The following account is about the discovery of a magnificent rock shelter in Arnhem Land, Australia, with an overwhelming amount of beautiful rock art. Of course, this ‘discovery’ only means that Western culture has finally seen it, the original inhabitants of the country always knew of it. Now that we have seen it, however, we can share its beauty with the world. The northern Entrance of Nawarla Gabarnmang. Photograph by Bruno David, published in Antiquity, 2013. “In June 2006, RLW and pilot Chris Morgan sighted an unusually large rockshelter during a routine aerial survey on the Arnhem Lan ..read more

This is a compilation of previous columns from RockArtBlog about sound and music at rock art sites.  ROCK ART AND SOUND EFFECTS, 24 February 2010: Black Salon, Grotte de Niaux, Ariege, France. From Rault, 2000, p. 18. One small but interesting subset in the study of rock art concerns the acoustics of rock art sites. According to some researchers it is possible to find interesting acoustics at many rock art sites. In locales where the rock art is on cliffs they believe that the form of the cliffs often provides for a stronger echo than other nearby sections of cliff. Measurements of the s ..read more

And now the fourth and final installment: Recording team led by Jim Keyser and Mark Mitchell, Box Canyon Site, 5LA8464, Las Animas County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, August 1999. Jim Keyser on the ladder. The latter stages of the Narrative Mode of Plains Biographic Style art represent story-telling and the recording of deeds and events. One excellent example is 5LA8464, the Box Canyon Site. Box Canyon Site, 5LA8464, Picketwire Canyon Lands, Bent County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, August 1999. Tracing of the full panel. Recording team led by Jim Keyser and Mark Mitchell. The re ..read more

Petroglyphs in the Purgatory Canyon (Picketwire), Bent County, Colorado, that some people believe resemble Archaic Northern African scripts. Photograph Peter Faris, June 1991. Did Albert Einstein really come up with the Theory of Relativity (his famous E=MC2) first? In the August 2015 issue of Scientific American magazine, Tony Rothman had an article asking “Was Einstein the First to Invent E=mc2?” Rothman pointed to a number of mathematicians that had played around with formulae approaching that over the years. Petroglyphs in the Purgatory Canyon (Picketwire), Bent County, Colorado, that so ..read more

As the use of, and dependence upon, the horse became integral to Indian societies Iconic portrayals continued to be produced in some instances (such as records of visions) but the bulk of these were supplanted by portrayals in the Narrative Mode where the horses began to be shown interacting with people and situations. Early Narrative Mode horse and figures, Farrington Springs, Bent County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris. Narrative Mode: The final stage of portrayals includes identifiable, and even individual, personal details. The horse is shown with tack and gear and other identifiable eq ..read more

The Cheyenne acquiring their first horse by trading. Ledger Book art by Howling Wolf (Southern Cheyenne). Online image, public domain. In Part 1 of this series I presented the concept of the early Iconic Mode of horse portrayals illustrating them as somewhat otherworldly spiritual beings. At this stage the horse was shown separately and usually alone. The latter Iconic Mode shows the beginnings of integrating the horse into the Native American culture. The Blackfoot name for the horse translates as “elk dog”. A name like “elk dog” expresses the results of fitting a new element into preconceiv ..read more

Horses at Little Bighorn (Custer) battlefield, Montana. Photograph Peter Faris. Every once in a while, inexplicably, some of the columns disappear from RockArtBlog. Now I have no idea if this is done by blogger.com, by hackers, or poltergeists, but I have found it has happened again. A series of columns on horses in rock art that I posted years ago just isn't here anymore. Therefore I am rewriting this series of columns under the title Horse Petroglyphs as Indicators of Cultural Transformation. Horse petroglyph, Purgatoire Canyon, Bent County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris. The acquisitio ..read more

           Cerne Abbas Giant, near the village of Cerne Abbas, Dorset, England. Online image, public domain. Some of the world’s most famous geoglyphs are the chalk figures found in England. The Uffington White Horse, the Long Man of Wilmington, and perhaps the most famous of all the Cerne Abbas Giant. “The Cerne Abbas Giant was formed by cutting trenches two feet deep into the steep hillside and then filling them with crushed chalk. Some scholars believed the giant might date back to the Iron Age as a fertility symbol. Local folklore holds that copulating on the ..read more

17,300 year old kangaroo dated with mud dauber wasp nests. Illustration from Finch et al. Back on 20 June 2020, I wrote a column titled “Dating Australian Rock Art With Mud Wasp Nests” about using small samples of mud wasp (or mud dauber) nests that overlay old pictographs to date them using optically stimulated luminescence dating. This practice has now produced dates for an image in the Kimberly region in Australia as old as 17,300 BCE. 17,300 year old kangaroo dated with mud dauber wasp nests. Illustration from Finch et al. “In two of the most extensive provinces for painted rock art ..read more

Spotted horses, Pach Merle Cave, France. Online image, public domain. The history of rock art research is replete with good ideas that get over-applied. From the original interpretation of “hunting magic” to David Lewis-William’s “shamans” interpretations that can be applied to some of the original examples are often then taken up and overused time and time again. Now a paper attributing the inspiration for painted caves in Spain to pareidolia seriously threatens to cause another run on that particular bank.Perhaps the first reference to the phenomenon of pareidolia in cave art involves the b ..read more