No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The aim of this thesis is to examine regionality in the rock art of the north Kimberley, Western Australia. The region is renowned for its art of polychrome Wandjina figures, totemic ancestors and creators of the land for modern West Kimberley people. Underlying them are smaller, elegantly painted human figures. These are Bradshaw Figures or the Gwion Gwion as they are increasingly being called. The figures are decorated as if for dancing with waist mounted tassels, sashes and elaborately decorated headdresses, and an elaborate stylistic chronology has been prepared for the Kimberley art sequence. What is missing from the literature and what this thesis aims to fulfil, is knowledge of regionality and changes in the distribution of the body of art. Some the earliest art is from what I term the Early Phase and is thought to date to a time of aridity near the height of the ice age in Australia. Successive art periods may have occurred at times of changing climate as sea levels rose at the end of the ice age and the ensuing flooding of the exposed coastal plain. The sea level and the shoreline only stabilised in its present day position, and the present climate and environment settled to its current conditions, around 6500 years ago. I argue that the different styles of art and different locations selected in which to paint are related to the situation in the period of flux, when the inhabitants of the Kimberley were affected by changes, including the changes in their territory due to rising sea levels. Two geographically distinct areas were selected which would have been different at the time of painting of the earlier art, one being a river and the other, the coast, as at the time of painting the elegant figures, with retreating shorelines, it would have been inland. My research shows that the painters of Middle Phase art oscillated between permanent water and more transient sources, an effect influenced by their experience of ancient changes in climate.

‘The Religious Life of Nabataea’ examines the evidence for the religious practices and beliefs of the inhabitants of the Nabataean kingdom. It analyses material produced in the large area of the north-western Arabian Peninsula that was under the rule of the Nabataean king until the annexation of his kingdom by Rome in AD 106. Because of the scarcity of literary sources describing Nabataea, this study is largely dependent on inscriptions, with architectural and archaeological remains helping to put these better into their context. It is argued that a number of methodological problems with earlier studies have produced an inaccurate picture of a ‘Nabataean religion’ that cannot be easily reconciled with this material. The focus has been on recovering the identities and characteristics of individual gods and the relationships between them. Inconsistencies and diversities in the evidence have often been minimised in order to produce a coherent model or system of beliefs that ‘the Nabataeans’ followed. Underpinning this has been the scholarly perception of Nabataea as a culturally monolithic bloc that was inhabited by a people following the same way of life. This study takes a different approach, analysing the material first and foremost in its local context. Each chapter therefore focuses on a different centre or region of Nabataea, before the conclusion compares these to consider the kingdom as a whole. It is concluded that there is very little sign of a coherent pattern of religious practice covering Nabataea. On the contrary, it is the variety of practices that emerges most strongly. Although this area was all under the control of the Nabataean king, its religious life was dominated by a diversity of much more local traditions.