993 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 269-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bradley ◽  
Jan Harding ◽  
Margaret Mathews
Keyword(s):  
Rock Art ◽  
Landscape Archaeology ◽  
Surrounding Area ◽  
South West ◽  
Field Of Vision ◽  
Special Character ◽  
Local Topography ◽  
Intractable Problems ◽  
Surrounding Landscape ◽  
Source Of Information

The interpretation of prehistoric rock art has posed some intractable problems, but recent studies have sought to integrate it within a more broadly based landscape archaeology. They emphasise the special character of this material, not only as a system of distinctive motifs, but also as a source of information employed by people engaged in a mobile pattern of settlement. This paper investigates the character of the rock art of south-west Scotland, comparing the positions of the petroglyphs with two series of control samples in the surrounding landscape. The carvings seem to have been situated at viewpoints. They may have been directed towards the coastline and the Galloway hills and commanded a significantly wider field of vision than locations in the surrounding area. There is some evidence that differences in the size and complexity of the motifs are related to their placing in the local topography, with the simpler carvings around the edges of lowland ‘territories’ near to the shoreline, and the more complex compositions in upland areas, especially around shallow basins and waterholes. The changing character of the designs may reflect differences in the composition of the audience who viewed them.

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