Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-qxdb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T19:06:02.386Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Symbolic language in Torres Strait, NE Australia: images from rock art, portable objects and human scars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Liam M. Brady
Liam M. Brady*
Affiliation:
*Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies, Monash University, PO Box 55, Clayton, Victoria, Australia 3800 (Email: Liam.Brady@arts.monash.edu.au)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Torres Strait is often in the research literature – unsurprisingly since it is not only a key area for early settlement but one where ancient and modern practice resonate. Rock art is a prominent archaeological source for the region – but not the only one. In this study the author shows how rock art interconnects with imagery on portable artefacts and scarification – scarring patterns on skin – to define cultural zones of the last few centuries in territories occupied by both horticulturalists and hunter-gatherers.

Keywords

Torres Straitrock arthunter-gatherershorticulturalistsportable objectsscarificationcultural zones
Type
Research article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 82 , Issue 316 , June 2008 , pp. 336 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barandiar´an, I. 1973. Art mueble del paleolitico cant´abrico (Monografias Arquelogicas 13). Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza.Google Scholar
Bégouen, R. & Clottes, J.. 1991. Portable and wall art in the Volp Caves, Montesquieu-Avantè (Ariège). Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 57(1):65–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Best, A. 2003. Regional variation in the material culture of hunter gatherers: social and ecological approaches to ethnographic objects from Queensland, Australia (British Archaeological Reports International Series 1149). Oxford: Archaeopress.Google Scholar
Bradley, R. 1997. Rock art and the prehistory of Atlantic Europe: signing the land. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brady, L. M. 2005. Painting patterns: Torres Strait region rock-art. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Monash University.Google Scholar
Carter, M. 2004. North of the Cape and south of the Fly: the archaeology of settlement and subsistence on the Murray Islands, Eastern Torres Strait. Unpublished PhD dissertation, James Cook University.Google Scholar
David, B. 2002. Landscapes, rock-art and the dreaming: an archaeology of preunderstanding. London: Leicester University Press.Google Scholar
David, B. & Chant, D.. 1995. Rock art and regionalisation in North Queensland prehistory. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 37(2):357–528.Google Scholar
David, B., McNiven, I. J., Manas, L., Manas, J., Savage, S., Crouch, J., Neliman, G. & Brady, L.. 2004a. Goba of Mua: archaeology working with oral tradition. Antiquity 78: 158–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
David, B., McNiven, I. J., Mitchell, R., Orr, M., Haberle, S., Brady, L. & Crouch, J.. 2004b. Badu 15 and the Papuan-Austronesian settlement of Torres Strait. Archaeology in Oceania 39(2):65–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devlet, E. 2001. Rock art and the material culture of Siberian and Central Asian shamanism, in Price, N. (ed.) The Archaeology of Shamanism: 43–55. New York & London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Glover, I. 1986. Archaeology in Eastern Timor, 1966-1967 (Terra Australis 11). Canberra: Australian National University, Research School of Pacific Studies.Google Scholar
Haddon, A. C. 1890. The ethnography of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits. Journal of the Anthropological Institute 19: 297–440.Google Scholar
Haddon, A. C. 1893. The secular and ceremonial dances of Torres Strait. Internationales Archiv f¨ur Ethnologie 6: 131–62.Google Scholar
Haddon, A. C. (ed.) 1904. Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. Vol 5. Sociology, magic and religion of the Western Islanders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haddon, A. C. (ed.) 1908. Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. Vol 6. Sociology, magic and religion of the Eastern Islanders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haddon, A. C. (ed.) 1912. Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. Vol 4. Arts and crafts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haddon, A. C. 1935. Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. Vol 1. General ethnography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haddon, A. C. 1946. Smoking and tobacco pipes in New Guinea. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 232(586): 1–278.Google Scholar
Haddon, A. C. & Rivers, W.H.R.. 1904. Totemism, in Haddon, A. (ed.) Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. Vol 5. Sociology, magic and religion of the Western Islanders: 153–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Harris, D. 1995. Early agriculture in New Guinea and the Torres Strait divide. Antiquity 69:848–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hatte, L. 1992. ‘Boring coastal stuff‘: rock images of the Townsville district, north Queensland, in McDonald, J. & Haskovec, I. (ed.) State of the art: regional rock art studies in Australia and Melanesia (Occasional AURA Publication 6): 71–5. Melbourne: Australian Rock Art Research Association.Google Scholar
Landtman, G. 1927. The Kiwai Papuans of British New Guinea: a nature born instance of Rousseau's ideal community. London: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Landtman, G. 1933. Ethnographical collection from the Kiwai District of British New Guinea in the National Museum of Finland, Helsingfors (Helsinki): a descriptive survey of the material culture of the Kiwai people. Helsinki: Commission of the Antell Collection.Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. 1994. Customary exchange across Torres Strait. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 34(2):241–446.Google Scholar
Lawrie, M. 1970. Myths and legends of Torres Strait. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Lee, G. & Hyder, W. D.. 1991. Prehistoric rock art as an indicator of cultural interaction and tribal boundaries in South-central California. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 13(1):15–28.Google Scholar
Leroi-Gourhan, A. 1965. Pr´ehistoire de l'art occidental. Paris: Mazenod.Google Scholar
Lewis, A. B. 1931. Carved and painted designs from New Guinea (Anthropology Design Series 5). Chicago (IL): Field Museum of Natural History.Google Scholar
McNiven, I. J. 1998. Enmity and amity: reconsidering stone-headed club (gabagaba) procurement and trade in Torres Strait. Oceania 69(2):94–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNiven, I. J., David, B. & Brayer, J.. 2000. Digital enhancement of Torres Strait rock art. Antiquity 74:759–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNiven, I. J., Von Gnielinski, F. & Quinnell, M.. 2004a. Torres Strait and the origin of large stone axes from Kiwai Island, Fly River estuary (Papua New Guinea). Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Cultural Heritage Series 3(1):271–90.Google Scholar
McNiven, I. J., David, B., Brady, L. & Brayer, J.. 2004b. Kabadul Kula rock-art site, Dauan Island, Torres Strait. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Cultural Heritage Series 3(1):227–56.Google Scholar
McNiven, I. J., Dickinson, W. R., David, B., Wiesler, M., Von Gnielinski, F., Carter, M. & Zoppi, U.. 2006. Mask Cave: red-slipped pottery and the Australian-Papuan settlement of Zenadh Kes (Torres Strait). Archaeology in Oceania 41: 49–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, D. R. 1984. The Torres Strait collections of A. C. Haddon: a descriptive catalogue. London: British Museum Publications.Google Scholar
Omnè, J. 1982. La Grotte ornée de Labastide (Hautes-Pyrénées). Lourdes: author.Google Scholar
Parsons, M. L. 1987. Plains Indian portable art as a key to two Texas historic rock art sites. Plains Anthropologist 32(117):257–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rivers, W.H.R. 1904. The regulation of marriage, in Haddon, A. (ed.) Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. Vol 5. Sociology, magic and religion of the Western Islanders: 233–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sharp, N. 1992. Footprints along the Cape York sandbeaches. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.Google Scholar
Shnukal, A. 1998. At the Australian-Papuan linguistic boundary: Sidney Ray's classification of Torres Strait languages, in Herle, A. & Rouse, S. (ed.) Cambridge and the Torres Strait: centenary essays on the 1898 Anthropological Expedition: 181–200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taçon, P. S.C. 1993. Stylistic relationships between the Wakeham Bay petroglyphs of the Canadian Arctic and Dorset portable art, in Lorblanchet, M. & Bahn, P. G. (ed.) Rock art studies: the post-stylistic era or where do we go from here? (Oxbow Monograph 35): 151–62. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Tac¸on, P. S.C., South, B. & Hooper, S. B.. 2003. Depicting cross-cultural interaction: figurative designs in wood, earth and stone from south-east Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 38: 89–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, D. (ed.) 1972. Bridge and barrier: the natural and cultural history of Torres Strait. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Wilson, M. 1999. Bringing the art inside: a preliminary analysis of black linear rock-art from limestone caves in Erromango, Vanuatu. Oceania 70(1):87–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, M. 2002. Picturing Pacific prehistory: the rock-art of Vanuatu in a western Pacific context. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Australian National University.Google Scholar