Experts Fear Australia’s Raging Wildfires Have Destroyed 500-Year-Old Indigenous Rock Art in New South Wales

There is great concern for Australia’s indigenous cultural
heritage following the discovery that a rock art site in New South
Wales, Australia has been fatally damaged in the recent,
unprecedented wildfires that have raged for months. Rock art is an
ancient practice which includes paintings, drawing, and engravings
made on rock; some of the oldest examples can be found in New South
Wales. The country’s recent fires have put many important examples
in peril.

The site in New South Wales, with art thought to be 500 years
old, is situated on private land west of the city of Armidale,
located halfway between Brisbane and Sydney. On discovering the
damage the owner of the property on which the rock art site is
situated reached out to Steven Ahoy and Callum Clayton-Dixon,
representatives of the indigenous Anaiwan tribe, the traditional
owners of the land. They visited the site with two academics from
the University of New England: Mark Moore, an associate professor
of archaeology, and Dr. June Ross, an adjunct professor at the
university’s school of humanities.

“The art site is a part of the Anaiwan cultural landscape and is
directly connected to other significant art sites in the New
England area,” Ahoy said to The Guardian. “These art sites
are very rare due to the fact that art sites have been highly
damaged or destroyed in the past.”

There is added concern, as not all rock art sites in New South
Wales have been fully documented, meaning there is no way of
measuring the true extent of the damage. This site had only been
officially recorded relatively recently.

“The rock art sites in the New England granite country are
poorly known and have not been comprehensively studied or
identified, and this example demonstrates that they are clearly
under threat from the new bushfire conditions,” warned Moore.

On assessing the damage Ahoy, Clayton-Dixon, Moore, and Ross
came to the conclusion that the damage at this particular site was
irreparable. Large shards of granite had sheared off the rocks in
the heat and fire-damaged stone tools were found.

“These sites are vulnerable to further damage and erosion,”
Moore concluded. “They were already vulnerable because of the
drought. Stone artifacts have been exposed, lying everywhere on the
ground because there’s no grass to cover them.”

Ahoy spoke of the need to resume traditional bush-burning
practices in order to prevent further destruction.

“Fires and other weather patterns have greatly affected the
landscape,” he said. “And we as Anaiwan people have not had the
ability or opportunity to continue our land management
practices.”

A reckoning of the damage will continue.

The post Experts Fear Australia’s Raging Wildfires Have
Destroyed 500-Year-Old Indigenous Rock Art in New South Wales
appeared first on artnet News.