http://www.dampierrockart.net/Archipelago.html


Dampier Archipelago Rock-Art Precinct
The Archipelago



The Dampier Archipelago, named after English Buccaneer William Dampier, who visited the area in 1688, is a group of some 47 islands situated 1600km north of Perth in Western Australia.


Dampier Island (The Burrup Peninsula) is approximately 30.5 km in length and 5km wide. At a 117 sq km it is the largest of the Islands that make up the Dampier Archipelago.


The Archipelago is relatively recently drowned landmass, the shorelines of which stabilised about 6000 years ago.

At the time of the last Ice Maxim, some 20,000 years ago, the Burrup and surrounding islands would have been mountain peaks on a plain that stretched all the way to the ocean some 140km further to the north.

The strange low boulder hills of the Peninsula are covered in countless rock engravings, or petroglyphs, many of which are believed to date well before this last ice age.






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http://www.burrup.org.au/
Dampier Archipelago contains the largest concentration of rock art in the world, estimated at perhaps a million Petroglyphs. The art is extraordinary in its range and diversity. Associated with the art is a rich archaeological record, including camp sites, quarries, shell middens and stone features. Many motifs and some stone features are connected to the beliefs and ceremonial practices of Aboriginal people in the Pilbara region today. The entire Archipelago is a continuous Cultural Landscape providing a detailed record of both sacred and secular life reaching from the present back into the past, perhaps to the first settlement of Australia.

The combination of cultural richness and scientific potential of the Dampier Archipelago has been known since the 1960s. Repeated archaeological investigations of the area over the last forty years have reinforced the view that the cultural landscape of the Dampier Archipelago is highly significant by international standards and demands comprehensive study. Nevertheless, the same period has seen the planning and establishment of major industrial and infrastructure developments in the area with little regard for its heritage values. There is still no comprehensive management plan based on sound archaeological research and consultation with local Aboriginal people. Heritage consultants investigate and make recommendations on specific projects in a vacuum without a comprehensive understanding of the values of the area as a whole. As a result, the outstanding heritage values of the area continue to be compromised by short-term industrial imperatives. Sites are physically destroyed by construction, eroded or polluted by industrial emissions, damaged deliberately or accidentally by visitors as population grows and road access develops. Some sites survive, but in a radically transformed and unsympathetic landscape.

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http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2006/1755443.htm

The Australian Heritage Council report on the Dampier Archipelago, which the minister released this week, describes the density of rock carvings, or petroglyphs, and stone arrangements on the Dampier as "exceptional".

It says the depictions of animals, human figures, human-animal figures and geometric designs "provides an outstanding opportunity to develop a scientific understanding of the social functions of motifs".

And it says the engravings, which date back 30,000 years, provide an "unusual and outstanding visual record" of Aboriginal people's responses to the rise of sea levels at the end of the last ice age

http://www.archaeology.org.au/session1/paper


As with the rest of the archaeology, there has been little done in understanding that the shell deposits, and this is part of the tragedy of the Burrup. One form are the dense shell middens and here is an example of one exposed in a road cutting. Visible are the layers of shell built up over hundreds and thousands of years of meals, then the shell has been deposited. You also get extensive shell scatters, where people have again had their meals - and there is a question. - why do you get the heap shells, why do you get the extensive scatters. Again there are questions that could be answered, questions we could understand about the culture that lived here and the continuing links to the present. The potential for cultural and social understanding is ignored as simply rubbish!

[slide 9] You also get the stone working areas, quarries, there occur extensive quarries over the Burrup. Thousands of artefacts have been produced at the rock extraction and reduction locations. However, there has been no real understanding as to why they have been produced or where the artefacts went. Research and cultural potentiality has been so high and yet it has been ignored. Some of the artefacts that have been produced include blades and scrapers - all sorts of artefacts that especially with today's technology we can understand better their use and function, the technology of their production. These are all potentials that are there, but are just being ignored. [slide 10] The extensive habitation areas are the places where people live, camped, carried out everyday activities. To most they are just scatters of rubbish, scatters of stone, bone and shell in areas, but they have meaning, they have understanding, and we are ignoring it all. [slide 11] The grinding patches, there are a phenomenal number of grinding patches on the Burrup. Presumed to be seed grinding - but no one has really bothered to look at the technology of these things. Looked at what residues might be there, understood why there are some many, they may have a totally different function altogether. In addition to the grinding patches you also get grinding stones, now this is not from the Burrup this is from near Onslow area, portable basal grinding stones, some like this one actual shaped grinding dishes. Information about networks of exchange and trade, the connections of people across landscape they are also important, vital things, sites do not exist in isolation, artefacts do not exist in isolation. They exist in their context within the landscape and within their contact with people