Hand stencils with and without narrowed fingers at two rock art sites in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Abstract

The rock art at Gua Andomo and Gua Lampetia, two newly described sites in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, is dominated by hand stencils. The Gua Andomo stencils include a variant focused on Sulawesi which involves narrowed fingers. This variant has been documented for many of the hand stencils of southwest Sulawesi, including an example dated to the Late Pleistocene. The extent of the variant's distribution hundreds of kilometres to the east is demonstrated by the location of Gua Andomo towards the centre of Sulawesi, and other narrow-fingered hand stencils recently documented from the Matarombeo Massif and Muna Island. The widespread occurrence of these stencils suggests the expression of a shared cultural heritage with hunter-gatherer origins across a large swathe of Sulawesi. Show more