Date Time
How Aboriginal rock art can live on even when gone
This article by Professor Joakim Goldhahn from UWA’s Centre of Rock Art Research and Professor Paul S.C.Taçon from Griffith University, originally appeared in The Conversation on 8 April 2021.
Aboriginal rock art unfolds stories about the present-past and emerging worlds, often described by an outsider as the Dreamtime. Some rock art, it is believed, was put in place by spiritual and mythological beings. Many of these Ancestral Beings travelled vast distances, and their journeys link places, clans and different rock art paintings.
Other images were created to educate children about cultural protocols, or just made to tell an amusing story. The artists who created the works are also important. Some artists were prolific and appreciated. A person who made a hand stencil could often be identified by the hand’s shape.