Art materials within archaeological deposits

  A certain number of Arnhem Land sites have both an art and an
  archaeological component. Many art sites have no archaeological
  component because they are well above the ground surface, or
  because the rock at their base is washed clean by wet-season 
  storms. Where paintings extend down towards the modern ground
  surface, they appear to vanish as they reach the earth; it is 
  likely the soil conditions do not permit the pigments to
  persist on the rock. Nor are engravings known in the region in
  a direct stratigraphic relation to archaeological deposits. So
  we have no direct stratigraphical links between art and
  archaeology.

  A repeated feature of deep Arnhem Land archaeological sites is
  the occurrence of ochre, consistently from the earliest levels
  for which these are not small and stray pieces, but of good 
  quality and - at Nauwalabila - shaped with distinct facets from 
  a level dating to about 12,000 BP (Taçon & Brockwell 1995: 687).
  Does ochre mean painting, and therefore the rock art goes back 
  in Arnhem Land to the very beginning, with two sites now dated
  by luminescence as having sequences that begin some 50,000 to 
  60,000 years ago? Is Arnhem Land art therefore 'the world's 
  longest continuing art tradition' (Chaloupka 1993)? As well as
  rock-art, ochre has many uses in modern Aboriginal ceremony, and 
  is in repeated association with burial from the later Palaeolithic 
  elsewhere in the world.

  http://www-mcdonald.arch.cam.ac.uk/Projects/Chip/Chip206.htm
  -------------------------------------------------

              FURTHER REFERENCES

  GO - "search perceptions" - in SEARCH-ENGINE


file-ID www.perceptions.couk.com/palaeo7.txt