Rock Art and Ritual: An Archaeological Analysis of Rock Art in Arid Central Australia

Rock art researchers throughout the world have explicitly or implicitly invoked ritual as an activity associated with the production of rock art but the articulation between the structure and composition of rock art assemblages and ritual behaviour remains poorly understood. Anthropologist, Roy Rappaport (1999) argued that all ritual, whatever the content or focus, has a universal structure. We review this proposition in the context of ritual studies and propose a method aimed at assessing the potential for identifying ritual structure in rock art assemblages. We discuss an archaeological analysis undertaken on the rock art assemblages in arid Central Australia, which aimed at distinguishing such a ritual structure among engraved assemblages, likely to have a Pleistocene origin, as well as more recent painted, stencilled and drawn assemblages. This analysis, despite its limitations, provides the foundation for developing a model, which will enhance the understanding of the relationship between the production of rock art and ritual.     

Social Values and Rock Art Tourism: An Ethnographic Study of the Huashan Rock Art Area (China)

The rapid expansion of cultural tourism has led to increased numbers of visitors to rock art sites throughout the world. The rise of rock art tourism has affected not only the preservation of rock art sites, but also the social values attributed to the sites by communities in the immediate vicinity. Social values refer to the social and cultural meanings that a place of heritage holds for a particular community. This article aims to discuss the influence of tourism on the social values that uphold local communities’ emotional attachment to rock art heritage, using the Huashan rock art area in China as a case study. Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape is the first rock art heritage in China proposed to be inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List and officially obtained World Heritage Status in July 2016. This article argues that many of the changes generated by the endeavour towards tourism promotion by the authorities in their pursuit of World Heritage designation have contributed to the reinforcement of the social values under discussion. However, negative feelings among the communities in response to the undesired consequences of the designation campaign might have resulted in the attenuation of such values. The ultimate goal of the research is to prompt further reflection on existing rock art heritage management mechanisms both in China and worldwide.     

基于区域视角的中国工业旅游发展的思考

本文以全国工业旅游示范点为样本,对工业旅游点的区域分布特征及空间密度差异、工业旅游点所属行业的区域分布特征与空间密度差异进行初步分析,并探索这些特征与各区域工业发展特征的相关性,在此基础上,从制定区域工业旅游发展规划、选择工业旅游空间开发模式、构筑"无边界"的区域工业旅游合作方式等方面对各级区域范围的工业旅游发展进行探讨.     

论岩画阐释中的多元视界

岩画意义的解释经常会出现望图生义或者恣意猜度的现象,导致学术界对岩画的解释产生了偏见。为了避免这种情况,在解读岩画的时候应当充分考虑各种可能的因素,如岩画所处的环境,岩画自身之间的关联,岩画产生地所呈现出来的地方性知识,其他学科的支持等。     

Ancient Rock Art at the Mouth of Trango Go

Trangu Go is located in the County of Kongkar,around the midstream area of the Yarlung Tsangpo River.It is a triangular ravine extending from South to North for 13 kilometers.One side faces the river;the other has mountains on three sides.In Trangu Go,archaeologists have discovered a Neolithic Tibetan site containing some barley seeds which are by far the earliest relics in Tibet.Since then, this ravine has acquired a reputation.On a sunny,golden autumn day,my old partner     

The Upper Paleolithic Rock Art of Iberia

Nearly 200 rock art sites of Upper Paleolithic age are currently known on the Iberian Peninsula, in both caves and the open air. Over half are still concentrated in Cantabrian Spain and they span the period between c. 30–11 kya, but–tracking the course of human demography in this geographically circumscribed region–many of the images were probably painted or engraved during the Solutrean and, especially, Magdalenian. Dramatic discoveries and dating projects have significantly expanded the Iberian rock art record both geographically and temporally in recent years, in close coincidence with the growth of contemporaneous archeological evidence: cave art loci in Aragón and Levante attributable to the Solutrean and Magdalenian, many cave art sites and a few open-air ones in Andalucía and Extremadura that are mostly Solutrean (in line with evidence of a major Last Glacial Maximum human refugium in southern Spain), the spectacular Côa Valley open-air complex in northern Portugal (together with a growing number of other such loci and one cave) that was probably created during the Gravettian-Magdalenian periods, and a modest, but important increase in proven cave and open-air sites in the high, north-central interior of Spain that are probably Solutrean and/or Magdalenian. Despite regional variations in decorated surfaces, themes, techniques and styles, there are broad (and sometimes very specific) pan-Iberian similarities (as well as ones with the Upper Paleolithic art of southern France) that are indicative of widespread human contacts and shared systems of symbols and beliefs during the late Last Glacial. As this Ice Age world and the forms of social relationships and ideologies that helped human groups survive in it came to an end, so too did the decoration of caves, rockshelters and outcrops, although in some regions other styles of rock art would return under very different conditions of human existence.     

宁夏贺兰山和北山虎岩画图腾崇拜初探--兼论虎岩画的族属

虎是贺兰山和北山岩画的重要题材。其构图有单体、双体和群体、虎扑食和猎虎四类 ,形态有直立和曲足两类 ,时代在商周至春秋战国时期。这四类虎岩画 ,与图腾崇拜相关。在图腾文化中 ,图腾之名也是相对应的氏族、部落之名号 ,而以虎为图腾的民族 ,其族名是春秋战国时期活动于我国北方的林胡。     

Examining the Potential of Indigenous Institutions for Development: A Perspective from Borana,Ethiopia

This article examines an institutional approach to development in which indigenous institutions are viewed as a resource for achieving development. It concentrates on indigenous natural resource management (NRM) institutions which have been seen by some development agencies to be a means to address the needs of people and the environment in a way that is also participatory. Using material from Borana, Ethiopia, the article describes the indigenous NRM institutions and examines the outcome of one attempt to work with them. In the process, it shows that partnerships between development agencies and indigenous NRM institutions are often fragile, and tend to dissolve when they fail to meet the preconceptions of the developers. Through an examination of this approach to development, the article also examines the usefulness of recent broad approaches to institutions.     

Digital Management of Rock Art: the African Archaeology Archive Cologne (AAArC)

Archaeology is a costly and object-affine practice requiring sophisticated technical equipment, and therefore is largely initiated and run from industrialised countries. Accordingly, also data and objects are largely lodged in these countries. In rock art, this leads to the paradoxical situation that many motifs and sites with outstanding prehistoric art are better known and more often shown in northern hemisphere urban centres than in the global south rural areas where the art in fact is found. This paper will focus on the possibilities and benefits of a digital archive in making pictures, data and other archaeological source material accessible anytime from everywhere. An open online archive will in the long run flatten the hierarchical order of access to the results of archaeological research and heritage archiving. Today, this is still concentrated in the western metropoles and rarest in African hinterlands. The open access to thousands of pictures will facilitate dissemination of motifs in particular since the distribution of smartphones and network coverage are ever growing particularly in Africa’s rural areas. The African Archaeology Archive Cologne (AAArC), being licenced under Creative Commons, provides open access to tens of thousands of rock art photos and to the enormous Brandberg-Daureb Data Base that contains 39,000+ rock art figures. Additionally AAArC stores all kinds of digital archaeological products from across Africa (mainly Sudan, Algeria, Chad and Namibia), including audio and film documentary.     

Assessing the Stability and Sustainability of Rock Art Sites: Insight from Southwestern Arizona

In light of global trends in human population growth and urbanization, burgeoning cultural heritage tourism industries, and climate change, cultural heritage places in nearly every corner of the world are significantly threatened, and will remain so into the foreseeable future. Rock art sites are some of the most imperiled, with their exposed contexts posing unique challenges to conservation. Consequently, effective management of publically accessible rock art sites necessitates a sustainable approach that weighs visitation in regard to cultural significance and site stability. This essay integrates rock art stability and sustainability assessment methodologies at the Painted Rock Petroglyph Site in southwestern Arizona. The study specifically applies the Rock Art Stability Index (RASI) to evaluate the natural and anthropogenic weathering forces impacting the site, and the Heritage Asset Sensitivity Gauge (HASG) to assess site sustainability under existing management practices in relation to current and forecasted rates of visitation. A spatial analysis of aggregated RASI data shows that visitor foot traffic has had some of the most profound impacts to the petroglyphs. Unrestricted access to the site area is also highly correlated with the presence and location of vandalism and graffiti, and visitor-related trampling has adversely affected the site’s surface artifact assemblage. Application of the HASG projects that, while existing management practices are fairly sustainable, they become less so under forecasted increases in visitation. Further, the HASG appraises the site’s cultural significance as outweighing its market appeal, indicating management efforts should prioritize conservation over tourism-related development.     

Death by Water: Boats and Footprints in the Rock Art of Western Sweden

This paper considers two of the key images in the Bronze Age rock carvings of Bohuslän in relation to the wider landscape. It compares the distribution of cairns on islands off the west coast of Sweden with that of similar monuments on low hills surrounded by drawings of boats. These are often in areas which had previously been occupied by the sea. Perhaps the drawings of boats evoked an expanse of water separating the world of the living from the burial places of the dead. If so, the lines of footprints leading between these two areas may also refer to the passage between life and death.     

The Discovery of Dhambalin Rock Art Site, Somaliland

Dhambalin, a sandstone rock shelter, was discovered in autumn 2007. The unique site holds polychrome paintings including the first sheep paintings in Somali archaeology. There is an extraordinary originality in the paintings, particularly those of the sheep and goats. There are unusual quality images and styles of humpless cows of which some are headless. The fauna depicted include antelopes, dogs, giraffes, snakes and a turtle, some of which are associated with human figures wearing what appear to be headgears and holding bow and arrows in hunting scenes. Relative dating is possible perhaps through the superimposition of various styles of paintings. Also the site shares some similarities with the Neolithic or protohistoric Arabian–Ethiopian Style in the Horn of Africa. Hence, there is a need for a multidisciplinary approach to the ritual landscapes, religion and identity in the Horn of Africa. With its richness of fauna, including unambiguous depictions of sheep and various styles of depiction of bovine, the new site of Dhambalin will no doubt play a major role in shedding light on pastoral cultures and pre-historic symbolism in the rock art of the Horn of Africa.     

Schematic Rock Art,Rain-Making and Islam in the Ethio-Sudanese Borderlands

Two sites with schematic rock paintings in Western Ethiopia, where Islamic ceremonies connected with rain-making are performed and miraculous events are said to occur regularly, are interpreted in the light of such factors as the beliefs of local informants, the Islamic appropriation of prehistoric rituals in Northern Africa, the characteristics of similar sites linked to rain-making rituals throughout Eastern Africa and the apotropaic meaning of schematic marks in many traditional cultures. Probably painted by the ancestors of the current Koman language speakers during the Later Stone Age or shortly afterwards, the rock art contextual analysis reveals the complexity of interregional relationships and processes affecting the multi-ethnic frontier regions in pre-colonial times and shows how the local groups have recombined prehistoric and historic religions and ideologies into an original mix that bears witness to the region’s multifaceted history.     

以艺术为媒介：贵州山地交往文化视域中的侗戏

侗戏是本民族说唱传统与汉戏融合的艺术结晶;其发展历程也体现出汉侗文化的互动与交融;侗戏表演对于侗族社会具有重要的功能,主要表现在：促进族际交往、深化代际交往和强化寨际交往等方面。在全球化语境中,侗戏应该积极展开与外界的沟通与对话,凸显民族艺术的重要价值。