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Journal of Social Archaeology
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Metanarratives and the (re)invention of the Neolithic

A case study in rock-art from Birappa Rock Shelter and Hiregudda Hill, South-Central India

David W. Robinson

School of Forensic and Investigative Sciences, University of Central Lancashire, UK, dwrobinson{at}uclan.ac.uk

Ravi Korisettar

Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Karnatak University, India, korisettar{at}gmail.com

Jinu Koshy

Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Karnatak University, India, jinuarch77{at}yahoo.co.in

Rock-art reflects cultural narratives and is influential as a medium in the invention of narratives. Images found in South-Central Indian rock-art are particularly useful in considering archaeological transitions. Rock-art here shows a chronology spanning the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Megalithic, Historic, and Modern times. Imagery reflects changing human/animal relationships, from `agile' hunted animals to cattle and its domestication, with rock-art an active medium in the creation of new metanarratives focused obsessively upon bulls. While bulls in the singular appear early, later compositional elements imply a growing concern with ideas of herds as interconnecting communities. Through time, panels were focal points for the addition of subsequent anthropomorphic imagery, further reinventing the Neolithic. A Historic period efflorescence of densely applied rock-art perhaps reflects an appropriation of a locality redolent with the past as new mythologies were invented in the ancestral association with the now millennia-old Neolithic rock-art.

Key Words: India • invention • Mesolithic • narrative • Neolithic • rock-art • transition

Journal of Social Archaeology, Vol. 8, No. 3, 355-379 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1469605308095009
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