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Concept
Sydney rock engravings
Summary
Sydney rock engravings, or Sydney rock art, are a form of Australian Aboriginal rock art in the sandstone around Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, that consist of carefully drawn images of people, animals, or symbols. Many thousands of such engravings are known to exist in the Sydney region, although the locations of most are not publicised to prevent damage by vandalism, and to retain their sanctity, as they are still regarded as sacred sites by Indigenous Australians. There are two art environments in Sydney Basin, rock shelters and engraving sites.
There are 1,500 pieces of Aboriginal art in Sydney, more than half of which contain rock art, and around 1,500 caves or shelters which contain cultural deposit. They are comparable with the petroglyphs of Native Americans and the rock art found elsewhere in Australia, but have their own distinctive style which is quite unlike rock art found anywhere else in Australia. Dating to around 5,000 years, with some possibly as old as 7,000 years, Sydney rock art is predominantly found in Ku-ring-gai Council, Sydney Harbour and the Blue Mountains.
The engravings were made by the Aboriginal Australians who have lived in the Sydney region from about 30,000 years ago until the present day. Radiocarbon dating suggests human activity first started to occur in the Sydney area from around 30,735 years ago (28,724 BCE). However, numerous Aboriginal stone tools were found in Western Sydney's gravel sediments that were dated from 45,000 to 50,000 years BP, which would indicate that there was human settlement in Sydney earlier than thought.
The engravings cannot be dated straightforwardly with contemporary archaeological methods, necessitating the use of indirect dating. The Sydney engravings are of a style known as "simple figurative", which formulaic archaeology dates to around 3,000 BC and 4,000 BC, which is contemporaneous to the neolithic period in Eurasia. Other engravings show European sailing ships, and so those cannot be more than about 200 years old.
Official source
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