Picturing Pacific Prehistory - Open Research

Rock-art and history in the western Pacific: a review

Rock -art: the invisible component of Pacific archaeology

Comparative analyzes of Western Pacific rock art, which aimed to relate findings to broader reconstructions of Pacific prehistory, have been performed by Hugo (1974), Specht (1979), Rosenfeld (1988), and Ballard ( 1992a). As a result, none of the rock art models constructed by these authors are derived from a systematic comparison of regional motifs.

The AES and the APT

The role ofVanuatu

One way to address this issue is through an in-depth study of the rock art of a single region where APT and AES elements appear to be present. The methodological program developed to investigate the relationship between the rock art of Vanuatu and the western Pacific is explored in more detail below.

The archaeology of rock-art: what does it have to offer in the Pacific?

In order for rock art to be included in broader reconstructions of the past, especially in the western Pacific where there was. The study of rock art in the western Pacific is currently deprived not only of a chronological foundation, but also of a strict spatial framework.

Thesis methodology: choosing between informed and formal methods

A forma l approach to studying meaningful versus coincidental similarity
The use of statistics in comparing rock-art
Phenetic similarities

This thesis represents a first step in this direction, with the ultimate goal of developing a preliminary model of rock-art transformation for the Western Pacific region. Other examples of rock art thought to reflect processes of colonization come from Australian evidence.

The sample area

Rock-art
Rock-art techniques: painting and engraving
Picture and motif

Homogeneous rock art patterns may also suggest processes of interaction and communication involving the borrowing and dissemination of motifs. I therefore adopted the term 'painted rock art' to refer to rock paintings produced with either wet or dry pigment.

Research process

The thesis concludes in Chapter 9 (Part 4) with a final comparison between the rock art of Vanuatu and other sites in the western Pacific. A preliminary model for the emergence and transformation of various Western Pacific rock art 'traditions' is presented.

Working with the Vanuatu Cultural Centre ....................................................................... 1 4

In Part three of the thesis the aim is to develop a detailed spatio-temporal model for the rock art of Vanuatu. In Chapter 7, transformations in the rock art of Vanuatu through time are considered using both chronometric and relative methods of dating.

Introduction

1500 years in Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, a region long seen as an island-studded barrier to the eastward expansion of Pacific colonization. This threshold was finally breached, culminating in the eventual landings on Easter Island in the east and Hawai'i in the north around the 9th century AD, and New Zealand in the south in the 13th century AD ( Spriggs and Anderson 1993).

The Pleistocene

The Southeast Asian Neolithic'

If a map of the major AN subgroups with an understanding of the sequence of language splits from Proto-Austronesian is superimposed on a map of the spread of the Neolithic in the region, it fits almost perfectly (Spriggs 1989: 608). This is largely a result of the apparent lack of immediately pre-Lapita known sites in the region; a situation which will only be rectified by future research.

What is Lapita?

The La pita ceramic series
Lapita exchange networks and Lapita as 'trade ware'
La pita through space
La pita through time

Some Lapit features that may play a role in rock art analysis are briefly detailed below. Such evidence of regionalization has major implications for the expected spread of rock-art conventions during the Lapita period.

Indigenous or intrusionist? The La pita debate

The indigenists
A middle-ground approach

Tridacna shell adzes, a component of the Lapita culture complex, were already in use by 7000 B.C. present in Island Melanesia (e.g. in Manus) (Frederickson et al. Contacts between Southeast Asia and Island Melanesia during the 'Metal Age' may have had an impact on rock art production throughout the region, and may provide a clue to the timing of the emergence of particular rock art styles.

Out to Polynesia

There appear to have been two main episodes of colonization on the islands of Micronesia, the first movement around 3500 BP to the Marianas (Butler 1994) and the second around 2000 BP when the rest of Micronesia was settled (Rainbird 1994) (Figure 2.1). The languages of Micronesia are all considered part of the Austronesian language family, but those of the Marianas and Palau are very different both from each other and from the core Micronesian languages spoken in the Caroline and Marshall Islands to the east (Rainbird 1994: 299 ).

The demise ofLapita?

Reportedly, a number of volcanic events have occurred in the Bismarck Archipelago over the past 2,500 years, which have disrupted the settlement of the region. In New Caledonia, Balabio pottery has been identified in the north and the plum style in the south, both styles beginning around 2000 BP.

The last 700 years

Conclusion

Overall, the rock art of these regions (which is mostly engraved) differs from the painted assemblages of Sialum and Manus and the engraved assemblages of Remote Oceania (New Caledonia, Tonga and Micronesia). All of the painted rock art at Velementi (which makes up over 90% of the images at the site) was recorded.

Pacific rock-art: a summary of research

Introduction

Several authors (Specht 1979; Rosenfeld 1988; Ballard 1992a) have proposed the existence of broad spatial and temporal patterns in western Pacific rock art. The level of detail in rock art depictions in each region varies accordingly.

Previous regional models of western Pacific rock-art

David Hugo (1974)
Jim Specht (1979)
Andree Ro senfeld (1988)
Chris Ballard (1992)

Specht also noted variations in the appearance of rock art between sites on a local scale. Summarizing his findings, Specht tentatively suggested the presence of a 'style' for the engraved rock art of the western Pacific.

Discussion

And finally, that the cohesion of the motif series suggests that a tradition of painting developed in tandem with the migration of Austronesians. In the introductory chapter to this thesis it was pointed out that one of the major shortcomings of previous research on the western Pacific research is the lack of a systematic analysis of motives.

Pacific rock-art: a description

Many of the rock art sites mentioned in this section are found on distribution maps, especially those included in the statistical analyzes presented in Chapter 4 (see Figures 3.7-3.11). In this section I treat the AES and APT as if they were real entities and describe the rock art of the region in relation to them.

Eastern Indonesia, East Timor and West Papua/Irian Jaya

Most of the Highlands and Lowlands of Papua New Guinea have not been mapped. Many of the decorated rock shelters contain platform burials that Roder suggests are contemporaneous with the most recent black rock art of the region (see below).

Mainland Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea (PNG) Highlands

Simbu Province and Eastern Highlands Province
Western Highlands Province
Southern Highlands Province

All petroglyphs were made outside the living memory of Wilde's informants (Wilde 1974b: 251). Hand stencils also figure prominently in the early Tabulinetin petroglyphs of the MacCluer Gulf.

Papua New Guinea lowlands interior

Sepik provinces
Morobe Province
Central Province

Much of the known rock art of Morobe Province is found in two dense groups of sites in the Buang Valley and at Sialum on the coast of the Huon Peninsula (Figure 3.8). Almost all of the rock art consists of painted anthropomorphs, many of which are said to depict the individuals whose remains were deposited in the cliffside shelters (Plate 5).

Papua New Guinea coast

Milne Bay Province

As for most other rock art regions of Papua New Guinea, few clues are available about the age of the rock art from the Sogeri/Port Moresby region. The age of the engravings in the Milne Bay Province is not known, but decorated shell found in a mound deposit at Collingwood Bay that resembles the Goodenough Bay rock art (including an S-shaped double spiral, and a stylized face showing resembling the Type1 levels identified by Spriggs 1990b) have been dated to between 500-1000 BP (Egloff 1979).

Selecting PNG sites for detailed motif analyses

Island Melanesia

New Britain
Manus Province (Admiralty Islands)
New Ireland Province
Solomon Islands
New Caledonia

Each of these locations marks further transformation in the patterns observed in this summary of Pacific rock art. There are few examples of the rock art especially found in New Britain's assemblages.

The rock -art of Micronesia

Large footprints, noted on Kiribati and at Pohnpaid, resemble those described on San Cristobal in the Solomon Islands. Boat motifs, recorded on Moen and at Pohnpaid, are also recorded in the Solomon Islands.16 Some of the engraved motifs seen in Micronesia have analogues in painted assemblages elsewhere in the western Pacific, including sun symbols (Pohnpaid) and lizard forms ( Kiribati).

Fiji-Western Polynesia

Fiji
Tonga and Samoa

In contrast, rock art located inland from Malake (between Yasawa and Valovoni, Vanua Levu) is thought to have been produced relatively recently due to the presence of post-contact imagery, including a "single-propeller airplane" (Hill 1956 : 83). . To test this perception, some of the rock art of Tonga and Samoa is included in the motif analyzes presented in Chapter 4.

The rock-art of Central Eastern and marginal Polynesia

The Marquesas
The Society Islands
Easter Island
New Zealand

Chronometric dating on some of the rock art from Kaho'olawe Islands provides support for this relative sequence (Stasack et al. Most of the figurative rock art in Hawai'i is rectilinear and very different in style from that of Island Melanesia (except Fiji) .Some of the painted rock art in the South Island is found high up on rock surfaces in inaccessible places.

An overview of the rock-art of the Pacific

The APT, AES and language

Some of the motifs Ballard originally associated with the APT are said to have been found on Metal Age artifacts, such as the boat motifs on Dong-son kettle drums. In particular, variants of the scroll are commonly associated with the APT in Eastern Indonesia, especially within the Manga style in the MacCluer Gulf.

Conclusions

Exceptions include some of the rock art at the cave site of Vatuluma Posovi (northwest Guadalcanal), mentioned in Chapter 3, and other cave sites in Vanuatu (see Chapter 6). In this chapter, a model of the chronology of rock-art transformation for Vanuatu is proposed.

A comparative view of western Pacific rock-art

Introduction

In the second section, the results of a series of frequency analyzes on non-motif data (e.g. geology, the height of motifs, topography and technique) are presented and compared with previous results obtained on similar data by Specht (1979) and Ballard (1992a). In the third section, the results of several multivariate (MV) analyzes on motif data are presented and described, and the usefulness of MV statistics as a tool for studying rock art in the western Pacific is evaluated.

Analytical methods

Data quality
Data registration
Motifs
Description

The last row in the spreadsheet (site 160) contains information about the rock art of a country (New Caledonia) rather than an individual site; the rock art sites of New Caledonia were combined and treated as a single site due to a lack of data available at the site level (see Frimigacci and Monnin, 1980).22. A picture resembling an animate or inanimate object in the everyday world was assigned to one of these motif categories (eg, anthropomorphic).

Frequency results: regional distributions of non-motif variables

Distribution of painted and engraved sites
Colour
Topographic context
Technique and location
Distance from the coast
Language
Height ........................................................ ................ ...... .......................................... lOO

Although the number of sites with black pigment rock art is small, their relative frequency increases in the eastern direction. It is also notable that the majority of rock art sites in my sample derive from coastal and coastal-inland areas.

Multivariate (MV) Analyses

Motif data
Multivariate techniques

Locations from East New Britain and Northwest Guadalcanal are also found in this part of the graph. Milne Bay, East New Britain and West New Britain are grouped at the top left of the distribution.

Discussion: centre or periphery?

Methods for testing these questions through analysis of Vanuatu rock art are outlined. 39 of the 40 painted rock art sites in Vanuatu contain black pigment (in contrast to the dominance of red pigment elsewhere in the western Pacific).

Vanuatu: the archaeology

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of aspects of Vanuatu's physical landscape and prehistory to provide a basis for analyzing and interpreting the distribution of rock art. First, pottery has been the primary source of evidence used by archaeologists to develop models of cultural change in Vanuatu.

The physical environment.. ................................................................................. ............. ll9

Volcanism
Seisnlic activity

It is within these elevated reef contexts that most of Vanuatu's petroglyphs have been found (Chapter 6). Seismic activity (as well as a range of other natural phenomena such as salt deposition and the growth of microorganisms on rock art surfaces) have clear implications for the long-term survival of rock art sites.

The social landscape: archaeology

Early archaeological research in Vanuatu
The American component
The French component
Les Groube and his successors on Aneityum and in the Banks
A moratorium on research
The Australian National University-Vanuatu National Museum (ANU-VNM)
Further 'Pieces of the Vanuatu puzzle'
Recent archaeology in northern Vanuatu

Jose Garanger started the French component of the PAAP in 1964 when he began research in the central islands. Ifo is said to contain three types of decorated pottery: serrated stamped (a single shard found in a secondary context); incised (including a single 'Lapita curvilinear incised' shard, three typical Mangaasi shards and a single embossed shard); and impressed (usually fingernail impressed), rarely found in the central islands.

Discussion: an overview of archaeological and linguistic evidence

Overall, evidence from the linguistics provides several lines of support for the archaeological picture emerging from Vanuatu, particularly in terms of the direction of colonization and settlement. Linguistically, Vanuatu forms part of the 'Southern Oceanic linkage' of the Central-Eastern subgroup of Oceanic languages (Lynch 1999: 441).

The last 1000 years in Vanuatu

Only in the interior of a few of the larger islands (Tanna, Santo, Malakula and Ambrym) was resistance completely successful. The social and cultural effects of such large dispersals of ni-Vanuatu to other parts of the world were far-reaching.

Conclusion

The aim of this section was to measure similarities and differences in Vanuatu rock art. The two earliest forms of red rock art in Vanuatu are hand stencils (Redl) and amorphous shaped (SA) solid pigment motifs (Red2).

The rock-art of Vanuatu: an analysis of non-motif and motif

Introduction

In the first part of this chapter, the distribution of rock art sites in Vanuatu is described and each site is assigned an analytical code. A more detailed province-by-province description of the history and study of the rock art sites in Vanuatu can be found in Appendix 6.1.

Distribution of rock-art sites in Vanuatu

On Malakula, dense concentrations of both painted and engraved rock art can be found in limestone caves in the raised northwestern part of the island. These regions were selected for the specific purpose of acquiring a north-south sample of Vanuatu's rock art.

The rock-art of Vanuatu: a brief history of research

Some of the rock art sites listed in Figure 6-7 have a VCHSS code (usually decimalized, e.g. 13.14) next to them, indicating that they are registered with the Vanuatu Cultural Centre. These were followed by a wave of very general references by archaeologists to the Aneityum petroglyphs (Elizabeth and Richard Shutler in 1966, Les Groube in 1972, Norma McArthur and Winifred Mumford in 1973, and Matthew Spriggs in 1978 and 1979).

Non-motif variables

Technique
Geology
Colour
Topography
Location ................................ ........................ .. ......................... ................ .... .............. l48

Roe noted that the most common pigment color in rock art sites in Vanuatu is black (or blue-black), with less frequent occurrences of red and white, and even less occurrence of polychrome (two locations). Of the 87 known rock art sites in Vanuatu, 51 are on or within vertical cliffs of (mostly limestone) elevated terraces.

Discussion: the distribution of non-motif variables

The overall conclusion that can be drawn from this section is that, while Vanuatu is characterized by many of the non-motif variables expressed at other western Pacific sites (e.g. inaccessibility), the archipelago also demonstrates several quantifiable differences, such as the relatively high density of black pigment relative to red pigment, and the number of inaccessible black paintings. Before attempting to answer this question, in the next section I conduct detailed analyzes of the motifs exhibited in Vanuatu's rock art; examining their distribution through space.

Motif categories and motifs

Five carving sites on the east coast of Erromango [ER 19-ER24] (collectively referred to as the Potnarvin sites) were excluded from the cross-site analysis but are discussed in light of the results.34. The total number of rock photos derived from each of the five island regions included in the analysis are given in Figure 6.12.

The classification of motif categories

Figurative versus non-figurative motifs

Each of the following frequency analyzes is based on the total number of figurative and non-figurative motifs including duplicate codes (n=6314). The total number of double non-figurative coded figurative motifs in each country can be determined by subtracting

Vanuatu-wide motifs

Figurative engravings
Non-figurative engravings
Figurative paintings
Non-figurative paintings
Figurative motifs common to both paintings and engravings
Non-figurative motifs common to both paintings and engravings

The most prominent attribute among the widely distributed non-figurative carved motifs in Vanuatu is the central (or off-centre) cup, which is associated with circles, semicircles (SSf9), ovals (0f6), triangles (Tf6), leaf shapes (Lf2) and ovate (vEGf3). The central line motif category is the most represented non-figurative painting category with a wide distribution in Vanuatu.

Regional motifs (inter-island)

Non-figurative motifs common to paintings and engravings

Non-figurative motifs in both media are presented with both rectilinear and curvilinear strokes. Regionally distributed non-figurative motifs include diamond (vD26, vD27) and leaf-shaped motifs (vL34) in the north-central region (Malakula and Lelepa) and a contiguous circle motif (Ccl8), which is restricted to the north (Figure 6.36). ).

Island-specific motifs

Non-figurative motifs common to paintings and engravings

Most non-figurative engraved motifs with an island-specific distribution have figurative equivalents (Figure 6.40). Non-figurative motifs of island-specific distribution common to both media found on Malakula include a circle (vC138), a leaf with a central cross (vL31), an anthropomorphic with a leaf-shaped torso (vL32), a face (vCP18), and an anthropomorph with feelers.

Discussion: the distribution of motifs in Vanuatu

Some facial motifs are exclusive to the north (Face8/vEgf4), while other motifs (often with a marine theme) are exclusive to the south (Fish6/vL20, vL40, Cd24 and vU7). Most of the regionally distributed painted motifs are found in the north-central region (Malakula and Lelepa) (Figures 6.35 and 6.36).

A multivariate impression of the s imilarities and differences between rock-art sites in

The most common non-figurative motif resembles a 'face', frequently encountered in Northwest Malakula assemblages (n=18). Places with only paintings are distributed in the upper half of the graph, above the dashed line.

Conclusion: a tale of two media

In general, black stenciling is an older form of rock art in Vanuatu than black linear. Rectilinear rock art was probably introduced late in the rock art production sequence in Vanuatu.

Vanuatu rock-art through time: a preliminary chronology

Introduction ................................................. ..................................................................... l67

As part of this thesis, funding was obtained from the Australian Museum to start a program of direct dating of the rock art of Vanuatu. Does this mean that the majority of the black linear rock art was also produced within the European contact period.

Relative dating

Maewo
Malakula
Lelepa
Erromango

Black hand stencils appear to replace red hand stencils and other red forms in the order of petroglyph production on Malakula. As on Malakula and Lelepa, examples of red rock art on Erromango are superimposed by other engineering classes.

Discussion: space, time and motifs

The STd12 motif is usually represented in the Painted Black4 category, which appears relatively late in the Vanuatu stone art production sequence (see below). Cupule configurations (except the large CP1 motif on the Maewo) appear after the Red1 and Red2 rock-art and before and after the Black1 hand stencil.

Conclusion

In this chapter, the results of the previous two chapters are revisited to generate a model of rock art transformation for Vanuatu. Based on the results of the previous two chapters, it may now be appropriate to consider certain repertoires of rock art in Vanuatu as 'traditions'.

Towards a model of rock-art transformation for Vanuatu

As with other forms of material culture, similarities and differences in Vanuatu rock art overlap in a non-uniform manner. Towards the end of this chapter, a series of statistical analyzes are performed to situate Vanuatu rock art in a western Pacific context.

A (Lapita period) engraving tradition (Vanuatu-wide)

A (Lapita period) Red1/Red2 painting tradition (Vanuatu-wide)

A (Mangaasi period) Black! tradition

A Rectilinear tradition of painting and engraving

Situating Vanuatu within a western Pacific context: non-motif variables

Technique
Geology
Topography
Non-motif variables: conclusions

Situating Vanuatu within a western Pacific context: motifs

Conclusion

Conclusion: the rock-art of Vanuatu in a western Pacific context

Introduction: developing a model of rock-art transformation for the western Pacific

The AES: a redefinition

Cupule-based tradition: from c. 3300 BP
Spiral-based tradition: from c. 3300 BP, but flourishing after c. 2000 BP
Rectilinear (engraving) tradition: from c. 1000 BP

The APT: a redefinition

Redl/Red2 tradition: from c. 3000 BP
Curvilinear red tradition: from c. 2000 BP
Rectilinear red tradition: from c. 1400 BP
Rectilinear tradition: from c. 1000 BP

Conclusion and future recommendations

The AES and APT: analytical fictions?
The future of rock-art research in the western Pacific