Gwion Gwion Rock Paintings of the Kimberley, Australia

The Gwion Gwion rock paintings are a style of Aboriginal rock art found in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, showing slender human figures with tassels, sashes and headdresses. Dating of mud wasp nests built over and under the paintings suggests that the style flourished around 12,000 years ago, near the end of the last Ice Age. They are among the most admired and most debated rock art traditions in the world.

Background: rock art in the Kimberley

The Kimberley is a remote region of sandstone ranges, gorges and rivers in the far north of Western Australia. It contains one of the largest concentrations of rock art on Earth, with many thousands of painted shelters, and some estimates run far higher.

Aboriginal people have lived in northern Australia for at least 50,000 years, and the Kimberley art records a long sequence of styles. Researchers usually place the Gwion Gwion figures after an earlier phase of large, naturalistic animal paintings and before the later Wandjina paintings, which depict powerful ancestral beings associated with rain and are still culturally central today.

What the paintings show

Gwion Gwion figures are usually human, painted in fine, confident lines. Their bodies are long and slim, often in graceful poses, as if walking, dancing or floating. Many wear elaborate headdresses and carry or wear tassels, sashes, armbands and other ornaments. Some hold boomerangs, spears or other objects.

The colours range from red and orange to mulberry and brown. Over thousands of years the pigments have become bonded into the surface of the rock, sometimes partly through the action of microscopic organisms, which helps explain how they have survived. The figures vary in size, from a few centimetres to around a metre or more.

Naming and the “Bradshaw” controversy

In 1891 Joseph Bradshaw, a pastoralist exploring the Roe River area, recorded several figures and published a description in 1892. For much of the 20th century the paintings were known in English as “Bradshaws”.

From the 1970s the amateur researcher Grahame Walsh documented large numbers of the figures. His recording work was extensive, but he also suggested that the paintings might have been made by an earlier people unrelated to today’s Aboriginal Australians. Archaeologists reject this idea for lack of evidence, and Aboriginal communities regard it as deeply offensive, because it was used to cast doubt on their connection to the land.

Today the name Gwion Gwion, from Ngarinyin tradition, is widely preferred. Traditional Owners, including Ngarinyin and Wunambal Gaambera peoples, are custodians of the sites and take part in research and protection.

Dating with wasp nests

Rock paintings are hard to date, because most pigments contain little organic material. In the Kimberley, researchers turned to the mud nests of wasps, which are often built on rock surfaces and sometimes over or under paintings.

Charcoal and other particles caught in the mud can be radiocarbon dated. A nest built over a painting gives a minimum age, and one under a painting gives a maximum age. In a study published in 2020, Damien Finch and colleagues dated wasp nests associated with Gwion Gwion figures and concluded that the style was most common around 12,000 years ago.

Earlier work had suggested ages of more than 17,000 years, but those results were based on a different method and are now treated with caution. Separately, a painted kangaroo in the Kimberley, from an earlier style, was dated in 2021 to about 17,300 years ago, making it the oldest known in situ rock painting in Australia.

Meaning and significance

The meaning of the Gwion Gwion figures is understood within Aboriginal knowledge, some of which is not shared publicly. Researchers note that the ornaments and objects shown may reflect ceremonial dress and social roles, and that changes in style over time may reflect changing climate and society at the end of the Ice Age, when rising seas flooded large areas of the northern coast.

The paintings show that sophisticated figurative art was made in Australia long before writing existed anywhere. They belong alongside other ancient Australian sites such as Nawarla Gabarnmang and the Madjedbebe rock shelter in the story of how people settled the continent, told in our article on the peopling of Australia.

Timeline

• At least c. 50,000 years ago: People arrive in northern Australia.
• c. 17,300 years ago: A kangaroo painting in an earlier Kimberley style is made, according to wasp-nest dating.
• c. 12,000 years ago: Gwion Gwion paintings are most common, according to wasp-nest dating.
• After c. 4,000 years ago: Wandjina paintings become a prominent style, a tradition that continues today.
• 1891: Joseph Bradshaw records several figures near the Roe River.
• 1892: Bradshaw publishes his account.
• 2020: Finch and colleagues publish wasp-nest dates for the Gwion Gwion style.

Why it matters

The Gwion Gwion paintings are a major body of Ice Age figurative art, comparable in skill and age to the painted caves of Europe. Their history also shows how names and theories can affect living communities, and why Aboriginal custodianship is central to understanding and protecting them.