Aboriginal rock art occurs throughout the lands of the Laura Sandstone Basin from Princess Charlotte Bay to the Great Dividing Range, in an ordered continuum of styles. Archaeologists attribute this varied spatial distribution to an Australia-wide trend of cultural differentiation which occurred from mid-to-late Holocene times. Given the links between Aboriginal rock art, cultural identity, land and social systems and the long history and intricate nature of Aboriginal-land relationships in Cape York Peninsula, such variability is predictable. However, there are also underlying strands of homogeneity and relatedness. This study identifies, and attempts to account for, some of the discontinuous and continuous spatial trends in Laura Basin rock art in their natural and cultural contexts, in order to shed light on the origins and role of rock art style in south eastern and south central Cape York Peninsula.
1984The Political and Economic Basis of Kuku-Yalanji Social History. PhD Dissertation. University of Queensland.
Anderson, Chris & Richard Robins
1988Dismissed due to lack of evidence? Kuku-Yalanji sites and the archaeological record. In Betty Meehan & Rhys Jones, eds. Archaeology with Ethnography: An Australian Perspective. Canberra: Australian National University. 152–205.
Bahn, Paul & Michel Lorblanchet
1993Introduction. In Paul Bahn & Michel Lorblanchet, eds. Rock Art Studies: The Post-Stylistic Era or Where Do We Go From Here? Oxford: Oxbow. v-viii.
Beaton, John
1985Evidence for coastal occupation time-lag at Princess Charlotte Bay, Queensland) and implications for coastal colonisation and population growth theories for Aboriginal Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 20: 1–20.
Bednarik, Robert
1994A taphonomy of palaeoart. Antiquity 68: 68–74.
Brady, Liam & John Bradley
2014Images of relatedness: patterning an cultural contexts in Yanyuwa rock art, Sir Edward Pellew Islands, SW Gulf of Carpentaia, northern Australia. Rock Art Research 31: 157–176.
Chase, Athol
1978Between land and sea: Aboriginal coastal groups in Cape York Peninsula. In
Papers and Proceedings of a Workshop on the Northern Sector of the Great Barrier Reef
. Townsville: The Great Barrier Marine Park Authority. 159–178
Chase, Athol
1980Cultural continuity: land and resources among east coast Cape York Aborigines. In Neville Stevens & Alan Bailey, eds. Contemporary Cape York Peninsula. Brisbane: Royal Society of Queensland.
Chase, Athol & Peter Sutton
1981Hunter-gatherers in a rich environment: Aboriginal coastal exploitation in Cape York Peninsula. In Allen Keast, ed. Ecological Biogeography of Australia. The Hague: W. Junk. 1819–1852.
Chase, Athol & Peter Sutton
1987Australian Aborigines in a rich environment. In William Edwards, ed. Traditional Aboriginal Society. South Melbourne: Macmillan. 68–95.
Chase, Athol, Peter Sutton, Michel Lorblanchet & Robert Layton
1975Flinders Islands expedition. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Newsletter 3: 34–37.
Cole, Noelene
1988The Rock Art of Jowalbinna. BA (Hons) thesis, James Cook University.
Cole, Noelene
1989Rock art of Agate Creek. Report to Qld Department of Environment and Heritage.
Cole, Noelene
1992Human figures in the rock art of Jowalbinna. In Jo McDonald & Ivan Haskovic, eds. State of the Art: Regional Rock Art Studies in Australia and Melanesia. Melbourne: Australian Rock Art Research Association. 164–173.
Cole, Noelene
1995Rock art in the Laura-Cooktown region, S.E. Cape York Peninsula. In Mike Morwood & Douglas Hobbs, eds. Quinkan Prehistory: The Archaeology of Aboriginal Art in S.E. Cape York Peninsula. St Lucia: University of Queensland. 51–70.
Cole, Noelene
1998Eel and Boomerang: An Archaeological Study of Stylistic Order and Variation in Aboriginal Rock Art of the Laura Sandstone Basin. PhD Dissertation, James Cook University.
Cole, Noelene
2010aAncient art and modern Australians – continuity in the Laura art system, Cape York Peninsula.
Proceedings of the Conference of the International Federation of Rock Art Organisations
. 1023–1036.
Cole, Noelene
2010bPainting the police: Aboriginal visual culture and identity in colonial Cape York Peninsula. Australian Archaeology 71: 17–28.
Cole, Noelene
2011Rock paintings are Stories: rock art and ethnography in the Laura region, Cape York Peninsula. Rock Art Research 28: 107–116.
Cole, Noelene & Alice Buhrich
2012Endangered rock art: 40 years of management in the Quinkan region, Cape York Peninsula. Australian Archaeology 75: 66–77.
Cole, Noelene & Bruno David
1992“Curious drawings at Cape York Peninsula”: An account of the rock art of the Cape York Peninsula region of north-eastern Australia and an overview of some regional characteristics. Rock Art Research 9: 3–26.
Cole, Noelene & George Musgrave
2006Colouring stone: Examining categories in rock art. Rock Art Research 23: 51–58.
Cole, Noelene, George Musgrave, Laura George & Danny Banjo
2002. Community archaeology at Laura. In Sean Ulm, Catherine Westcott, Jill Reid, Anne Ross, Ian Lilley, Jonathan Prangnell & Luke Kirkwood, eds. Barriers, Borders, Boundaries: Proceedings of the 2001 Australian Archaeological Association Annual Conference. St Lucia: University of Queensland. 137–150.
Cole, Noelene & Percy Trezise
1992Laura engravings: a preliminary report on the Ampitheatre site. In Jo McDonald & Ivan Haskovic, eds. State of the Art: Regional Rock Art Studies in Australia and Melanesia. Melbourne: Australian Rock Art Research Association. 83–88.
Cole, Noelene & Alan Watchman
1993Blue paints in prehistory. Rock Art Research 10: 59–61.
Cole, Noelene & Alan Watchman
1996Archaeology of white hand stencils of the Laura region, North Queensland, Australia. Techne: La science au service de l’histoire de l’art et des civilisations. Paris : Laboratoire de Recherche des Musées de France. 82–90.
Cole, Noelene & Alan Watchman
2005AMS Dating of Aboriginal rock art in the Laura region, Cape York Peninsula: protocols and results of recent research. Antiquity 79: 661–678.
Cole, Noelene, Alan Watchman & Mike Morwood
1995Chronology of Laura Rock Art. In Mike Morwood & Douglas Hobbs, eds. Quinkan Prehistory: The Archaeology of Aboriginal Art in S.E. Cape York Peninsula. St Lucia: University of Queensland. 147–160.
Commonwealth of Australia
1962Dept. of National Development. Bureau of Mineral Resources and Geology and Geophysics. Cape Melville 1:250 000 map. Notes
Cook, Ben, Mark Kennard, Doug Ward & Brad Pusey
2011The Hydroecological Natural Heritage Story of Cape York Peninsula. An assessment of natural heritage values of water-dependent ecosystems, aquatic biodiversity and hydroecological processes. Retrieved 6 August 2014 from: [URL].
David, Bruno
1994A Space Time Odyssey: Rock Art and Regionalisation in North Queensland. PhD Dissertation, University of Queensland.
David, Bruno & David Chant
1995Rock art and regionalisation in north Queensland prehistory. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 37: 358–528.
David, Bruno & Noelene Cole
1993Rock art and inter-regional interaction in Cape York Peninsula. Antiquity 64: 788–806.
Dixon, Joan & Linda Huxley
1985Donald Thomson’s Mammals and Fishes of Northern Australia. Melbourne: Nelson.
Flood, Josephine
1987Rock art of the Koolburra Plateau. Rock Art Research 4: 91–126.
Flood, Josephine & Nicky Horsfall
1986Excavation of Green Ant and Echidna Shelters, Cape York Peninsula. Queensland Archaeological Research 3: 4–61.
Franklin, Nathalie
1996An analysis of rock engravings in the Mt Isa region, northwest Queensland. In Peter Veth & Peter Hiscock, eds. Archaeology of Northern Australia: Regional Perspectives. St Lucia: University of Queensland. 137–149.
George, Tommy, George Musgrave & the Ang-Gnarra Rangers
1995Our Country Our Art Our Quinkans. Laura: Ang-Gnarra Aboriginal Corporation.
Gordon, Willie with Judy Bennett
n.d. Guurrrbi: My Special Place. Cooktown: Guurrbi Tours.
Gorecki, Paul, Miranda Grant & Matthew Salmon
1995Rock art from the Gregory Range, Gulf of Carpentaria. In Sean Ulm, Ian Lilley & Anne Ross, eds. Australian Archaeology ’95. Proceedings of the 1995 Australian Archaeological Association Annual Conference. St Lucia: University of Queensland. 219–225.
Gunn, Robert
2011Eastern Arrente rock art and land tenure. Rock Art Research 28: 225–239.
Hale, Herbert & Norman Tindale
1933Aborigines of Princess Charlotte Bay, north Queensland. Records of the South Australian Museum 5: 63–116.
Hale, Herbert & Norman Tindale
1934Aborigines of Princess Charlotte Bay, north Queensland. Records of the South Australian Museum 5: 117–172.
Haviland, John
1979Guugu Yimidhirr. In R.M.W. Dixon & Barry Blake, eds. Handbook of Australian Languages. Volume 1. Canberra: Australian National University Press. 27–180.
Keen, Ian
1997A continent of foragers: Aboriginal Australia as a ‘regional system’. In Patrick McConvell & Nick Evans, eds. Archaeology and Linguistics. Aboriginal Australia in Global Perspective. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. 261–274.
King, Philip Parker
1827Narrative of a Survey of the Inter-tropical and Western Coasts of Australia Performed between the Years of 1818 and 1822. London: Murray.
McConnel, Ursula
1931A moon legend from the Bloomfield River, North Queensland. Oceania 2: 9–25.
McConnel, Ursula
1933The symbol in legend. Psyche 13: 94–137.
McConnel, Ursula
1936Cape York Peninsula (1) The civilised foreground. Walkabout 2: 17–20.
McConnel, Ursula
1953Native arts and industries on the Archer, Kendall and Holroyd Rivers, Cape York Peninsula. Records of the South Australian Museum 11: 1–39.
McDonald, Jo
2008Dreamtime Superhighway: Sydney Basin Rock Art and Prehistoric Information Exchange. Canberra: ANU Press.
McDonald, Jo & Peter Veth
2012The social dynamics of aggregation and dispersal in the Western Desert. In Jo McDonald & Peter Veth, eds. A Companion to Rock Art. Oxford: Blackwell. 90–102.
Mathews, Robert Hamilton
1898Aboriginal customs in North Queensland.
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland
13: 33–37.
Morwood, Mike
1992Changing art in a changing landscape: a case study from the upper Flinders region of the North Queensland Highlands. In Jo McDonald & Ivan Haskovic, eds. State of the Art: Regional Rock Art Studies in Australia and Melanesia. Melbourne: Australian Rock Art Research Association.
Morwood, Mike
1995The archaeology of Quinkan rock art. In Mike Morwood & Douglas Hobbs, eds. Quinkan Prehistory: The Archaeology of Aboriginal Art in S.E. Cape York Peninsula. St Lucia: University of Queensland. 1–4.
Morwood, Mike, Douglas Hobbs & David Price
1995Excavations at Sandy Creek 1 and 2. In Mike Morwood & Douglas Hobbs, eds. Quinkan Prehistory: The Archaeology of Aboriginal Art in S.E. Cape York Peninsula. St Lucia: University of Queensland. 71–91.
Morwood, Mike
2002Visions of the Past. The Archaeology of Australian Aboriginal Art. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin.
Morwood, Mike & Douglas Hobbs
eds.1995aQuinkan Prehistory: The Archaeology of Aboriginal Art in S.E. Cape York Peninsula. St Lucia: University of Queensland.
Morwood, Mike & Douglas Hobbs
1995bThemes in the prehistory of tropical Australia. Antiquity 69: 747–768.
Mulvaney, Derek John
1976Chains of connection. In Nicolas Peterson, ed. Tribes and Boundaries in Australia. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. 79–94.
Officer, K
1992The edge of sandstone: style boundaries and islands in south-eastern New South Wales. In Jo McDonald & Ivan Haskovic, eds. State of the Art: Regional Rock Art Studies in Australia and Melanesia. Melbourne: Australian Rock Art Research Association. 6–14.
Qld Land Tribunal
1996Aboriginal Land Claim to Lakefield National Park.
Rigsby, Bruce
1980aThe language situation on Cape York Peninsula: past, present and future. In Judith Wright, Napier Mitchell & Pamela Watling, eds. Reef Rainforest Mangroves Man. Cairns: Wildlife Preservation Society. 5–7.
Rigsby, Bruce
1980bLand, language and people in the Princess Charlotte Bay area. In Neville Stevens & Alan Bailey, eds. Contemporary Cape York Peninsula. Brisbane: Royal Society of Queensland. 89–94.
Rigsby, Bruce
1997Structural parallelism and convergence in the Princess Charlotte Bay languages. In Patrick McConvell & Nicholas Evans, eds. Archaeology and Linguistics. Aboriginal Australia in Global Perspective. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. 169–178.
Rigsby, Bruce
1999Aboriginal people, spirituality and the traditional ownership of land. International Journal of Social Economics 26: 963–973.
Rigsby, Bruce
2002Kuku Thaypan, Introduction (draft m/s provided to the author).
Rigsby, Bruce
2003The Languages of the Quinkan and Neighbouring region. Unpublished report to the Quinkan and Regional Interpretive Centre, Laura.
Rigsby, Bruce
2005The languages of eastern Cape York Peninsula and linguistic anthropology. In Bruce Rigsby & Nicolas Peterson, eds. Donald Thomson: The Man and Scholar. Canberra: Academy of Social Sciences. 129–142.
Rigsby, Bruce & Athol Chase
1998The sandbeach people and dugong hunters of Eastern Cape York Peninsula: Property in land and sea country. In Nicolas Peterson & Bruce Rigsby, eds. Customary Marine Tenure in Australia. Sydney: University of Sydney. 192–218.
Rosenfeld, Andrée
1981Quinkan Country. In David Yencken, ed. The Heritage of Australia: The Illustrated Register of the National Estate. South Melbourne: Macmillan Australia. 87–90.
Rosenfeld, Andrée
1982Style and meaning in Laura rock art: a case study in the formal analysis of style in prehistoric rock art. Mankind 13: 199–217.
Rosenfeld, Andrée
1997Archaeological signatures of the social context of rock art production. In Margaret Conkey, Olga Soffer, Deborah Stratmann & Nina Jablonski, eds. Beyond Art: Pleistocene Image and Symbol. Berkeley: University of California Press. 289–300.
Rosenfeld, Andrée, David Horton & John Winter
1981Early Man in North Queensland. Canberra: Australian National University.
Roth, Walter Edmund
1898On the Aboriginals occupying the ‘Hinterland’ of Princess Charlotte Bay, together with a preface containing suggestions for their better protection and improvement. Report to the Commissioner of Police. Cooktown.
Roth, Walter Edmund
1899An account of the Koko-Minni Aboriginal occupying the country drained by the (Middle) Palmer River. Report to the Commissioner of Police, May 12, 1899.
Roth, Walter Edmund
1902Games, sports and amusements. North Queensland Ethnography: Records of the Australian Museum, Sydney.
Roth, Walter Edmund
1909aFighting weapons. Bulletin 13.
North Queensland Ethnography: Records of the Australian Museum
, Sydney.
Roth, Walter Edmund
1909bTransport and trade. Bulletin 14.
North Queensland Ethnography: Records of the Australian Museum
, Sydney.
Roth, Walter Edmund
1910Social and Individual nomenclature. Bulletin 18.
North Queensland Ethnography: Records of the Australian Museum
, Sydney.
Roughsey, Dick
1977Moon and Rainbow: The Autobiography of an Aboriginal. Adelaide: Rigby.
Sharp, Lauriston
1939Tribes and totemism in north-east Australia. Oceania 9: 254–75; 439–61.
Sutton, Peter
1978Wik. Aboriginal Society, Territory and Language at Cape Keerweer, Cape York Peninsula. PhD Dissertation, University of Queensland.
Sutton, Peter
2011Cape York Peninsula Indigenous Cultural Story: preliminary outline. Retrieved 1 September 2014 from: [URL].
Peter Sutton & Bruce Rigsby
1979Speech communities and social networks on Cape York Peninsula. In Stephen Wurm, ed. Australian Linguistic Studies. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. 713–732.
Peter Sutton & Bruce Rigsby
1982People with politicks: management of land and personnel on Australia’s Cape York Peninsula. In Nancy Williams & Eugene Hunn, eds. Resource Managers: North American and Australian Hunter-Gatherers. Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science. 155–171.
Taçon, Paul
1993Regionalism in the recent rock art of western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. Archaeology in Oceania 28: 112–120.
Thomson, Donald
1933The hero cult, initiation and totemism on Cape York Peninsula. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 63: 453–537.
Thomson, Donald
1972Kinship and Behaviour in North Queensland. A Preliminary Account of Kinship and Social Organisation on Cape York Peninsula. Ed. By H.W. Scheffler. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Tindale, Norman
1974Aboriginal Tribes of Australia. Canberra: Australian National University Press.
Trezise, Percy
1969Quinkan Country. Sydney: Reed.
Trezise, Percy
1971Rock Art of South-East Cape York Peninsula. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Trezise, Percy
1977Representations of crocodiles in Laura art. In Peter Ucko, ed. Form in Indigenous art: Schematisation in the Art of Aboriginal Australia and Prehistoric Europe. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. 325–336.
Trezise, Percy
1987Comment on J. Flood. Rock Art Research 4:124.
Trezise, Percy
1993Dream Road: A Journey of Discovery. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin.
Trezise, Percy
n. d. Unpublished records (duplicates of scaled field drawings held by the author).
Ucko, Peter
1983The politics of the Indigenous minority. Journal of Biosocial Science 8: 25–40.
Walsh, Grahame
1984Archaeological significance of Flinders Island/Princess Charlotte Bay. Unpublished report to Qld. NPWS, Brisbane.
Walsh, Grahame
1985Flinders Island Group Conservation Project. Unpublished report to Qld. NPWS, Brisbane.
Walsh. Grahame
1988Australia’s Greatest Rock Art. Bathurst: E.J. Brill/Robert Brown Associates.
Woolston, Frank & Percy Trezise
1969Petroglyphs of Cape York Peninsula. Mankind 7: 120–127.
Wright, Richard
1971Prehistory in the Cape York Peninsula. In John Mulvaney & Jack Golson, eds. Aboriginal Man and Environment in Australia. Canberra: Australian National University Press. 133–140.
Cited by
Cited by 4 other publications
BUHRICH, ALICE & WILLIE BRIM SR
2020. Looking after bulurru: Protecting the scientific and cultural values of an Aboriginal rock art complex in northern Queensland. Archaeology in Oceania 55:2 ► pp. 93 ff.
Cole, Noelene
2022. Aboriginal rock art of the Laura valleys: One landscape, many Stories. In Histories of Australian Rock Art Research, ► pp. 257 ff.
Kelly, Madeleine & Liam M. Brady
2021. Boundaries, Relationality, and Style Provinces in Australian Rock Art. In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea, ► pp. 717 ff.
Tutchener, David, David Claudie & Michael Morrison
2019. Results of archaeological surveys of the Pianamu cultural landscape, central Cape York Peninsula, 2014-2016. Queensland Archaeological Research 22 ► pp. 39 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.