Dampier Archipelago Petroglyphs: Achaeology, Scientific Values and National Heritage Listing

Abstract

In 2007 the Dampier Archipelago petroglyph province was included on the National Heritage List. This paper outlines the process of determining the province's scientific values. We briefly describe our findings, which are based on all existing site data lodged with regulatory authorities. We synthesize published and unpublished systematic survey and rock art recording data collected over three decades for research and environmental impact assessment. Based on this synthesis we provide the first thorough analysis and contextualisation of petroglyph sites across the Archipelago. We compare this art province with other art style provinces in the Pilbara.