A TEAM of University of Southern Queensland archaeologists have
uncovered the oldest rock art to have been discovered in
Australia in a remote Northern Territory shelter. Professor
Bryce Barker, who was working with USQ researcher Dr Lara Lamb,
found the charcoal drawn fragment dated at 28,000 years after
excavating a small part of a massive rock shelter site named
Narwala Gabarnmang. Professor Barker and Dr Lamb are members of
a major archaeological project Connecting Country in south
western Arnhem Land. "When I turned over that little piece of
rock and saw that art I couldn't believe it," Professor Barker
said. "There I was sitting in the lab at USQ in Toowoomba with a
piece of art that I knew had to be more than 20,000 years old."
A specialist dating team led by Dr Fiona Petchey from the
University of Waikato radiocarbon laboratory took scrapings of
the charcoal which subsequently turned out to date to 28,000
years ago, making it the oldest firmly dated rock art painting
in Australia and amongst some of t