John A Hayward | Flinders University of South Australia (original) (raw)

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Papers by John A Hayward

Journal of Visual Art Practice, 2024

This essay takes a cross-disciplinary approach to contemporary art practices in which found-thing... more This essay takes a cross-disciplinary approach to contemporary art practices in which found-things are used to construct material culture narratives. As both an artist and archaeologist I focus upon the different practices of four South Australian artists who have in common that they all use, in varying degrees, discarded things as the raw material for their art. The use of found-things, being a form of material culture or human-made things, as the raw materials for art making is a twentieth century phenomenon which has grown and developed along with other disciplines that use narratives as a means to explain and interpret contemporary culture. The spread of narrative analyses and the emergence of the ‘narrative turn’ across many disciplines is part of a move from a specialised narrative theme as the subject of inquiry into a multifaceted structure within which a whole range of phenomena, including art, can be viewed and analysed. I discuss the artists’ work and practice through an archaeological framework of material culture studies as forms of narrative-making that imbue things with wider associations, memory and meaning.

Journal of Australian Studies, 2023

This article provides an archaeologist's reflection on some forgotten cultural and historical art... more This article provides an archaeologist's reflection on some forgotten cultural and historical artefacts. Since the early 1920s, performing artists and variety acts who visited the Hoyleton Institute Hall in the Mid North of South Australia inscribed their names on the inside of the stage doors as a memento of their visit. Towards the end of the 20th century, the old railway town of Hoyleton and its century-old institute became victims of change, modernisation and progress, leaving the memories of the once popular travelling performers to linger in obscurity on the stage, immortalised on the back of the likewise forgotten stage doors. In this article, I animate some of the performers whose names are inscribed on the stage door through historical documents, juxtaposing the inscriptions with other forms of spontaneous mark-making such as rock art and graffiti to contextualise a cultural phenomenon. I also reflect on the fragility of some cultural heritage and the significance of small and modest sites such as the Hoyleton Institute Hall.

Journal of Field Archaeology, 2020

This paper presents findings from a recent study of the Anbangbang Gallery in the Burrungkuy (Nou... more This paper presents findings from a recent study of the Anbangbang Gallery in the Burrungkuy (Nourlangie) site complex of Kakadu National Park, Australia. Using new technologies alongside established methods for rock art documentation, we discuss the complexity and uniqueness of Anbangbang Gallery as an icon of Australian rock art. We have taken a comprehensive approach to our investigations, deliberately linking new technologies and scientific analysis with other archaeological and anthropological research methods. In particular, using evidence from a detailed site recording, oral histories, and pXRF analysis, we explore aspects of the site chronology, the nature of painting activity, and the retouching and repainting of earlier imagery. The findings force us to rethink the existing interpretative narrative for Anbangbang Gallery, the motivations behind previously held beliefs relating to recent rock art, and the implications this has had for ongoing conservation work in the region.

Australian Archaeology, 2020

Shields were not known to have been made or used in western Arnhem Land, northern Australia, sinc... more Shields were not known to have been made or used in western Arnhem Land, northern Australia, since European contact and possibly as a consequence are rarely found in the rock art of the region. However, during a recent survey of rock art sites in the Burrungkuy region of Kakadu two shields, or shield-like implements, were recorded in one shelter. This paper documents these motifs and discusses the cultural significance of shields in other parts of Australia, including as traded items, and offers suggestions as to how such depictions of these 'exotic' implements might have come to be in Arnhem Land. The paper concludes that some shields may have found their way into the Arnhem Land region via the extensive trade and exchange networks that connected communities across the continent for millennia and were depicted as a result of items collected by locals or observed by those involved in the trade.

Journal of field archaeology, 2021

During recent detailed recording of Nanguluwurr, a rock art site that is part of the Burrungkuy (... more During recent detailed recording of Nanguluwurr, a rock art site that is part of the Burrungkuy (Nourlangie) complex of cultural sites in Kakadu National Park, Australia, the data showed discrete clusters of specific motif types distributed throughout the length of the gallery. This paper focuses on the spatial distribution of the main motif clusters depicting spirit figures, material culture, fish, and painted hand and forearm motifs in order to understand the significance of these clusters within the site and the significance of Nanguluwurr as part of a wider complex of cultural sites. We consider the concept of these motif groupings as "meaning clusters," as well as their chronological sequence, and discuss the possibility that they are the result of bursts of painting activity that occurred during the long history of the site manifest through depictions of ancient Dynamic Figures to the recent painting of X-ray fish.

This paper addresses the motivations for producing the rare object stencils found in the rock art... more This paper addresses the motivations for producing the rare object stencils found in the rock art of western Arnhem Land. We present evidence for 84 stencils recorded as part of the Mi-rarr Gunwarddebim project in western Arnhem Land, northern Australia. Ranging from boomerangs to dilly bags, armlets and spearthrowers, this assemblage suggests something other than a common or ongoing culture practice of stencilling objects used in everyday life. Instead, we suggest that these stencils represent an entirely different function in rock art through a process of memorialization that was rare, opportunistic and highly selective.

The rock art of the northern Kakadu region of the Northern Territory of Australia has a large ran... more The rock art of the northern Kakadu region of the Northern Territory of Australia has a large range of paintings that depict human figures interacting with material culture items such as spears, spearthrowers, clubs and boomerangs. The paintings are often rendered in fine detail allowing for identification of specific artefact types. Many of the artefacts depicted in the rock art are recognisable as similar to those collected by ethnographers from Arnhem Land and the surrounding regions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. South Australia’s interests in the Northern Territory during the second half of the nineteenth century ensured that a large number of collected items found their way to the South Australian Museum’s ethnographic collection. Whilst no direct association is made between particular ethnographic objects as subjects in rock art paintings, there are some observations that can be made about the object/subject relationship in general. The first pertains to artefact types, in which paintings appear to depict actual types found in the collection. Another relates to what an artefact represents, functionally and symbolically, and whether these concepts are transferable between the ethnographic world and the rock art world. A third refers to the semiotic relationship, where one object signifies the other but where the relationship is complex and considered as ‘unstable’. This paper explores these issues and the possible mutual correspondence that exists between the S.A. Museum’s Australian Aboriginal material cultures collection and the rock art of Kakadu.

Thesis Chapters by John A Hayward

This thesis focuses on rock art paintings from western Arnhem Land and, specifically, those depic... more This thesis focuses on rock art paintings from western Arnhem Land and, specifically, those depicting human figures interacting with material culture items - people and things. Previous researchers have found that some of the earliest depictions of the human figure in this region, which are thought to date back to over 10,000 years ago, are often shown with spears, boomerangs and large headdresses. The intense association that people had with things has been an ongoing theme for artists throughout the history of rock art, continuing through to the middle of the twentieth century. How such paintings are interpreted is dependent upon the viewpoint of the observer. Traditionally, rock art has been associated with hunter gatherer cultures and has, therefore, been interpreted as depictions of these activities. In my study, I move beyond these generalisations to provide a more detailed, social interpretation of people and things in rock art. Rather than assuming that artefacts are just functional and technological objects, I consider them as meaningful things in both a social and art context, and evaluate the choices that artists made when constructing a composition of human figures with material culture as having meaningful significance. These ideas are explored through semiological and materiality frameworks, as well as incorporating first-hand recordings from ethnographic collections as comparative data, which add to a more nuanced understanding of the material culture items depicted in rock art.

Books by John A Hayward

The Archaeology of Rock Art in Western Arnhem Land, Northern Australia. Edited by: B. David, P.S.C. Taçon, J. J. Delannoy and J. M. Geneste., 2017

Book Reviews by John A Hayward