This study takes readers on a journey through prehistory, from enigmatic finger markings and handstencils, found in the limestone caverns to life-size paintings of Ancestral Beings in the tropical north. It gives an overview of recent research, dating techniques and discoveries.

DREAMTIME SUPERHIGHWAY presents a thorough and original contextualization of the rock art and archaeology of the Sydney Basin. By combining excavation results with rock art analysis it demonstrates that a true archaeology of rock art can provide insights into rock art image-making in people's social and cultural lives. Based on a PhD dissertation, this monograph is a significantly revised and updated study which draws forcefully on rich and new data from extensive recent research - much of it by McDonald herself. McDonald has developed a model that suggests that visual culture - such as rock artmaking and its images and forms - could be understood as a system of communication, as a way of signaling group identifying behaviour. For the archaeologist of art, the anthropologist of art and those of us who try to think about past worlds... this monograph is a must read.

A young boy learns from his elder how the animals in the dreamtime created a world in which they could all live in peace and harmony.

At last! A book showcasing the Aboriginal rock art of Western Australia's Burrup Peninsula. Western Australia contains some of the oldest, most prolific, and most spectacular rock art in the world. Some of the art probably dates from about 40,000 years ago, and much dates from around the last ice age which peaked 20,000 years ago. On the Australian Heritage-listed Burrup Peninsula and surrounding islands there are an estimated one million motifs carved into the rocks. This lavishly illustrated 516-page book has more than 600 images of this amazing art.

Using the very latest archaeological evidence from stones and bones and also Aboriginal oral traditions, this volume examines the way in which the Aborigines adapted to and modified their environment, how their art and culture developed and were passed on, and how they coped with changes such as the rising seas after the last ice age.

Recounts the aborigine story of creation featuring Goorialla, the great Rainbow Serpent.

Published just once before in 1988, this book contains over sixty paintings and sixty drawings by Ainslie Roberts based on Aboriginal Mythology, with texts by Melva Jean Roberts and Charles Mountford. Introduced by Dale Roberts. Quite apart from their artistic worth the paintings add a great deal to our understanding and appreciation of the myths they illustrate; and Roberts delivers them with a real sense of background, whether this is the harsh hot Centre or the green waves of the Southern Ocean. - The Australian The artist's evocation of these myths is often extremely dramatic and imaginative; this volume is valuable both for its material on Aboriginal mythology and as an example of contemporary Australian art. - British Book News