Gilparrka Almira, a rock art site in Mithaka Country, southwest Queensland: cultural connections, dreaming tracks and trade routes

Abstract

This paper describes a rock engraving site in Mithaka Country in the Channel Country, southwest Queensland, where the majority of the motifs consist of crescents or variations on crescents. This is the first rock art site to be recorded in Mithaka Country, which is in a part of Australia's sandy deserts where rock art is uncommon.

Gilparrka Almira is placed within a broader social context by exploring its possible cultural connections with other sites and regions. Regional comparisons of the main motif type found that proportions decreased in all directions away from the site. Possible meanings for crescent imagery are then examined from ethnohistorical sources, indicating that crescent motifs may bear a range of “discontinuous” meanings that can be used in different contexts. It is suggested that crescent motifs may have moved/diffused across vast areas of the continent, following the north-south Lake Eyre Basin trade network, with Mithaka Country lying at its approximate centre, and other (east-west) trade routes, along the Dreaming tracks with which the trade routes are frequently associated. Motifs with “discontinuous” meaning ranges, like crescents, would have been particularly suitable for use in this scenario because of their ability to be readily incorporated into different social contexts.