Rock Art Research

The recent recording and detailed appreciation of two rock art sites in western Victoria, Australia, revealed they contain attributes of significance to the interpretation of Gariwerd rock art and the overall appreciation of Aboriginal people’s use of its landscape. In particular, the recording of an infant’s hand stencil and a type of variant hand stencil, the first recorded from within the Greater Gariwerd rock art region. The row of variant hand stencils appears to be in association with the nearby infant’s hand stencil, suggesting the elevated catchment in which the site occurs was used during the period of the earliest rock art by family groups, in relatively short foraging excursions from the perimeter of the range. Also, while most hand stencils in the shelter were of left hands, suggesting that most of the stencillers were right-handed, two dry-pigment drawings are likely to have been produced by left-handed people. The two adjacent sites are seen as complementary, as both shelters have very different physical properties in addition to differing rock art repertoires. The two Boorpeck sites continue to enhance the importance of Gariwerd as a highly significant cultural place for local Aboriginal people.