00:00.00 Alan Welcome back everybody in the rock art podcast world. We're continuing with Liam Amanda and John talking about the rock art in Australia and and what it means the word rock art is tossed about here in the states all the time Amanda this isn't. Rock Art's not really the best word to use for this database. Please go ahead. 00:18.99 Amanda Kearney Well, you know this was this yeah well you know I mean it was interesting that um when you're working with ah indigenous groups who say to you know a painting is not a painting. Ah, when people are not themselves using the word rock art to describe this thing that as anthropologists and archaeologists we have come to know as rock art. You find yourself sort of going. Okay I feel like I'm trying to put a square peg in a round hole by talking about rock art all the time and and I think one of our biggest commitments on this project has been. To be led by yannua knowledge and yannu perspectives and yannu language like John has really emphasized the importance of the language to understanding this context in in the world and if rock art isn't yeah yeah. 01:06.45 Alan Amanda Amanda what do the? what do the indigenous people call the paintings. 01:12.75 Amanda Kearney Well, they can be a whole lot of things they can be old people. They can be dreaming. They can be an indication of the health and wellbeing of the the land and sea country that we're visiting people never really settle on that word rock art because. 01:28.85 Alan And and how do they perceive? How do they perceive the images are they sentient are they alive are they are they fashioned by Supernatural beings help us. 01:30.10 Amanda Kearney It's a country is very alive and very active. 01:41.92 Amanda Kearney Well supernatural is a bit of a funny word to use there but it would certainly be and and I will get John and Liam to also respond to this as well. But from my perspective. The idea is that. Country and the land and sea is alive and it's full of presences. These can be the presence of ancestral beings. They might be the presence of deceased kin who are moving through their land and sea country. So nothing is is as we in the west might necessarily understand it. So if everything has a kind of. Agency and the capacity capacity to be present in in-co then what we are seeing on rock surfaces could be created by the spirit beings the ancestors what people often refer to more generally as dreaming ancestors. Or they could be the presence and reminders of old people and kin who have passed away but who are still making up part of country. So for example, you know we've had instances where. You know it became very well known that we were a group that were always and forever talking about and looking for paintings and rock art. So and people would sort of see that as as I guess that we had a keenness and a desire to see rock paintings. 03:01.30 Amanda Kearney And on occasions you know we would go to do surveys and we would be on periods of time we were camping out on country and you know we'd be looking and looking and then for example, on 1 occasion. We found 2 of the freshest handprints that we had ever recorded in this context and. These were extremely ah vibrant red ochre handprints on 1 particular rock surface and when we returned back to the community that that evening to talk to people about this and I'm going to hand over to John because John is the one who often has these conversations in language. John do you want to recall the conversation about the super fresh handprints that we found. 03:44.75 john bradley Sure. Okay, so the day before we made this trip um to where these rock art prints were found. It's a country now. Let me just pre preface this ya country has over two thousand place names over its area. So location of place if you know the place names is very easily understood and that every place name actually has its own biography so we had organized with a ah group of traditional owners of yanua men and women. To go to a place called luwing guineya as soon as you say the name luwing guineya people look a little concerned. It's um, a place where it's felt that the the spirits of the old people are very present. It's a place therefore where you have to be very. Careful. So the night before we made the trip and we made the trip by helicopter. There was a lot of talk about this place called luwingya. There's a lot of ceremonial knowledge associated with this place called luwing guinea and we were sitting with a very old woman. 1 of the last really key knowledge holders of that country and her cousin who was going to travel with us and in that process songs were sung discussions were talked about this place called Luwng Guinea so we then traveled to luwng guineya. 05:16.55 john bradley As Amanda said we find these handprints that are just so vibrant. They are so rich in color and people were absolutely amazed by them. Photographs were taken. We went back to the community that evening and we sat down and talked about it of course Liam could show photos of the prince because Liam was always because of his knowledge. The photographer of all these sites and the decision that was made and the conversation around those handprints. Was about that the country and the old people were so happy that we had remembered them that they had put those prints there just before we had arrived to demonstrate the happiness that they were revealing the happiness of that country to us to be remembered. To be represenced and that those handprints weren't at all old at all. They were a phenomenamer from the day before or even the evening before and this is not unusual. This is just part of the conversation about this presentsencing in country. And how you must approach country so there's other sites that are actually the in which are what we might call humanoid in form they look human. Um and people will say well they're actually not art. 06:44.69 john bradley That's actually the bodies of the ancestors that have placed themselves into the rock and they're addressed as kin people talk to them people interact with them and this was the process through the whole journey that we made over these ten years I suppose for myself. It didn't strike me as unusual because that's the kind of thing that I learnt to expect over all the years I'd moved through that country. But I think as Amanda rightly said those handprints more than anything demonstrated. This constant engagement with country and while people are still in country in 203040 years time it will always be engaged with perhaps in ways that will surprise archaeologists that will surprise anthropologists and. Will surprise anyone that doesn't know if you like a annual way of thinking. 07:50.81 Amanda Kearney Does that help Alan was for a big good. 07:52.23 archpodnet 10 all there. 08:01.22 archpodnet Ah, we may have lost him stand by let me pause. Okay, you're live again. Go ahead. 08:01.96 Amanda Kearney Okay. 08:02.50 john bradley You? okay. 08:06.49 Alan Thank you? So I think it was John who is speaking correct. Can you hear me? Yeah, so by way of interpretation. It seems as though the the people the australian the indigenous. 08:14.42 Amanda Kearney Here. John John gave yeah 08:16.90 john bradley That's right? yes. 08:17.18 archpodnet But. 08:26.41 Alan Have a central centrally important aspect and that is the focus on people and their ancestors am I correct or incorrect. 08:39.68 Amanda Kearney Absolutely correct. Alan yeah I mean but it's those ancestors may not always be human as well. Um, and that's yeah. 08:45.58 Alan That's that's right, they could be they could be. They could be people they could be animal people or they can be some sort of spiritual people. But at their ancestral nonetheless. 08:55.80 Amanda Kearney Exactly and even the ancestral linkages in a play like in working in Yanua Country we we refer to it based on what yanua teach us as a concentric ecology. So this is ah this is an ecology and a life world that is. Defined and determined by relationships and connection. So that that is sort of the overarching premise for understanding everything in a annual in a annual context and the rock art becomes one part of that. 09:19.24 Alan So so so so so so yeah, so illuminate me you alluded to the fact that you have to understand relationships and ecology and and the interactions the ah the way the tether that occurs here help me understand that just. 09:31.90 Amanda Kearney Are. 09:38.26 Alan Even superficially. 09:40.94 Amanda Kearney Well look I think that everything is in relationships. So everyone that is ah as humans are connected through kinship but that every person is embedded in the annual world through relationships to non-human presences as well and that can include. Um, non-human animals the elements weather phenomena anything of the sorts that because it's a world that is mapped by kinship and relationships everything is in relation. So. It's really not. A system that operates on an on an individual kind of logic like we might have in a western context. It's rather one of hyperconnectivity and so a person can be in a relationship of ah of a deep and abiding sort of familial nature with everything in their yan world. And that gets reflected in the language that's reflected in day-to-day life. It's reflected in the way people organise their housing and their their raising of children how they might plan to travel across their land and sea country on any given day as well. So I mean relationships and this is something maybe Liam would might like to speak to about yeah those these relationships um we have to understand them and practice them as well in in order to do the research so we don't just come in as researchers. 10:50.87 Alan Yeah, that. 11:02.35 Alan liam le ah Liam mix explain explain that to me please what do you have to do to best understand and appreciate and access this cognitive map of the universe. 11:18.10 Alan Liam. 11:20.15 Liam Brady Um, ah well that's a tricky one. Yeah, it's um, it's just about those relationships and developing them and and nurturing them and Seattle from my perspective coming from archeology is that you know it's it's sitting down and and working with John and Amanda to listen with. Um, with the annual men and women that take us out there and you know that's the. 11:36.17 Alan Give give me give me a give me ah, give me a concrete example. So I can sort of wrap my mind around this you're going to a you're going to a particular site. You've got a native person with you. What is it that you have to understand or know or access. To better appreciate what you're going to do. 11:59.50 Liam Brady Well first, it's just a matter of listening of being able to just sit there quietly of quietly and just just listening to what people have to say the way that people act and react and and people's emotions with being at um, at particular places there's places that we've been to where. 12:00.14 Alan Listening. Thank you. 12:14.76 Liam Brady People are openly excited and happy to be here because they have good memories whereas there's other places that evoke sadness or fear. So. There's all these different emotional responses that you can that you can watch. You can learn about and it gives you another understanding of you know, rock art isn't just about identifying a picture on a rock surface. There are so many other dimensions associated with it that that we that we cover in this book to show that there are other ways of knowing and seeing rock art. So you know a lot of times archaeologists go in with just to focus on. You know what is the meaning of ah of a motif. How old is it and those sorts of questions. But when you bring in the anthropology the ethnography. Relationships with traditional owners. You can start to see a whole other world about rock art and I think that's why this book stands out first as being something very very different. You know these relationships that we have are are deep. They're complex and it shows that rock art is so is not a very simple thing to look at. There's um, it's. Layered in so many different ways. There's so many different angles to approach it with and it all starts with relationships with the traditional owners. 13:14.90 Alan So give me and it give me an example of one of the sites. So um, Liam give me an example of one of the sites that that you discovered this multi layeryered emotionality and connections and explain it how you've. Came to better understand these images and what they what the significance of the site was and how how it's best to ah, appreciate and understand it. 13:44.17 Liam Brady Sure. Okay, so my first time into the gulf of carpentaria happened in April Two Thousand and ten we arrived out there just after a cyclone had been through super hot superhuid um camping out on Southwest Island with a lot of senior yeah men and women one of the senior women Donna Norman asked us to go and record a rock shelter that she remembered camping at when she was a young girl so probably some time in the 1950 s and so she wanted she wanted us to go out there and record a painting of a donkey as she remembers seeing now. Donkeys were really interesting because they were introduced introduced species so they reflected um you know contact with europeans. 14:14.74 Amanda Kearney Um. 14:21.22 Liam Brady We went out to the site went out there with a lot of young kids and we scoured the site we looked everywhere for it. There were other paintings that were that were there but we could not see it and it was really disappointing from my point of view but at the same time I was thinking in my head. Oh maybe this is because it's in a coastal area. So. It faded away because there's so much rain and wind and that was you know me looking at it through this this western lens this western science lens and then you go back to to the campsite and and John is there talking to to the women about it and the explanation for it had nothing to do with with western science. It had nothing to do with. Micro-erosion or granular disintegration or anything like that Don said that it was because it was taken away by the spirit of of deceased kin it was taken away by the ancestors. They actually took that painting away because they were sad. They were sad that nobody was out visiting country anymore. Spirits were sad because people were dying in in the annual community back in waraloola. So it was. It was a response. It was a reaction and the the spirit the Liwangalla and they took that painting away and so it was a sad sort of um situation. But at the same time. The example that Amanda was talking about with those fresh handprints. Those fresh hand senses paintings could be made again when things were were in in good situations when people were happy when when people were back out onto country so you know those relationships between the paintings the yanu men and women. 15:49.35 Liam Brady And us is is this really interesting Network This interconnected world of of meaning and understanding and so as an archaeologist that completely threw me. It wasn't what I expected and it really forced me to to rethink and to to challenge the way that I've. Come to know and understand rock art and I think that's why this book is really important for archaeologists because it shows how important collaboration is with with anthropologists with linguists with traditional owners and the depths that you can go to to try and understand the complexity of this rock art. 16:20.58 Alan Fantastic John what did you bring in your own perspective on this from an historical standpoint. 16:26.96 john bradley Well well both Amanda and Liam have picked up on really important points and I sort of want to take it a bit deeper. You cannot and Amanda touched on this with kincentrism the whole notion of being kincentric. 16:38.74 Liam Brady As. 16:43.87 john bradley But we have to understand in yanua country kin-centrism also means politics and I mean sometimes really heavy politics between families and between understandings of what is present in country. So all our field work. Was predicated also by understanding the politics in country of how kin organized themselves politically. So for example in a yanu way of thinking you can relate to any area of country through four ways. 1 is through your father through paternal descent one is through your mother one is through your mother's mother or your mother's mother's brother and another is through your father's mother or your father's mother's brother and this is the. 17:31.22 Amanda Kearney Um, she. 17:31.46 Alan Ah, ah, why don't we Why don't Why don't Why don't we Why don't we hold that for the next section and we will dig deeper into the kincentric nature of the rock art see in the flip flop gang. But. 17:42.23 Amanda Kearney Um. 17:43.36 john bradley Okay, yeah, yeah.