Nawarla Gabarnmang (Terre d’Arnhem, Australie)

• Main Authors: Jean-Jacques Delannoy, Bruno David, Jean-Michel Geneste, Robert G. Gunn, Margaret Katherine
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme 2019-05-01
• Series: Les Nouvelles de l’Archéologie
• Subjects: rock art site; archaeomorphology; Nawarla Gabarnmang; Arnhem Land; Australia.
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/nda/5110

Nawarla Gabarnmang is a major rock art site of northern Australia. Occupied by people for some 50,000 years, it contains an exceptional deposit of stone artefacts including one of the oldest ground-edge stone axes in the world (35,500 years) and an extensively decorated ceiling with close to 1 400 paintings in multiple panels and with numerous superpositions. The earliest evidence of art dates to 27,000­–26,000 years ago—an excavated broken piece of painted rock—with the most recent art dating to the late 19th-early 20th century. The site’s interdisciplinary study has shed information on the decorated panels, and from the excavations a robust cultural chronology has been revealed. Archaeomorphology has allowed us to understand the history of the site’s wall and ceiling configurations, surfaces on which the art is found: under its vast overhang, multiple ceiling and more that 50 rock pillars are found. Their study showed that the site’s morphology was crafted by people: it is, in effect, an architectural construct. Archaeomorphological research has enabled the recovery of human actions underlying the site that we see today.