Nawarla Gabarnmang (Terre d’Arnhem, Australie)

Abstract

Nawarla Gabarnmang is a major rock art site of northern Australia. Occupied by people for some 50,000 years, it contains an exceptional deposit of stone artefacts including one of the oldest ground-edge stone axes in the world (35,500 years) and an extensively decorated ceiling with close to 1 400 paintings in multiple panels and with numerous superpositions. The earliest evidence of art dates to 27,000­–26,000 years ago—an excavated broken piece of painted rock—with the most recent art dating to the late 19th-early 20th century. The site’s interdisciplinary study has shed information on the decorated panels, and from the excavations a robust cultural chronology has been revealed. Archaeomorphology has allowed us to understand the history of the site’s wall and ceiling configurations, surfaces on which the art is found: under its vast overhang, multiple ceiling and more that 50 rock pillars are found. Their study showed that the site’s morphology was crafted by people: it is, in effect, an architectural construct. Archaeomorphological research has enabled the recovery of human actions underlying the site that we see today.

Keywords

• rock art site
• archaeomorphology
• Nawarla Gabarnmang
• Arnhem Land
• Australia.