The Magic of Rock Art

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is host to the highest biological and cultural diversity on the planet with over 800 distinctive languages, societies and art traditions in a territory only twice the size of Britain. Despite this exceptional diversity, we have no idea how these diverse art forms emerged in deep time, what they signified for people in the past, and what it meant to transpose designs across a wide range of media. One way to explore these topics is to examine rock art. This project focuses on the East Sepik Province of PNG, and employs a multi-disciplinary approach using cutting-edge methodologies drawn from cognitive archaeology, ethnography, and archaeological science to better understand the deep history of PNG’s rock art, the materiality of rock art production, and the spatial and temporal dynamics of transposing similar designs from one medium to another. This will be the first deep historical analysis of PNG’s art traditions, a topic of profound importance especially because of rapid loss of these traditions in the modern era. The results will have important implications for how we conceptualise the scale and rate of changes in art traditions, and how the materiality of design systems entangled across media shapes the nature of these transformations.

Aims and objectives 

This project aims to employ cutting-edge archaeological and ethnographic techniques to study the nature of mark-making and determine how similar designs are transformed into different media over time and across space. These objectives will be addressed through the following three main Research Questions:

1. What is the nature of rock art production in East Sepik?

2. What is the variability of East Sepik art forms across media, time, and the landscape?

3. How do rock art traditions in East Sepik connect with a wider landscape of art making?

Mentor

Dr Dylan Gaffney

Other Advisors 

Dr Rachel Wood 

Professor Chris Gosden 

Dr Marenka Thompson-Odlum and Ms. Faye Belsey

Professor Lambrous Malafouris

Collaborators

Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea – Kenneth Miamba and Kylie Sesuki

Auwim village, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea – Sebastien Katuk

Fieldwork

First fieldwork: 20th October – 11th November 2025 – Archaeological Reconnaissance Fieldwork (Reconnecting with community, return of Roxanne Tsang’s PhD results to Auwim community, community consultation for the TMORA–AESOAAMIPNG project, archaeological reconnaissance survey of four well-documented rock art sites, and archaeological survey of three new rock art sites).