Rock Art Research

Here we report AMS radiocarbon ages associated with rock art in the Kimberley, north-west Australia, from beeswax motifs (26), charcoal pigments (7), a fragment of ochred baler shell used for mixing pigments, and mineral deposits from the base of a pecked cupule. With one exception, these ages are for motifs or paraphernalia associated with the Wandjina painting tradition, which appears to have included a number of contemporaneous art ‘styles’. The radiocarbon determinations range from ~3800 bp to modern, a distribution very similar to that previously obtained for wax figures in Northern Territory rock art.