High-resolution digital photomosaic recording of rock-art.(RESEARCH REPORT)

Baseline recording should be the top priority in the fight to retain and preserve rock-art. Not only are old and so far durable images facing new environmental and industrial threats, but an entire body of recent paintings, including those of the colonial period, which have not already been selected for long-term survival by fortunate and very rare taphonomic circumstances (Bednarik 1993) are rapidly disappearing, with little prospect of effective intervention to save them. This is certainly the case on the Batavia coast near Geraldton in Western Australia where the predominant white-clay pigments have undergone serious weathering since photographs were first taken in the early twentieth century (Ford 2005).

Many rock-art sites have been recorded by archaeologists over the years. However, these recordings, even if they can be found in various archives, do no necessarily assist the conservator seeking to determine the rate and mechanisms of deterioration because, on the whole, conservators and archaeologists view rock-art through different eyes, each selecting features most relevant to their purpose from an almost infinite source of potential data. What is included and left out depends on a complex range of factors, including Indigenous cultural values, site promotion and management exigencies, theoretical and ideological bias, personal interest, aesthetic considerations, conservation awareness, time and money, and the recording method itself (Gunn 1995a).

Archaeologists find that photographs, while ostensibly objective, not only fail to capture relevant detail but contain too much distracting 'noise'. Some employ a graphic recording method involving a combination of sketching, scale drawing, photography and tracing (direct or from photographs), designed to accurately abstract motifs (ironically) from the same physical context which is of most interest to the conservator. It is time-consuming, expensive and generally speaking quite useless as a conservation record, but encourages intensive scrutiny of the often subtle physical indicators of cultural significance such as style, sequence, repainting and marking techniques and often reveals images that are less visible to the casual observer or on photographs. Tracing, which in its direct form is sometimes criticised as a 'contact' and potentially damaging technique (e.g. Gunn 1995b), locates each mark accurately and avoids common perceptual traps such as recording what one expects to see. Unlike wide-angle photography, especially of surfaces with complex topography, there are no significant focal length distortion and parallax errors.

Site registers accurately reflect the diversity of rock-art recording purposes and techniques. Not infrequently they consist of a …