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Book chapter
Some Implications of Pleistocene Figurative Rock Art in Indonesia and Australia
Deep-Time Images in the Age of Globalization: Rock Art in the 21st Century
Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology, Springer International Publishing, First edition
14/05/2024
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Abstract
Until recent years, most western scholars had overlooked the existence of rock art in Indonesia or viewed it as being of limited antiquity and of largely regional-interest only. In 2014, however, an Indonesian-Australian team announced the results of a program of Uranium-series (U-series) dating of rock art in Maros-Pangkep, Sulawesi, including a surprisingly early antiquity of at least 39.9 ka for a hand stencil and 35.4 ka for a figurative animal painting. U-series dating more recently has yielded minimum ages for figurative animal painting of 40 ka in Kalimantan and 45.5 ka in Maros-Pangkep, with the latter presently constituting the world’s oldest dated example of representational art. Indonesia’s previously little-known rock art has been propelled to the global stage. Here, we examine how scholars are grappling with the implications of ‘ice age art’ in Indonesia and its integration, for the first time, into models of early human artistic culture in other parts of the world. In particular, we discuss the seemingly close stylistic parallels between Late Pleistocene figurative animal art in Indonesia and early representational depictions of animals in the Arnhem Land and Kimberley regions of northern Australia. We consider scenarios that could explain these similarities, including the idea that a single figurative rock art style spread into Australia from Wallacea during the early movements of our species in the region.
Details
- Title
- Some Implications of Pleistocene Figurative Rock Art in Indonesia and Australia
- Creators
- Adam Brumm - Griffith UniversityAdhi Agus Oktaviana - Griffith UniversityMaxime Aubert - Griffith University
- Contributors
- Oscar Moro Abadía (Editor) - Memorial University of NewfoundlandMargaret W. Conkey (Editor) - University of California, BerkeleyJosephine McDonald (Editor) - University of Western Australia
- Publication Details
- Deep-Time Images in the Age of Globalization: Rock Art in the 21st Century
- Series
- Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology
- Publisher
- Springer International Publishing
- Edition
- First edition
- Identifiers
- 991013206711402368
- Copyright
- © 2024 The Author(s). Open Access: This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Science and Engineering
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Book chapter