Some Implications of Pleistocene Figurative Rock Art in Indonesia and Australia

Abstract

Until recent years, most western scholars had overlooked the existence of rock art in Indonesia or viewed it as being of limited antiquity and of largely regional-interest only. In 2014, however, an Indonesian-Australian team announced the results of a program of Uranium-series (U-series) dating of rock art in Maros-Pangkep, Sulawesi, including a surprisingly early antiquity of at least 39.9 ka for a hand stencil and 35.4 ka for a figurative animal painting. U-series dating more recently has yielded minimum ages for figurative animal painting of 40 ka in Kalimantan and 45.5 ka in Maros-Pangkep, with the latter presently constituting the world’s oldest dated example of representational art. Indonesia’s previously little-known rock art has been propelled to the global stage. Here, we examine how scholars are grappling with the implications of ‘ice age art’ in Indonesia and its integration, for the first time, into models of early human artistic culture in other parts of the world. In particular, we discuss the seemingly close stylistic parallels between Late Pleistocene figurative animal art in Indonesia and early representational depictions of animals in the Arnhem Land and Kimberley regions of northern Australia. We consider scenarios that could explain these similarities, including the idea that a single figurative rock art style spread into Australia from Wallacea during the early movements of our species in the region.