Les sites d’art rupestre de la Baliem (Papouasie occidentale, Indonésie)

Abstract

Back from a field season in 2008, two of us (A-M.P. & P.P.) spent a few days studying the red rock paintings at the central Baliem (Jayawijaya, West Papua, Indonesia). These painting have been first noted by K. Heider in 1963: they are among the very few paintings known from the Highlands area of West Papua in New-Guinea, where red rock paintings are mostly concentrated along the coastlines. The site of Suroba discussed here, located 8 Km north of Wamena, a karstic basin situated at an altitude of 1700 m, is a densely inhabited area by the Dani group. Among the interesting aspects of the site is the possibility of a modern production of red paintings. Indeed, , following succinct indications by his informers in the 1960s, Heider considered that the figures might have been produced in the course of boy's initiation rites – this would make it one of the very rare contexts of rock art production for New Guinea as a whole. These rock art shelters have never been recorded and studied in detail, however. Apart from a brief UNESCO mission organised by the K. Arifin and Ph. Delanghe in 1995, no research has been undertaken on the paintings themselves, nor on their social and cultural impact among the neighbouring Dani populations. Our 2008 visit provided us therefore an opportunity to revisit the two prior studies (by Haider and Arifin and Delanghe) on which the interpretation of the sites was based. These comparisons enable us to highlight certain differences between these authors, notably with regard to access restrictions to the site. It also enables us to discuss the attitudes taken by social actors – be they scholars or Dani – regarding these painted shelters, and show how the social importance given to them has been renegotiated in the course of time. This observation will make it necessary for us to examine the role played by external actors (Indonesian and western) in the contemporary perceptions of some painted shelters by Dani populations of the Baliem area. These interactions could provide some possible explanations for the prohibition of access to the sites of Suroba, at a time when the tensions between the Indonesian government and the Dani populations have reached their paroxysm. Upon this, we will attempt here to understand the discourse and behaviours observed around Soruba, the main painted shelter of the Baliem, addressing together the perspectives of western visitors (ethnologists and prehistorians) and the reactions of local communities between 1963 (the first mention of the paintings) and our visit in 2008.

Keywords

• Dani
• ethnoarchaeology
• New Guinea
• prehistory
• rock paintings