2013/10/29 by Jo McDonald, Peter Veth · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Archaeology and Rock Art Studies #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
paper · doi:10.1080/00664677.2013.843444
openalex publication_date 2013/10/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Bob Tonkinson’s anthropological work in the Western Desert provides archaeologists with a unique insight into the totemic geography of the Martu. Part of his explication of the long-distance relationships that Martu maintain with remote homelands and sacred sites involved crayon drawings which showed the travels and actions of the Wati Kutjarra around the Jilakurru Ranges. These drawings, made remotely 300 km from the country being described, have been mobilised to assist in the interpretation of rock art distributed around these Ranges. In this paper we explore the recursivity of graphic vocabulary and highlight how the interplay of anthropological and archaeological approaches can provide a much richer and nuanced explanatory framework to understand the role of art in Western Desert culture.