Rock art as a proxy for environmental change

该项目旨在鉴定北领地Warddeken土著保护区岩石艺术中的动物群，该地区没有更新世古生物动物群记录。阿纳姆地的岩石艺术保存了有关晚全新世之后考古上无法获得的过去动物物种的信息。作为过去和现在不断变化的人与动物关系的数据来源，这一储备一直没有得到充分利用。这项研究将利用土著居民的见解来增强动物学方法。在岩石艺术中安全地识别和确定动物物种的年代有望加强对过去人类与动物关系的理解。潜在的好处包括提高澳大利亚岩石艺术的国际意义，并为有关澳大利亚巨型动物灭绝、气候和环境变化的辩论提供信息。

The project aims to identify fauna in rock art in the Warddeken Indigenous Protected Area, NT, an area with no Pleistocene palaeontological fauna record. Rock art in Arnhem Land preserves information about past fauna species unavailable archaeologically beyond the Late Holocene. This repertoire has been vastly under-exploited as a source of data about changing human-animal relationships past and present. The research will augment zoological methods with insights from Aboriginal people. Securely identifying and dating fauna species in rock art is expected to enhance understanding past human-animal relationships. Potential benefits include enhancing international significance of Australia’s rock art and informing debates on megafauna extinctions, climate, and environmental change in Australia.