Of Lightning Brothers and White Cockatoos: dating the antiquity of signifying systems in the Northern Territory, Australia BRUNO DAVID, IAN MCNIVEN, VAL ATTENBROW, JOSEPHINE FLOOD & JACKIE COLLINS * Northern Australia is one ofthe very few regions of the world where an established tradition of rock-art has continued and extends into present-day knowledge. Excavation of deposits under the painted surfaces allows the age of the paintings to be estimated, by linking across to these deposits and their dateable contexts. One can begin to assess the antiquity of those systems of knowledge and of ‘signifying’. Introduction A number of authors have argued that the late Holocene was a period of widespread change in Aboriginal Australia (e.g. Lourandos 1983; David 1991). Such changes may have involved a major restructuring of socio-political systems, such as the beginnings of ceremonially based, extractive networks geared to the large-scale management of resources (including eels) in western Victoria (Lourandos 1983; 1991). In north Queensland, David (1991) has argued that, during the last 3000 years or so, systems of land tenure andlor regional interaction net- works may have changed. However, as far as we know, no researcher has attempted system- atically to relate changes observed in the ar- chaeological record with broader concerns re- lating to past belief systems. Recognizing the difficulties of such a program, we address this issue with an investigation of the archaeology of a number of locations (Yiwarlarlay, Mennge- ya and Garnawala) in what is today Wardaman country. Wardaman country Wardaman country is renowned archaeologi- cally for its vast body of rock art, which to the local Wardaman people is visual proof of the Dreaming itself. To archaeologists, such paint- ings were created some time in the past - they have a definable antiquity. Given their impor- tance in Wardaman society today, and their identity as signifiers and signified of the belief system we know of as the Dreaming, investiga- tions of their antiquity may shed important light on the beginnings of the modern belief system itself. In essence we are looking for patterns, and we begin by asking whether or not the paintings which today express the identity of the land to Wardaman people were all initially undertaken within a time-specific and identi- fiable time frame. If this is the case, then it is possible that we are identifying the antiquity of the modern ontological system itself, or at least its expression, largely as we know it to- day. Knowing which of these two options we are observing, however, may be a major archaeo- logical problem which we may not be able to solve. Wardaman country is located to the south- west of Katherine, Northern Territory (FIGURE * Bruno David, Department of Anthropology & Sociology, The University of Queensland, QLD 4072, Australia. Ian McNiven, Department of Classics and Archaeology, The University of Melbourne, Parkville VIC 3052, Australia. Val Attenbrow, Anthropology Division, Australian Museum, PO Box A285, Sydney South NSW 2000, Australia. Josephine Flood, Australian Heritage Commission, PO Box 1567, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia. Jackie Collins, Department of Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology, University of New England, Armidale NSW 2350, Australia. ANTIQUITY 68 (1994): 241-51