Rock Art Research

The extensive rock art of Burrup Peninsula and Dampier Archipelago in the Pilbara region of Western Australia has been well documented over the past thirty years, yet there remains considerable confusion among rock art researchers about the rocks on which the art resides. Most of the art is on Neoarchean (2.7 billion years old) intrusive igneous rocks including granophyre, gabbro, dolerite and granite. Petroglyphs were produced by removing the outermost few millimetres of dark red-brown iron oxide to expose a pale-coloured 1-cmthick weathered clay-rich rim above the dark grey-green, very hard fresh rock.