Photograph courtesy of Ursula Frederick, 2007.

This article explores the re-purposing of rock art imagery in contemporary graffiti. We examine a particular case study from Perth, Western Australia, whereby graffiti resembling Wandjina rock art figures appeared throughout the metropolis (Figure 10.1). The power of this graffiti drew considerable attention from the public and the media. It also, however, drew attention to the complexities of representing cultural heritage and the custodial responsibilities faced by the Indigenous people of the Kimberley region (Figure 10.2). The appearance of Wandjina in Perth, outside their place in the remote north-west of Australia, was enjoyed by many as an appreciation of the power and beauty of the Wandjina. For others, including those with the rights and obligations of looking after Wandjina, it was also an unsettling occurrence. In light of past debates about what is vandalism and what is culture, the Wandjina of Perth present interesting insights into the power of images and living heritage.

Throughout the world, thousands of rock shelters, boulders, mountains, caves and riverbeds have been inscribed by the human hand. These marks take the form of paintings, petroglyphs, murals, prints and stencils, incisions and grooves. Many were made several millennia ago and only partial traces remain. Some are figurative depictions of animals, people and material goods, while others are abstract shapes and designs such as concentric circles, zigzags or herringbone. These sites and their vast iconography, how they were arranged and where they occur, tell us something of how the people of the past engaged with the surfaces of the Earth. Although their meanings remain largely obscure, the very presence of these marks demonstrates an enduring human impulse to mark the world.

Ethnographic records reveal much more detail about the motivations for such marking practices. Some accounts reveal their didactic purpose, their role in communication, as narrative and as entertainment or for increase rituals. The oral testimony of Indigenous peoples also indicates that rock art could be multivalent components of a broader dynamic culture. As such, these marks on rock walls are regarded as key integers in the maintenance of social, cultural and cosmological connections. Certainly, many Indigenous accounts from Australia suggest that the rock art we view today is the ancestral law, stories of life and cultural beliefs made tangible.

In our present-day lives, graffiti is one extension of our human mark-making legacy.^[1] Graffiti reveals how people occupy space and how they choose to express their experiences. It shows how individuals elect to move through, interact with and communicate via the fabric of their environment. Archaeologists, rock art specialists and amateur enthusiasts have dedicated considerable time and effort to documenting, analysing and interpreting the traces of the past. With few exceptions,^[2] however, the study of contemporary mark making is outside the domain of most archaeologists. As other scholars have noted,^[3] graffiti research to date has largely been the work of sociologists, criminologists, psychologists and geographers.

There are, we believe, sufficient resonances between the rock art of the past and the graffiti of today to warrant exploration of their intersections. An archaeological eye towards the human made, a range of methods and an understanding of deep temporal trajectories offer archaeologists a unique perspective on graffiti studies. Similarly, the results of graffiti researchers provide locally situated accounts and evidence for archaeologists to consider in theorising about the past.

As archaeologists with a special interest in visual cultures, we are particularly intrigued by the way graffiti artists employ cultural heritage in their activities. In this article, we focus on the unique Wandjina figures of Western Australia. In doing so, we explore the re-purposing of the past by graffiti artists in the context of a living tradition of Indigenous cultural practice. Set against an Indigenous history of repainting Wandjina in rock art and other media, the emergence of Wandjina graffiti offers unique insights into the power and politics of enduring images.