Online Via Zoom: Our August 18, 2021, Featured Speaker, David Lee
08/11/2021
Our monthly GCAS general meeting returns to Zoom format on Wednesday, August 18, 2021, at 7 PM. As is our Zoom custom, our brief-if-any business meeting will be immediately followed by our Featured Speaker, David Lee, founding member of Western Rock Art Research, who will present "Closer Than We Know: Comparing the Rock Art of Australia and Western North America."
David Lee is an independent rock art researcher, focusing on the function and context of Native American rock art of western North America and the rock art and associated traditional knowledge of northern Australia. He is a founding member of Western Rock Art Research, a non-profit organization located in Bishop, California and dedicated to the study and management of rock art and the cultures who produced it. He has documented rock art in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon and Australia, and has written or co-authored many papers, reports and books on the Mojave Desert, eastern California, and Australia including "Rock Art East of the Range of Light" and "Learning to Listen: A Personal Journey to the Land of the Lightning People." In 2005 he and his wife Charlotte began a project to document the rock art and associated traditional stories of the Wardaman People in northern Australia, work that continues to shed light on how rock art fit into the lives of the peoples who made it.
David's presentation will describe how:
"Both Australia and the New World were originally colonized by peoples who brought with them rich spiritual and symbolic systems. These people successfully adapted to major environmental changes, and these adaptations may be reflected in the paintings and engravings they left on cliff faces and on shelter walls. Despite being a world apart, there are a surprising number of parallels in the production, evolution, and context of rock art on the two continents. Viewing rock art with a global perspective highlights both the similarities and the differences of people surviving under similar circumstances. This lecture will investigate the rock art of both continents, focusing on environmental and cultural context, ethnography, and current research trends."
David will illustrate the global implications of the work that he and Western Rock Art Research have been pursuing for the past 15 years and the insights he has gained by working with international colleagues. He adds that with his rock art research, "I don't interpret anything because there is plenty of ethnographic evidence concerning that, and I side with the vast majority of international researchers who agree with Indigenous elders about its general functions within any foraging society."
David's presentation to us on August 18 will also serve as a good introduction to the more in-depth lecture he has arranged for the American Rock Art Research Association (ARARA) in October 2021, regarding his and his organization's Australian archaeological/ethnographic work. Watch ARARA's Events page for details on attending that lecture about this important research.
You can learn more about David Lee's background, his publications, and the progression of his and Western Rock Art Research's work, by reading his Curriculum Vitae, and of course by visiting the Western Rock Art Research website.
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