Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Convenors:
April Nowell, University of Victoria, Canada, anowell@uvic.ca
Meenakshi Dubey-Pathak, Independent Scholar, India, meenakshividushi@gmail.com
Storytelling, whether around a campfire, in a café or a sold out theatre, is ubiquitous in human culture and the universality of storytelling suggests that this behaviour has deep roots. In foraging societies, oral stories are often a vehicle for sharing vital ecological, social and spiritual knowledge across the generations. To bring stories to life, storytellers vary the timbre of their voices, pause for effect, use onomatopoeia, and mimic animal sounds and atmospheric noises. Sometimes they also create images as a visual component to these oral stories through drawing in snow or sand or by painting on their bodies or bark, and in caves or rock shelters. Drawing on archaeological and ethnological case studies from around the globe, this session brings together researchers exploring the complex and nuanced relationships between storytelling, rock art, memory, emotion and place.
Papers:
From Shapes to Action—Narrative Turns in Prehistoric Image-Making
Assoc. Prof. Michael Ranta, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China & Division of Archaeology, Dept of Cultural Sciences, Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden
Assoc. Prof. Tomas Persson, Division of Cognitive Science, Dept of Philosophy, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Prof. Peter Skoglund, Division of Archaeology, Dept of Cultural Sciences Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden
Jan Magne Gjerde, High North Dept, Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), Tromsø, Norway
Assoc. Prof. Anna Cabak Rédei, Division of Cognitive Semiotics, Dept of Language and Literature, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Pictorial storytelling, e.g. displaying and combining pictures in narrative scenes, hardly occurred during the Palaeolithic. Art historians and archaeologists have been interested in the realism of cave paintings in southern Europe, seen as a starting point for the development of later art. However, the earliest emergence of picture stories has been neglected, though fully-fledged forms in Mesopotamia and Egypt during the third millennium BCE have been thoroughly investigated.
Still, the first steps of creating narrative scenes arose arguably as early as around 5,000 BCE at different places in Europe. Clear examples can be found in northern Scandinavia, where rock carvings depict people, animals, and various activities in image sequences. The ability to portray life experiences with pictorial storytelling enlarged human communication. What made this innovation possible?
In an ongoing interdisciplinary project, we examine the emergence of pictorial storytelling as well as its socio-cultural relevance. Approaches from cognitive science, narratology, and semiotics will be applied to archaeological material. More specifically, we examine some of the earliest picture stories in northern Scandinavia, with a comparative perspective on apparently narrative turns in Portugal and Spain. In this paper, we shall outline this project, as well as discuss and present some concrete pictorial examples.
Belief Systems and Oral Traditions of the Folk Communities in Relation to the Rock Paintings of Jharkhand, India
Dr Seema Mamta Minz, Central University of Jharkhand
Dr Himanshu Shekhar, Central University of Jharkhand
Jharkhand state is part of the geological system comprised of the pre-Cambrian to Cenozoic periods and is one of the oldest geological lands of the Earth. With special geological attributes, Jharkhand contains signs of early human settlement, including rock paintings on the walls, ceilings and niches of sandstone rock shelters and geological faults of granite hills and hillocks in different parts of the state. The geomorphology and ecological features of the state enriched this land with forest, a series of plateaus and consequently presents difficult conditions for human settlements. Due to a closer proximity with nature, the Indigenous people of Jharkhand have taken rock painting as an integral part of their life since time immemorial. As a result, the rock art became an inseparable part of their culture that plays a vital role in their belief systems and oral narratives, and is passed from one generation to another.
This pragmatic research paper tries to bring forth the oral tradition of four important rock art sites in Jharkhand. It reveals how the rock art determines Indigenous people’s belief systems. During various festive occasions, some of the rock art sites in north and south Jharkhand, particularly Chatra, Latehar, Gumla and Simdega districts, became a part of ceremonies and rituals for both tribal and non-tribal communities. These shelters are an integral part of the rituals performed during Durgapuja, Shivaratri and pre-monsoon and post monsoon times. Some caves also have depictions of ancient warfare and are associated with folklore of historical battle events.
At the Crossroads of Stories and Art: Rock Art of Azerbaijan as a Form of Narrative
Sc. Dr Prof. Malahat Farajova, Dept of History of Art and Theory, Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Art, Azerbaijan
The rock art sites of Azerbaijan are places where the tradition of archaic art has been preserved since ancient times, from the late Upper Palaeolithic period to the Middle Ages. The existence of monuments such as shrines and caravanserais with similar petroglyphs on their walls in regions like Gobustan, the Absheron Peninsula, the Kalbajar Highlands, and Gyamigaya, attests to a long cultural continuity.
Through a comprehensive analysis of the rock art of Azerbaijan, it can be observed that these images are connected to cultic beliefs and representations reflected in the epics of the medieval Turkic Oghuz tribes, as well as in the traditions and customs of certain areas in Azerbaijan. Thus, the approximate historical and cultural context of the petroglyphs of Gobustan preserves a variety of narratives.
Rock Art of India and Stories
Dr Meenakshi Dubey-Pathak, Independent rock art researcher and expert
The practice of age-old beliefs, ceremonies and stories has nowadays become rare, and the most quoted examples of its continuation in rock art literature are from Australia and Africa. Until very recently, Indian rock art, too, was believed to have become a static cultural phenomenon, frozen in time. But, during work in Central India, I found that the traditional ceremonies and stories, followed since time immemorial, were still taking place in various painted shelters at auspicious times of the year. In Central India I had exceptional access to several tribes (Korkus, Muwasi, Gonds, Kols, Bhils, Pahari Korba and Maria Gonds) to gather detailed new information, testimonies and stories on those fast-disappearing cultural practices. Even if many images remain mysterious to us, India in general, and central India in particular, is one of the few places in the world where the perseverance of traditions may permit us to understand the meaning, or some of the meanings, of diverse motifs. For example, depictions of animal prey are a very important theme in the rock art. Some defied animals have been painted in gigantic form, with a decorated body with intricate patterns, and in some rock shelters they occupy a prominent place. Many animals are still revered and worshipped among the different forest tribes in India.
Rising Up: Digital Traces and Performative Indigenous Culture at Koonalda Cave, Southern Australia
April Nowell, University of Victoria, Canada
Keryn Walshe, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Indigenous Australian art relies on motifs and figures to visually symbolise a traditional story, myth and/or ritual. Intrinsic to these symbols is a narrated performance that builds the dynamic art. In contrast, parietal art such as digital tracings (tracings drawn in soft sediment covering the walls, ceilings and floors of some limestone caves) have not been considered as visually symbolic expressions of performative art. Using the >30,000 year old site of Koonalda Cave in southern Australia as our case study, we argue that digital tracings also operate within a performative space, with an emphasis on ritual maintenance – the spiritual propagation of a prized food or trade item. As with story, this item will then rise up.
Stories about Animal Extinctions, Caves as Portals, Fears and Desires: A View from the Levant on Upper Palaeolithic Rock Art
Ran Barkai, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
Despite one hundred years of intensive research in the Levant, no decorated Upper Palaeolithic caves have been found. This state of affairs is unexpected, since the Levantine UP Aurignacian culture bears striking resemblance to its depictions-rich counterpart in western Europe, and mutual contacts between Levantine and European groups seem likely. Natural caves are found in abundance in the Levant, and some were encountered by Aurignacian groups, so this absence has nothing to do with technological or cognitive human capabilities, nor with the lack of potential caves. I explore this intriguing conundrum in the light of human-animal relationships, prey availability and extinctions, and human ontological and cosmological beliefs. It is suggested that UP humans in Western Europe witnessed the disappearance and extinction of mammoths and rhinos on which they were heavily dependent, and that this was the major incentive to penetrate into deep and dark caves in order to convey the message to the entities beyond the walls of the caves. In the Levant, mega herbivores became extinct during the early Palaeolithic, so UP humans had other issues to deal with, and thus did not depict large mammals on cave walls.
Recent Amurdak Rock Paintings, Cross-cultural Encounters, Stories and Exchange in Northwest Arnhem Land, Australia
Paul S.C. Taçon, Distinguished Professor, Griffith University, Australia
Charlie Mungulda, Davidson’s Arnhemland Safaris, Australia
Sally K. May, University of Adelaide, Australia
Oral history, early ethnography and historical records inform us that Amurdak people of northwest Arnhem Land regularly engaged with all their neighbours for trade, ceremony, marriage partners and other reasons both within Amurdak Country and in that of their neighbours. Amurdak rock paintings reflect many aspects of this engagement, but recent rock art also illustrates a range of interactions with people of European and Asian descent since the 1800s. Furthermore, as Amurdak encounters with foreigners increased, the nature of contact and exchange between the Amurdak and their neighbours altered. In this paper, we explore the nexus between cross-cultural contact, stories, memory and rock art. Amurdak encounters with the British north of Amurdak Country in the mid-1800s, explorers passing through Amurdak Country in the mid to late 1800s, buffalo shooters in the late 1800s to early 1900s, missionaries and anthropologists in the 1900s are all documented in written records. Some are also illustrated in rock paintings and live on in oral history. We have written a soon to be published book that tells the story of the Amurdak people in detail for the first time, with traditional Amurdak songman Charlie Mungulda a central character. A synopsis is presented here.
Mongolian Rock Art: Story of the Camel, the Horse and the Deer
Tseren Byambasuren, School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Australia
The legend goes that the horse and the deer robbed the camel of his antler and tail. In rock art, however, the horse is man’s best friend, the most depicted character, whereas the deer is exquisitely illustrated as the deity or the conveyor between worlds. Both were commonly depicted during different periods of the Holocene. Camel, on the other hand, was first depicted in a Late Pleistocene cave in northern Mongolia along with ostrich, mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. This paper compares and analyses available datasets and seeks to answer how their depictions increase and decrease throughout time and what this tells us about changes in cultural practices and symbolism in Mongolia. The study also explores methods to distinguish between critically endangered wild camel species and domesticated Bactrian camels in the rock art of Mongolia. The findings offer new insights into the cultural significance of these animals and their roles in Mongolian history.
A Relational View on Rock Art: More-than-human World in the Land- and Soundscape of Finnish Rock Art
Ulla-Marja Valovesi, University of Turku, Finland
My study explores the interface of landscape, soundscape, and cultural practice of rock painting. From fieldwork at 140 rock art sites, covering practically the whole field in Finland, there emerges two constant patterns: the anthropo- and zoomorphic features of rock and the exceptionally good echo of singing. At this intersection the rock paintings demarcate both human- and animal- like features and are precisely the best place for singing with multiple echoes and an immersive soundscape.
The anthropo- and zoomorphic features which resound singing facilitate the experience of a living and conscious more-than-human world present at rock art sites. This has a close correlation with the old accounts of Sami sacred sieidi sites. These features contribute to relational states necessary for communication between the human and more-than-human world. They also reveal the presence of intangible sonic ontology and participate in the construction of cognitive landscape with reciprocal relationships in a multi-species network. In the framework of relational epistemology and ontology, rock art and sieidi sites construct analogous cognitive landscapes where situated knowledge formation contributes to a balanced way of life in a multi-species network.
The Earliest Known Rock Art is About Storytelling
Maxime Aubert, Griffith University, Australia
Recent discoveries in Indonesian caves have revealed the world’s oldest known cave paintings created by early Homo sapiens, dating back at least 51,200 years. Found in the limestone caves of Sulawesi (Indonesia) these ancient paintings depict narrative scenes, suggesting that storytelling was a fundamental aspect of early human culture. Unlike simple hand stencils or isolated animal depictions seen in other prehistoric sites, the Indonesian rock art presents dynamic compositions of human-like figures interacting with animals, possibly illustrating mythological or hunting-related stories. This challenges the Eurocentric view that figurative art and complex symbolism first emerged in Ice Age Europe. The presence of therianthropes—hybrid figures with both human and animal traits—suggests early forms of spiritual beliefs and oral traditions. These findings indicate that our ancestors were not only artists but also storytellers, using visual narratives to communicate ideas, share experiences, or reinforce social bonds. The discovery of such ancient storytelling art in Indonesia highlights the deep-rooted nature of narrative expression in human evolution and expands our understanding of early symbolic behaviour. This breakthrough underscores Southeast Asia’s critical role in shaping the origins of art and cognition, redefining how we perceive the emergence of human creativity.
The Spanish Expedition Mural, A Commemorative Navajo Pictograph Panel in Arizona, USA, and its Interpretation
Stephen C. Jett, Dept of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, University of California, Davis, USA
The Spanish Expedition Mural in Arizona’s Canyon del Muerto may memorialise an 1803 massacre of Navajos—old men, women, and children—by a Spanish punitive force. Costume and firearms are compatible with the period. The painted panorama of large figures depicts a cavalcade of horsemen; independent pictographs are nearby. I am the only commentator who has climbed to the elevated ledge to obtain a close-up view. Figures proposed to represent war dogs are, in fact, later-executed horses painted in smaller size. I test the notion that a mounted figure with a cross on his cloak and usually supposed to represent a Catholic priest but carrying a musket may instead display a cross of the religious and military Orden de Santiago. That Iberian order was present in Colonial New Mexico. Against this are that the cape in red-brown instead of the standard white (as worn by the other riders), and that the cross on the cape here lacks elaborations on the Santiago cross, which was red, not white in colour as here (perhaps the artist transposed the colours).
A Narrative Turn in Rock Art: How Iconic, Indexical and Conventional Aspects Differ Between the Earliest and Later Depicting Petroglyphs in the Northern Scandinavian Stone Age
Assoc. Prof. Tomas Persson, Division of Cognitive Science, Dept of Philosophy, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Assoc. Prof. Anna Cabak Rédei, Division of Cognitive Semiotics, Dept of Language and Literature, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Assoc. Prof. Michael Ranta, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China & Division of Archaeology, Dept of Cultural Sciences, Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden
Jan Magne Gjerde, High North Dept, Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), Tromsø, Norway
Prof. Peter Skoglund, Division of Archaeology, Dept of Cultural Sciences Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden
The first depictions in Scandinavian rock carving traditions appear around 9000 BCE of game animals such as elk or reindeer. A distinguishing feature is a strive for realism, or high degree of iconicity, with respect to size, outline shapes and details. The animals were represented as singular motifs, usually without interaction with other figures. While the full appreciation of these pictures arguably was dependent on socio-cultural conventions, their positioning in the natural landscape could also have added indexical meaning. They thus capture all three ways to convey pictorial meaning: through iconicity, indexicality and conventionality. If the pictures had any narrative functions, it must have taken place in interaction with the environment, or with an oral culture. Around 5000 BCE pictorial traditions still had game animals as the dominant motif, but now sometimes together with images of humans. Importantly, the images were smaller. Miniaturisation makes spatial organisation of images more efficient and manipulation of indexical relationships possible, which affords relations and interactions between figures into pictorial scenes. Furthermore, miniaturised images tend to have a considerably less attempt at realism. We will exemplify how early and later pictorial traditions differ in how they realise narrative potential through iconic, indexical, and conventional means.
Did They Paint What They Ate? An Archaeological Analysis of Zoomorphic Motifs and Associated Faunal Assemblages from Northwest Kimberley
Samantha Keats, Archaeology, University of New England, Australia
Images of animals are one of the most frequently depicted subjects on rock surfaces around the world. In Australia, the study of rock art has helped address some fundamental problems in archaeology including Aboriginal territoriality, resource use, social organisation and ideology.
This presentation will bring together zooarchaeology and rock art analysis to help determine how and in what ways did the depiction of animals in rock art and associated faunal remains express social, economic and environmental change in the northwest Kimberley. This will be achieved by adopting an integrated socio-environmental approach where landscape is used as a heuristic device to explore relationships between storytelling, rock art and connection to landscape and place.
Rock Art of Pagoda in Chengduo County, Eastern Tibet: Symbolic Signs of Ancient Shang-Shong Culture on the Qinghai Tibet Plateau
Yasha Zhang, PhD in History, Professor, School of Ethnology and Sociology, Minzu University of China, Beijing, China
Since 1983, a large number of petroglyphs have been discovered in Ali, the westernmost part of the plateau; since 1990, some cave paintings have been discovered in Nagqu, north plateau; Ssnce 2010, dense petroglyphs have been found in Yushu, east plateau; and from 2018 to 2021, a large number of tower shaped rock paintings were discovered in Chengduo County within the territory of Yushu Prefecture. In fact, we only truly realised today that the tower shape runs through the entire distribution area of rock paintings on the Qinghai Tibet Plateau from west to east, indicating that the tower shape is an important symbol in the rock art system of the Qinghai Tibet Plateau.
During the Tibetan period in the 7th century AD, Indian Buddhism was introduced into Xizang. Academics usually attribute the plateau pagoda rock paintings to the influence of Indian Buddhist art. However, according to the author’s research, the rock paintings of the Qinghai Tibet Pagoda were indeed influenced by Indian or Central Asian Buddhism in terms of form or style in the mid to late period, but their main source should be the primitive Bon religion on the plateau, which can even be traced back to earlier periods. The most direct evidence is that tower shaped artefacts dating back at least 2200-1800 years have been unearthed from tombs in the region, indicating that the tower shaped structures on the plateau not only belong to the local Bon cultural tradition, but also have a very close relationship with the legendary kingdom of Shang-Shong in ancient times on the plateau. Even though the introduction of Buddhist pagodas during the Tubo period had an impact on the local tower design, it did not completely change the original design concept in the area.
Due to the dense and ancient nature of the newly discovered on the tower shapes in Chengduo rock art, we believe that this area should be the origin of the tower shapes in the plateau rock art system, and the transmission direction of tower culture on the plateau should be from east to west, rather than the previously believed west to east direction.