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Pacific archaeology/prehistory so
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Of related interest
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Emplaced Myth
Space, Narrative, and Knowledge in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea
Edited by Alan Rumsey and James Weiner
2001, 296 pages, illus.
II
Cloth ISBN: 0-8248-1663-3; paper ISBN: 0-8248-2389-3 L
Bruno Davidis Logan Fellow at Monash University. nn andscapes all over the world are inscribed
He is the author of Landscapes, Rock-art and the Australia and Papua New Guinea share a number of important social, cultural, and historical features, Marking and Making Place with enduring physical marks. Socially con-
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Dreamingand coeditor of Bridging Wallace’s Line. making a sustained comparison between the two especially productive. This volume is the first in-depth structed and engaged, landscape inscriptions
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work to do just that: it situates the ethnography of the two areas within a comparative framework and (monuments, roads, gardens, rock-art) are
Meredith Wilsonis currently completing her Ph.D. in examines the relationship between indigenous systems of knowledge and “place”—an issue of growing rr foci of social experience and as such are
the Department of Archaeology and Natural History, concern to anthropologists. ii symbolic expressions that mold and facilitate
Australian National University. the transmission of ideas. Through inscription,
bb
landscapes become social arenas where the
Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago ee past is memorialized, where personal roots,
Revised Edition dd ambitions, and attachments are laid, and
Peter Bellwood where futures unfold.
1997, 400 pages, illus.
Cloth ISBN: 0-8248-1883-0; paper ISBN: 0-8248-1907-1 LL Inscribed Landscapesexplores the role of
inscription in the social construction of place,
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Continues to provide a robust and scholarly interpretation of the prehistory of the region. [This revised edition] power, and identity. Bringing together twenty-
is as timely and relevant today as the first edition was in 1985. Buy the book and enjoy. nn one scholars across a range of fields—primarily
—Archaeology in Oceania archaeology, anthropology, and geography—
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it examines how social codes and hegemonic
ss practices have resulted in the production of
particular senses of place, exploring the
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physical and metaphysical marking of place
Cover art: Dreaming gornbu(hawks), Garnawala, Wardaman Country, Australia. (By permission of the Wardaman)
aa as a means of accessing social history.
Cover design:Bookcomp, Inc
pp
Two major conceptual themes link the chapters
ee of this book: social participation and resistance.
Participation involves interrelationships between
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people and place, the way inscribed environ-
ments and social experience intertwine; resist-
University of Hawai‘i Press ance relates to the rejection of modes of domi-
Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822–1888 nation and their inscription in the landscape.
The volume explores these themes in three
www.uhpress.hawaii.edu parts: the first focuses on rock-art, the second
on monuments, and the third describes how the
Edited by Bruno David and Meredith Wilson
physical and metaphysical articulate to inscribe
places with meaning.
Inscribed Landscapes
Inscribed Landscapes
Marking and Making Place
edited by
Bruno David
Meredith Wilson
University of Hawai‘i Press
Honolulu
© 2002 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
07 06 05 04 03 02 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Inscribed landscapes : marking and making place / edited by Bruno David and Meredith Wilson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8248-2472-5 (alk. paper)
1. Human geography. 2. Inscriptions. 3. Monuments. 4. Sacred space. I. David, Bruno.
II. Wilson, Meridith.
GF50 .I55 2002
304.2—dc21 2001052824
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines
for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.
Designed by Bookcomp, Inc.
Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group
CONTENTS
Preface vii
one Introduction 1
Meredith Wilson and Bruno David
Part I ROCK-ART
two The Signature of Terror: Violence, Memory, and Landscape at Freeport 13
Chris Ballard
three Ritual Response: Place Marking and the Colonial Frontier in Australia 27
Ian J. McNiven and Lynette Russell
four Spaces of Resistance: Graffiti and Indigenous Place Markings in the Early
European Contact Period of Northern Australia 42
Bruno David and Meredith Wilson
five Rock-Art as an Indicator of Changing Social Geographies in Central Australia 61
Andrée Rosenfeld
six Wahi Pana: Legendary Places on Hawai‘i Island 79
Georgia Lee
seven Making Sense of Petroglyphs: The Sound of Rock-Art 93
Paul Rainbird
eight The Narrow Doors of the Desert: Ancient Egyptian Roads in the Theban
Western Desert 104
John Coleman Darnell
nine Rock-Art and Landscapes 122
Paul S. C. Taçon
v
vi Contents
Part II MONUMENTS
ten A Sense of Time: Cultural Markers in the Mesolithic of Southern England? 139
Michael J. Allen and Julie Gardiner
eleven A Place of Special Meaning: Interpreting Pre-Historic Monuments in
the Landscape 154
Chris Scarre
twelve Monuments in the Pre-Historic Landscape of the Maltese Islands: Ritual and
Domestic Transformations 176
Simon Stoddart
thirteen Imperial Inscriptions in the Aztec Landscape 187
Emily Umberger
fourteen Negotiating the Village: Community Landscapes in the Late Pre-Historic
American Southwest 200
Michael Adler
Part III BEYOND THE MARK
fifteen Anchoring Mobile Subjectivities: Home, Identity, and Belonging among Italian
Australian Migrants 219
Mariastella Pulvirenti
sixteen Inscriptions as Initial Conditions: Federation Square (Melbourne, Australia)
and the Silencing of the Mark 230
Paul Carter
seventeen Sarawak on Stage: The Sarawak Cultural Village and the Colonization of Cultural
Space in the Making of State Identity 240
Sallie Yea
eighteen The Edge of the Sacred, the Edge of Death: Sensual Inscriptions 253
Marcia Langton
nineteen The Work of Inscription in Foi Poetry 270
James F. Weiner
Contributors 285
Index 289
PREFACE
This book is an archaeological and social in the production of a sense of place and belonging.
anthropological exploration of the role of We thus decided to redirect the book somewhat, to
place marking in place making. The ap- focus less on the fixed landmark and more on the
proaches taken by the various authors are varied, humanization of landscapes, on the process of social
although all are united in the view that landscapes and sensual anchorage in place. The book’s new
are not simply “out there,” but constructed in social direction echoed more closely our intellectual inter-
engagement. People physically inscribe spaces, such ests and curiosities.
as in rock-art, monuments, and the like, in the We have followed a number of conventions in the
process of dwelling. More intimately, people’s spatial following pages. For one, we write of the nonwritten
experiences are inscribed through the senses. Both past as “pre-History” rather than “prehistory.” We do
people and place are codefined in a process of this as an attempt to avoid the evolutionary loaded-
engagement that involves inscription. It is various ness of the notion of prehistory (while at the same
dimensions of this codefinition that are explored in time being well aware of the history of the terms pre-
this book. history/prehistory, as influentially used in particular
The initial seeds for this volume were laid in 1998 by John Lubbock and Daniel Wilson during the mid-
when we considered assembling a group of to late nineteenth century).
researchers to discuss how the marking of place Following Paul Taçon and Christopher Chip-
affects human interaction and perception. At first we pindale’s lead (1998, An archaeology of rock-art
were particularly interested in how places marked or through informed methods and formal methods,
decorated with rock-art gained significance as 1–10 in The Archaeology of Rock-Art, edited by C.
socially marked territorial (already-owned) spaces. Chippindale and P. S. C. Taçon, Cambridge: Cam-
The psychological and social implications of such a bridge University Press), we hyphenate “rock-art” to
process of place marking are considerable, but have distinguish such practices from the Western artistic
remained largely unexplored by archaeologists. program, which is closely tied to a market economy.
However, we were not entirely satisfied with the We also sometimes refer to radiocarbon dates and
initially bounded archaeological direction for this sometimes to calibrated ages. Wherever radiocarbon
book. It was clear that it was not inscriptions that dates are presented, they are listed as “years B.P.”; cal-
were at stake, but people’s relationships with places ibrated ages are presented as “years ago.” We use the
vii
viii Preface
convention C.E. (Common Era = A.D.) and B.C.E. McNiven, David Mercer, Mariastella Pulvirenti,
(Before the Common Era = B.C.), in acknowledg- Lynette Russell, and Sallie Yea read and commented
ment of the widespread use of the Western calendar on drafts of various chapters, and two anonymous
by people of all faiths. referees read the entire manuscript—a big thank you
There are many people who made this book pos- to all. Many thanks also to Gary Swinton for drafting
sible. First and foremost we thank the authors them- most of the figures; Colin Hope for technical advice;
selves for producing what we think is a wonderful set the Department of Geography and Environmental
of stimulating essays. Thanks also to the University of Science at Monash University, under whose auspices
Hawai‘i Press, and in particular our editor, Pamela the volume was edited; Monash University for a
Kelley, and copyeditor, Eileen D’Araujo, for their Logan Fellowship to B.D.; and Bill Harney and The
patience and assistance in seeing this book through. Wardaman Aboriginal Corporation for permission to
Nick Dolby, Colin Hope, Marcia Langton, Ian reproduce the cover photograph.
one
Introduction
Meredith Wilson and Bruno David
Each way of conceptualising artefacts will tend to bring with it
a particular understanding of society.
Julian Thomas, Time, Culture, and Identity
This book explores various dimensions of is placed on “art” (Part 1). But the issues we address
inscription as place marking from an archae- apply equally to “monuments” (Part 2) and to other
ological/anthropological perspective. Our forms of inscription, physical and metaphysical
focus is the making of place through its physical and (Part 3).
metaphysical marking: what Bradley (1997) aptly
termed “signing the land.” Rock-art, monuments, and
other social and personal expressions of place marking MEANING AND ONTOLOGY
signal a cultural presence and give the land social sig-
nificance. At the same time, it is in the social con- One of the first questions usually asked of an
struction of a sense of place that people’s identities inscription is “what does it mean?” This is a useful
unfold. place to begin, because “meaning” is a multiladened
A book that focuses on place marking in the con- term and thus a source of much confusion (espe-
struction of past and present social landscapes cially in rock-art research). Most commonly it is
requires a consideration not just of monuments taken to refer to a particular individual’s or cultural
fixed in the landscape, but of their social and, where group’s understanding of an inscription. In this
possible, ontological contexts. We have drawn on sense, meaning is about emic understanding, or
two major conceptual themes in this volume in an accessing someone else’s experience of the world.
attempt to explore such contexts: participation and To understand inscriptions such as rock-art,
resistance. We explore these themes in this intro- three questions must be asked:
ductory chapter.
Because most of the chapters in this book focus on 1. What does a picture represent (e.g., a picture of
rock-art as a way of marking place, much emphasis a pig)? Gell (1998:25) described representation
1
