Rock Art of the Western Desert and Great Basin: long term social responses to environmental change

The Australian arid zone covers more than half of the continent and provided a significant environmental barrier between first landfall–and the rest of the continent. Rock art was part of the cultural repertoire enabling modern humans to colonise this most arid continent on earth. There have been major environmental changes over the 50,000 years that the desert has been occupied by hunter-gatherers. How did the social context of rock art production change as a response to changing environment? Changed signalling behaviour in response to environmental change in the Australina and American arid zones, and a new review of Information Exchange Theory will contribute to a global understanding of hunter-gatherer rock art production.