Shevaun Wright and Neane Carter, Senior Solicitors at Terri Janke and Company (TJC) facilitated a bespoke True Tracks® workshop at the RAA Annual Research Workshop on 20 November 2024. True Tracks® is a framework developed by TJC that supports best practice engagement with Indigenous people and their Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) – this was the foundation of the workshop.  

The workshop supported participants to understand fundamental concepts regarding Indigenous engagement, and how to consider ICIP rights and Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDSov) to achieve meaningful and collaboration outcomes.  

In addition to exploring fundamental concepts, the workshop supported participants to consider what best practice standards look like in relation to work they are undertaking. It empowered participants to consider how their work is currently recognising ICIP rights and IDSov principles, and how to continue to improve on this in the future. Including case studies and group discussions allowed the participants to interact with the workshop and apply the content to their own circumstances.  

TJC continues to work with a variety of clients from differing industries to understand how their work interacts with ICIP and how to ensure best practice is implementation. This includes through delivering workshops, developing policies and protocols and drafting agreements. Through collective action, and implementing the learnings from the workshop, this ensures that the ICIP rights and self-determination of community are empowered. 

Mr Grant Nayinggul, Head Ranger of the Njanjma Rangers at the Old Man’s hand rock art site at Red Lily Lagoon. This rock art site is known for contact rock art paintings such as European boats and decorated hands. The site is within the proposed boundary of the Greater Red Lily Lagoon (Wulk) National Heritage site, currently under assessment.

Dr Tristen Jones, Senior Traditional Owner Mr Alfred Nayinggul and Njanjma Ranger Mr James Dempsey working on developing a rock art recording and monitoring work flow on Country, as part of the bim project in 2018.

Tristen Jones presenting at the RAA SAC annual research workshop

Dr Tristen Jones from the University of Sydney presented an overview of the research partnerships between the Manilakarr Clan – Senior Traditional Owner Mr Alfred Nayinggul and the Nayinggul families, and the Njanjma Rangers, and researchers such as Dr Jones, Dr Daryl Wesley (Flinders University), Dr Ian Moffat (Flinders University), and Dr Mel Marshall (University of Notre Dame Australia) who have been working on Country for more than 15 years.

Dr Jones undertook her PhD with Manilakarr from 2011 to 2017, with the research outputs underpinning the scientific values for a current National Heritage nomination and listing for Greater Red Lily Lagoon (Wulk).

The Manilakarr Clan and Njanjma Rangers are joining with Dr Jones, Dr Wesley, Professor Chris Clarkson and Dr Kasih Norman to develop a major collaborative research project supported by the Rock Art Australia Foundation in 2025.

Led by Professor Chris Clarkson (University of Queenland) the project will research Australian Indigenous socio-cultural and technological innovations, resilience and adaptive responses to significant climate change through deep time to present. The research collaboration will build upon the Greater Red Lily Lagoon (Wulk) National Heritage Listing by enhancing knowledges of the scientific significance of the area.

Most importantly the project will also function as a mechanism of resourcing support to build sustainable partnerships for the ongoing land management the Greater Red Lily Lagoon (Wulk) area, as well as provide Indigenous Ranger training and infrastructural support for land management and conservation programs.   

Murujuga in northwest Western Australia is one of the world’s largest rock art provinces, with ~2 million engravings, and has recently been nominated for UNESCO World Heritage Listing. The art and other archaeological evidence in this landscape are an important record of human response to the changing climate following the last ice-age. 130 m of sea level rise following Last Glacial Maximum (LGM ~22 kya) transformed Murujuga from an inland range to a coastal archipelago.

At the 2024 SAC Annual research Workshop we discussed our efforts to develop palaeoenvironmental records of the changing environment, landscape, and resources since the LGM. This research is part of the ARC Linkage Project Dating Murujuga’s Dreaming in collaboration with Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, which aims to use innovative scientific methods to date the rock art and stone features, and to contextualise the rock art sequence by providing detailed palaeoenvironmental records for the region. We presented our results so far from two palaeoenvironmental archives; laminated tufa carbonate and Tegillarca granosa shells.

The tufa, which is composed of calcium carbonate, formed in freshwater creeks over the past ~10,000 years. Intervals in deposition, accumulation rates and a range of geochemical and palynological evidence provides insights into changing hydroclimatic regimes and other environmental factors over this time frame. Initiation of tufa formation coincides with the influence of the ocean around the landscape, as the archipelago was forming.  Greater tufa accumulation during the mid-Holocene indicates prevailing wetter conditions shifting to comparatively drier conditions in the late Holocene.

Tegillarca granosa shells are abundant in late Holocene middens at Murujuga. Stable oxygen isotope (δ¹⁸O) analysis of shell growth increments in archaeological shells provides a record of past sea surface temperature (SST) and seasonal change, providing both climatic records and insights into Aboriginal shellfish harvesting. The δ¹⁸O patterns in the Tegillarca granosa shells show that harvesting was greatest during autumn, with almost no harvesting occurring in summer months.

The seasonal harvesting patterns may be influenced by rainfall and availability of water in the landscape. Work is ongoing to refine and integrate the datasets and provide a more comprehensive environmental history for the region.

Primary collaborators: Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, Amy Prendergast the University of Melbourne, Maurice Tucker, School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK, Matthias Leopold, Mick O’Leary, Patrick Morrison, The University of Western Australia

Freshwater tufa being investigated formed at a waterhole on Burrup Peninsula_image permission_MAC 

What was the climate like during the last glacial maximum or the end of the deglaciation period? There have been many attempts to answer this question using different types of bioclimatic evidence. These records, however, do not provide a good spatial representation of the palaeoclimate.

Using climate models overcomes this problem. The work in this project has developed climate model simulations at a previously unmatched resolution (10 km) for the last glacial maximum (21 ka), the end of the deglaciation (12 ka), and the middle of the Holocene (6 ka). With these simulation results we can quantify the palaeoclimate in terms of temperature and precipitation at very high resolution.

For example, the mean summer temperature in Broome was 27.2 °C during the last glacial maximum, 3.0 °C cooler compared to modern-day conditions. Summer precipitation in Broome during the last glacial maximum was 314 mm, a reduction of 251 mm compared to modern-day observations. The climate simulations also give us the possibility to understand the mechanisms underpinning these changes, for example continental penetration of the monsoon.

Ongoing work with these simulations will provide a repository that is accessible for those in the Rock Art Australia community.

Mean Annual Temperature for 6 ka, 12 ka and 21 ka

Mean Summer Precipitation for 6 ka, 12 ka and 21 ka

Above image left: Maddison Crombie presenting at the RAA SAC annual research workshop Above image right: ARC DP DP190102219 Ochre Archaeomicrobiology: A New Tool for Understanding Aboriginal Exchange Research Team.  Back (L-R) Claire Lenehan, Shane Tobe, Robert Edwards, Jolene Anthony, Cameron Isaacs, Maddison Crombie, Alex Cruz Front (L-R). Amy Roberts, Rachel Popelka-Filcoff, Claire Smith Not pictured: Venera May

Professor Rachel Popelka-Filcoff (Rock Art Australia Minderoo Chair in Archaeological Science) and PhD student Maddison Crombie presented at the RAA SAC Research Workshop in November 2024. They presented on recent results from the ARC DP DP190102219 Ochre Archaeomicrobiology: A New Tool for Understanding Aboriginal Exchange, which addresses identifying origins and movements of Australian archaeological ochre through the development of novel tools to help answer significant questions about past human behaviour. The presentation gave an overview of the project and also highlighted a key outcome of the project: the development of a novel non-destructive mineral magnetic method for ochre provenance.

Maddison has demonstrated that mineral magnetic measurements can be used to determine minerology and qualitatively fingerprint cultural ochre sources around Australia and worldwide. This novel application of mineral magnetism is an accessible, non-destructive method to provenance ochre.

The project is a collaboration between Rachel Popelka-Filcoff (University of Melbourne), Claire Lenehan, Amy Roberts, Claire Smith and Robert Edwards (Flinders University), and Shane Tobe (Murdoch University), and four Indigenous partner organisations: River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation, Barunga Community, Yinhawangka Aboriginal Corporation and Wintawari Guruma Aboriginal Corporation. Completing the team are three PhD students Maddison Crombie (University of Melbourne), Jolene Anthony (Flinders University) and Alex Cruz (Murdoch University), and research assistants Venera May and Cameron Isaacs.

Above image taken of the coast of Roti Island, Indonesia, during the survey.

Indonesian colleagues left to right: Dr Thomas Sutikna, Prof. Chris Clarkson, Dr Kasih Norman, Dr Sofwan Noerwidi. Jakarta in 2024 

Dr Norman presented on upcoming research in Indonesia in partnership with Rock Art Australia and the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN).

The research aims to build on our understanding of human cultural and technological response to periods of rapid climate change and devastating sea level rise at the end of the last glacial between 14,000 and 9000 years ago.

The project will test the hypothesis that rapid post-glacial sea-level rise during this time had a profound effect on humans living in regions where large areas of land were lost to marine inundation. It aims to investigate changes in occupational intensity, seafaring, new regional rock art styles and technology as people adapted to unprecedented environmental change.

Fieldwork will begin mid-2025. The research is generously funded by a RAA Strategic Grant.

I had the pleasure of providing an update on my research at the Rock Art Australia SAC Annual Research Workshop in November.

My research focuses on understanding how the hydroclimate in the Kimberley region has changed since the arrival of humans to the continent. To do this, I analyse sediment cores from floodplains of the Kimberley. These cores act like natural archives, holding clues about past rainfall, vegetation, and landscape.

So far, I’ve analysed the results of a core collected on Bullo River Station, on Mirriwoong and Gajirrawoong country, in the east of the Kimberley. The core reveals that the Kimberley experienced long-term climate stability between 65,000 years ago and the end of the last glacial at ~ 19,000 years age. The sediments show that conditions were drier during the glacial compared to more recent times, but that the climate became variable leading out of the glacial until a particularly wet period in the early Holocene (~12 – 8 thousand years ago). About 5,000 years ago, conditions grew significantly drier during the late Holocene, remaining that way until modern conditions began to emerge around 1,000 years ago.

Importantly, this work provides environmental context for the Kimberley’s human history. The stability in the glacial revealed in these sediments aligns with the enduring human presence in the region, suggesting that people adapted to relatively predictable environmental conditions over tens of thousands of years. Additionally, by reconstructing the climate, we can better understand the conditions under which the rock art of the Kimberley was created.

Collecting one of my cores at Birrindudu Station. Jordan Brook and Hamish McGowan hard at work on the shovels – the lengths we’ll go to collect a core when it gets stuck! 

Three of us from the Aboriginal Heritage Office (AHO) were thrilled to be able to attend the RAA SAC Annual Research Workshop in Brisbane in November 2024. What could we say to a group of savvy people about a project we hadn’t actually started? Well, who we are to start with!  

The AHO is a partnership of Councils (Ku-ring-gai, Lane Cove, North Sydney, Northern Beaches, Strathfield and Willoughby Councils) in Sydney that employed an Aboriginal Heritage Manager in 2000 to help better protect the amazing array of sites that have somehow survived in Australia’s oldest city. Protection is not just about deciphering the old site cards, the incorrect GIS locations, finding the sites again and monitoring them. It’s also about raising awareness about their importance at the local level. And training Council staff in how to avoid unintentionally damaging them.  

The project is about getting all our site records from the last quarter of a century (that sounds more impressive than 25 years!) and consolidating them in a new database. We want to make it easier to find information, research, see patterns, identify priority issues, share data and showcase the incredible Aboriginal heritage of this area. Pristine sites are special, but so too are the battle-weary survivors. The ones that faced 19th century picnickers, squatter era campers and all the years of visitation and indifference. Weeds, coastal erosion, extreme weather, graffiti, rock climbers and more!  

With around 120 rock art sites and 240 rock engraving sites in the partner Council areas, there’s a long list of things that can be done to better protect this vulnerable, fragile and irreplaceable heritage. Our new database will greatly assist in this.  

We were reenergized and reinspired by the RAA conference and all the positive work being done far and wide. A big thank you to the RAA team, the participants, the many Aboriginal communities looking after Country, and the benefactors and donors who enable RAA and everyone to do what they do. 

We are excited to share that the Western Yalanji Aboriginal Corporation (WYAC) had received funding from the Department of Environment and Science (DES) to explore the potential for national heritage listing of the Palmer/Mitchell limestone area. WYAC is one of four Aboriginal groups selected to receive funding for projects aimed at investigating significant locations that could ultimately lead to World Heritage recognition. 

This marks the second visit by our rangers to the area, and for the first time, we were honoured to be accompanied by an elder, whose presence added invaluable cultural insight to our work. The Palmer/Mitchell limestone area is renowned for its rich geological and archaeological significance. Excavations of four caves within the region have revealed that Aboriginal people have been using this landscape for at least 30,000 years. 

Many of the materials uncovered during these excavations are preserved by Dr. Bruno David at Monash University in Melbourne, offering a rare glimpse into the deep history of the area. This project represents an important step in recognizing and protecting the cultural and historical heritage of our people, and we are eager to continue this journey toward preserving and celebrating this remarkable part of our past. 

At Rock Art Australia, we believe the study of rock art is fundamental to understanding Australia’s story. We therefore believe these significant sites need to be managed and preserved. In support of this, we are focused on developing long-term collaborations and research partnerships with Aboriginal communities, universities, corporate organisaitons, government agencies and generous donors around the country to develop research projects which have social, cultural, economic and environmental benefits.

It is through your support that Rock Art Australia can fund this fundamental research. We invite you to consider making a tax-deductible donation. Your gift directly contributes to major breakthroughs in the field, and we simply cannot do it without you.