Why should we explore contemporary relationships to the archaeological record?

As archaeologists we use insights derived from the material culture record to tell stories about the lifeways of Indigenous peoples in the deep and recent pasts. Yet archaeological agendas oftentimes overlook the values of the contemporary significance and interpretations of the places and objects we seek to learn about. My aim is to challenge archaeologists to explore what frames peoples’ current encounters and interactions with the archaeological record to generate a deeper, more holistic understanding of its significance. While the objects, images and places we encounter may seem decipherable using descriptive and style-based explanations, the meanings are in fact complex, layered, nuanced and enveloped in a world of relationships involving Ancestral Beings (Dreamings), fauna, flora, human kin, social systems and every conceivable aspect of human life. To do this requires considering in greater depth concepts of agency, multivocality, affect, and the relational contexts that shape contemporary engagements to/with the archaeological record. To show how such an approach can work, I draw on work in Yanyuwa Country in the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria that has shaped my understanding of how the archaeological record can be conceptualised in present-day settings.

Some of the most influential moments I’ve had in my career involve Yanyuwa explanations for change in the rock art from the Sir Edward Pellew Islands. On several occasions, my colleagues (John Bradley, Amanda Kearney, both anthropologists) and I were asked by senior Yanyuwa men and women to record motifs they remember seeing during their travels across the islands. When we couldn’t find these images, I was disappointed but actively sought to explain their absence through a Western-trained lens, focusing on granular disintegrations and weather-related impacts. Instead, for the Yanyuwa men and women, their absence was met with sorrow. They explained that their disappearance was the result of the li-wankala (‘spirits of the dead’, or the ‘old people’) taking them away because too many Yanyuwa were sick and dying, the correct kin weren’t visiting Country anymore or carrying out the correct rituals, so the li-wankala became angry and took the paintings away.

Such an explanation then leads to the question: if paintings can be taken away, can the li-wankala or other spiritual entities add new paintings when circumstances change? The answer it turns out is yes. In 2019, members of the research team were invited by senior jungkayi (‘owners’) and ngimirringki (‘managers’) to visit Liwingkinya at Vanderlin Island to survey for more rock art sites. The evening prior to our departure, senior women and Bradley sat at the Yanyuwa town camp and sang the kujika (‘songline’) for Liwingkinya. The next morning, we flew to Liwingkinya with its jungkayi and ngimirringki. At one site we encountered two relatively small, dark red hand stencils that had the appearance of being freshly made (Figure 1). Mavis Timothy a-Muluwamara, the senior jungkayi, responded to this discovery with excitement and joy, stating, ‘From yesterday perhaps, or maybe early this morning those hand prints, the spirit beings [namurlanjanyngku] heard your words, when you spoke and sang for this Country, so that was what they did, they felt good, so the spirit beings from this place put their hand prints in the cave for you, they are newly made, they are not from a long time ago’ (li-Yanyuwa li-Wirdiwalangu et al. 2023:206).

Figure 1. Two hand stencils made at Liwingkinya (Vanderlin Island) by the namurlanjanyngku spirit beings on the morning the research team arrived (photograph: Liam M. Brady, 2019).

What these two examples show is how explanations about rock art—one of the most visible symbolic markers found in the archaeological record—are multivocal, dynamic, layered with meaning and emotion according to present-day circumstances, and part of a complex interconnected world involving the living and the dead. While stylistic and temporal analyses of Yanyuwa rock art are certainly useful in generating new knowledge situated in a Western science framework, contemporary Yanyuwa views are critical to adding another dimension to our analyses. Embedding a cultural explanation for the presence and absence of rock art according to health and wellbeing is particularly interesting given the present-day concerns and issues in remote Aboriginal communities.

Further exploration of the depth of the relational networks and cultural understandings that underpin peoples’ engagement with rock art reveal how no one part of the archaeological record exists in isolation. For example, just outside Borroloola is Bambarrani, a place associated with Wurdaliya clan Country. At one site is a unique painting of a faded human-like figure with black infill, white perimeter dots, a bulbous head and two large ‘horns’ on its head. Senior Yanyuwa, Garrwa, and Gudanji (both adjacent language groups) men and women identified it as a Baribari. Baribari are regarded today and in the past as evil, harmful, and dangerous, and are feared by all language groups in the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria, and further east into Wannyi Country. They can enter people and animals and cause illness and unpredictable behaviour and can even be used to kill people through a form of song-induced sorcery. People also believe that a lunar eclipse is the result of a Baribari trying to eat the moon; they used to sing a specific song when there was an eclipse to help the moon shine once again. Baribari are also associated with shooting stars; when they land on the ground, they become a Shooting Star Ancestral Being that belongs to two of the four clans from the region—Wuyaliya and Wurdaliya—and are associated with many places on Garrwa Country. They are mentioned in the Wuyaliya Spirit People Ancestral Being story where they met with the Spirit People near the lower Robinson River, and the Wuyaliya Dingo Ancestral Being at Fletcher Creek (li-Yanyuwa li-Wirdiwalangu et al. 2023). The Baribari is also worn as a body design in an abstract form during certain ceremonies including a-Marndiwa, which is still performed today in Borroloola. What this means is that when one takes a deeper look into a motif it becomes more than just a painting; it is a part of a relational network involving song, ceremony, kinship, clan identity, emotion (fear), sorcery, Ancestral Beings, and spans multiple language groups across broad expanses of the Gulf Country. Engaging with shared cultural understandings can reveal a whole other world of meaning to the archaeologist that can easily complement stylistic and temporal studies.

While I have provided examples from my research involving contemporary relationships to rock art, others have targeted aspects of the archaeological record including stone artefacts, grinding stones, and subsurface deposits (e.g. Brown 2020; Liebelt 2019; Urwin 2019). What unites this type of research is the possibility that there is more to the archaeological record than simply an interest in how it can help construct past lifeways. Such an approach represents a commitment to understanding the complex nature these objects, images and features play in daily life, how they are relevant today to the people who own and care for them, and form part of their contemporary identity. This approach can be taken even further by engaging with younger generations who are increasingly interested in the discourses around archaeology and the narratives of the old people. Their encounters with rock art for example, may be entirely different where first encounters may elicit awe, curiosity and perhaps even uncertainty. In this context, it can become possible to learn how engagement with objects, images and features can be shaped by life stages, acquired knowledge, kinship and relationships to Country.

If archaeologists choose to focus on and explore contemporary dimensions of the archaeological record, how would they do it? As archaeologists, we sometimes silo ourselves into our various specialities. The research approach I am encouraging, however, draws heavily on collaboration with (1) Traditional Owners; and (2) the social sciences, in particular working with ethnographers and linguists who are able to disentangle many of the complexities, nuances and subtleties involved in interpreting conversations about the archaeological record. I’ve realised there are many things that would have escaped me in my conversations with Yanyuwa men and women had it not been for an anthropologist (Bradley) who has a long-term relationship with Yanyuwa Families and is extremely knowledgeable in matters around language and change and continuity. At a time where archaeological science is garnering much attention in archaeological discourse, perhaps it is time to focus more attention towards contemporary frameworks of understanding as a means to creating a fuller, richer and more meaningful narrative of the archaeological record according to present-day contexts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.