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Bradshaw rock paintings, Bradshaw rock art, Bradshaw figures or The Bradshaws, are terms used to describe one of the two major regional traditions of rock art found in the north-west Kimberley region of Western Australia.〔McNiven, Ian and Russell, Lynette ''Appropriated Pasts: Indigenous Peoples And The Colonial Culture Of Archaeology'' Rowman Altamira 2005 ISBN 9780759109070 p. 147〕 The identity of who painted these figures and the age of the art are contended within archaeology and amongst Australian rock art researchers. These aspects have been debated since the works were first discovered and recorded by pastoralist Joseph Bradshaw in 1891, after whom they were named.〔Davidson, Daniel Sutherland ''Aboriginal Australian and Tasmanian Rock Carvings and Paintings'' Hesperian Press (American Philosophical Society) 2011 () ISBN 9780859053754 p. 132-133.〕 As the Kimberley is home to various Aboriginal language groups, the rock art is referred to and known by many different Aboriginal names, the most common of which are ''Gwion Gwion''〔Doring, Jeff ''Gwion Gwion: Chemins Secrets Et Sacrés Des Ngarinyin, Aborigènes D'Australie'' (Gwion Gwion: Secret and Sacred Pathways of the Ngarinyin Aboriginal People of Australia), Könemann 2000 ISBN 9783829040600 p. 55〕 or ''Giro Giro.''〔Worms, Ernest ''Contemporary and prehistoric rock paintings in Central and Northern North Kimberley'' Anthropos Switzerland 1955 p. 555〕 The art consists primarily of human figures ornamented with accessories such as bags, tassels and headdresses.〔Donaldson, Mike (''The Gwion or Bradshaw art style of Australia’s Kimberley region is undoubtedly among the earliest rock art in the country –but is it Pleistocene?'' ) (free download) ''L’art pléistocène en Australie (Pré-Actes)'', IFRAO Congress, September 2010 p. 4.〕 ==Discovery and study== Rock art in the Kimberley region was first recorded by the explorer and future South Australian governor, Sir George Grey as early as 1838. This rock art is now known as Wandjina style art. While searching for suitable pastoral land in the then remote Roe river area in 1891, pastoralist Joseph Bradshaw discovered an unusual type of rock art on a sandstone escarpment. Bradshaw recognised that this style of painting was unique when compared to the Wandjina style. In a subsequent address to the Victorian branch of the Royal Geographical Society, he commented on the fine detail, the colours, such as brown, yellow and pale blue, and he compared it aesthetically to that of Ancient Egypt. American archaeologist Daniel Sutherland Davidson briefly commented on Bradshaw's figures while undertaking a survey of Australian rock art that he would publish in 1936. Davidson noted that Bradshaw's encounter with this art was brief and lacked any Aboriginal interpretations; furthermore, as Bradshaw's sketches of the art were at this time the only visual evidence, Davidson argued that they could be inaccurate and possibly drawn from a Eurocentric bias. The rediscovery of the original mural after more than a century has shown that Bradshaw had a remarkable gift for reproduction without photography, and that Davidson’s criticisms were unfounded in the absence of the original.〔Rainsbury, Michael P (2013) Mr Bradshaw's drawings': reassessing Joseph Bradshaw's sketches. Rock Art Research: The Journal of the Australian Rock Art Research Association (AURA) 2012 Volume 30 243-253〕 Bradshaw's figures and their existence as an artistic tradition was questioned; articles and books on these works were not published until the 1950s. With the growth of anthropological interest in Australia, research in the Kimberley bought with it an awareness of Aboriginal art and culture. However, attention to the Bradshaw art was sporadic. Several researchers who encountered the Bradshaw-type of paintings during expeditions to the region were members of the 1938 Frobenius Institute expedition. Agnes Schultz noted that unlike with Wandjina art, Aboriginal people showed little interest in the Bradshaw paintings, although they recognised them as depictions of bush spirits or ''D’imi.'' When pressed, the expedition's Aboriginal guide explained their creation:〔 Anthropologist Robert Layton notes that researchers such as Ian Crawford, who worked in the region in 1969, and Patricia Vinnicombe, who work in the region in the 1980s, were both told similar creation stories regarding the Bradshaw-type art. Since 1980, more systematic work has been done in an effort to identify more Bradshaw rock art sites in the Kimberley. The most notable has been the work undertaken by amateur archaeologist Grahame Walsh, who began work there in 1977 and returned to record and locate new sites up until his death in 2007. The results of this work produced a database of 1.5 million rock art images and recordings of 1,500 new rock art sites. He expanded his records by studying superimposition and style sequences of the paintings to establish a chronology that demonstrated that ''Bradshaw art'' is found early in the Kimberley rock art sequence. He proposed that the art dated to a period prior to the Pleistocene.〔 Many of the ancient rock paintings maintain vivid colours because they have been colonised by bacteria and fungi, such as the black fungus, ''Chaetothyriales.'' The pigments originally applied may have initiated an ongoing, symbiotic relationship between black fungi and red bacteria. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bradshaw rock paintings」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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