J Mcdonald
Biographic Data
| ID | 8018 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Mcdonald |
| GIVEN NAMES | J |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcdonald |
| SIGNATURE | MCDONALD J |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Western Australia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2701-7406 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 76 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 410 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 75 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1940 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Characterisation of rock varnish at Murujuga (Western Australia)
The aim of this study is to describe the textural, chemical, mineralogical and microbiome characteristics of rock (desert) varnish and assess its potential as a paleoclimate archive, with particular attention to the challenges of reconstructing climate variability in Northwest Australia. Rock samples from Murujuga (Dampier Archipelago, Western Australia) with visible varnish were collected from Rosemary Island, the Burrup Peninsula and Dolphin Is…
Challenging Narratives
The Calga Women’s Site is an ancient rock engraving site near the town of Gosford on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. The site holds special significance for Aboriginal women in this area. It is one of many rock art and occupation places in a complex cultural landscape. There are multiple narratives for the Calga cultural landscape. One of these is ancient and speaks of Creator and Ancestral Beings, Lore and Law. Another is modern…
Signalling and Mobility
This paper explores Great Basin arid-zone hunter–forager rock art as signalling behaviour. The rock art in Lincoln County, Nevada, is the focus, and this symbolic repertoire is analysed within its broader archaeological and ethnographic contexts. This paper mobilises an explicitly theoretical approach which integrates human behavioural ecology (HBE) and the precepts of information exchange theory (IET), generating assumptions about style and sign…
Soil wetting and drying processes influence stone artefact distribution in clay‐rich soils
Soils that contain swelling clay minerals (e.g., montmorillonite) expand and contract during wetting and drying, causing movement within the soil profile. This process, known as argilliturbation, can alter artefact distributions, destroy stratigraphy and complicate the interpretation of archaeological deposits. Our study investigates the influence of argilliturbation on stone artefact distribution in a clay‐rich sediment basin on Middle Gidley Is…
Provenance analysis of stone artefact assemblages using petrography and pXRF at Murujuga (the Dampier Archipelago), Western Australia
Symbolic Meanings in Mosques and Churches
The formation of public open space is an essential element in the existence of cities and neighborhoods.Public open spaces are defined as social locations, such as streets, parks, and local neighborhoods, and are spaces where individuals or groups encounter and interact with one another.Community participation in public open space planning can provide opportunities for potential interactions in the decision-making process to help stimulate social…
Luminescence rock surface exposure and burial dating
On the balance of evidence, peopling of Parramatta, Sydney, Australia, occurred after the Last Glacial Maximum
A recent synthesis of archaeological investigations in the centre of Sydney has proposed that initial peopling of this part of southeast Australia focussed on the Hawkesbury-Nepean River system, and only utilised the broader region following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in response to demographic packing, ameliorating climate and/or coastal inundation. Two new publications, Quinn et al. (2023) and Owen et al. (2024), have proposed a pre-LGM occ…
Late Pleistocene scaphopod beads from Boodie Cave and deep time traditions of personal ornamentation in northwest Australia
Tubular segments of Scaphopoda (tusk shell) were traditionally used by Aboriginal peoples in the manufacture of ornate bead necklaces across northwest Australia. Twenty-seven scaphopod shell beads were recovered from Boodie Cave on Barrow Island dating to between 13,500 and 10,600 cal BP. We compare the Boodie Cave bead assemblage to historical necklace collections as well as experimental studies on scaphopod blanks to characterise bead manufactu…
How many Juukans? The case for heritage conservation strategies into the future
Pilbara Fat-Tailed Macropods
This paper presents a pioneering analysis of a distinctive engraved motif from the Pilbara region: the fat-tailed macropod (kangaroo). This stylistic analysis has used a combination of conventional qualitative and multivariate techniques with less commonly deployed geometric morphometrics analysis (GMA). Focusing on a distinctive engraved motif in Australia’s northwest, this study has quantified the stylistic characteristics of the fat-tailed mac…
Challenges and Opportunities in Online Learning among Freshman Architecture Students
The folklore of Gunung Gamping in Yogyakarta, Indonesia describes us the story of two servants in the Mataram Kingdom of Yogyakarta under the leadership of Sri Sultan Hamengku Buwono 1.The story is also the basis for an annual tradition called Saparan Bekakak in the month of Sapar in the Javanese calendar.This oral literature describes to the relationship between past natural events with the mystical and sacred things.The avalanche of Mount Gampi…
New approaches for assessing site formation of submerged lithic scatters
The Sydney School and the genesis of contemporary Australian rock art research
A wet strawman
Earlier this year Ward et al. (2022) published a desktop study critiquing our fieldwork findings undertaken in partnership with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation demonstrating underwater cultural heritage places across Murujuga in northwest Western Australia. In our response we comprehensively refute the critique, drawing attention to wider ethical concerns about the conduct of research and its impact on Indigenous community aspirations to mana…
Histories of Australian Rock Art Research
Australia has one of the largest inventories of rock art in the world with pictographs and petroglyphs found almost anywhere that has suitable rock surfaces – in rock shelters and caves, on boulders and rock platforms. First Nations people have been marking these places with figurative imagery, abstract designs, stencils and prints for tens of thousands of years, often
A multi-scalar approach to marine survey and underwater archaeological site prospection in Murujuga, Western Australia
Archaeology, deep history and the culture wars
The integrated cultural landscape of North Gidley Island
Recent studies conducted in Murujuga Sea Country have confirmed that Indigenous Australian archaeology does not end at the modern shore. Since the earliest peopling of the Australian continent, sea levels have fluctuated significantly, dropping as much as 130 m below modern mean sea-level during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). During this period, the continent (including Australia and New Guinea) represented a landmass one-third larger than prese…
Was Aboriginal population recovery delayed after the Last Glacial Maximum? A synthesis of a terminal Pleistocene deposit from the Sydney Basin, New South Wales, Australia
Seeing and managing rock art at Nganjarli
The Nganjarli site complex, which includes a rich body of rock art, shell middens and artefact scatters, has been identified by the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation (MAC) as the primary location within Murujuga National Park for tourism and interpretation facilities. Murujuga National Park lies on the north-west coast of Western Australia, and within the Dampier Archipelago (including Burrup Peninsula) National Heritage Place. MAC owns and co-mana…
The dependable deep time Acacia
Clegg, John K.
Aboriginal Rock Art and the Telling of History
Dreamtime superhighway
The research examines prehistoric rock art which occurs in the Sydney region in coastal south-eastern Australia. The rock art is located in two distinct contexts provided by the sandstone bedrock which defines this region. Engravings, or petroglyph, sites occur in open locations. In rockshelter locations the art consists of drawings, stencils, paintings and engravings. The principal aim of this thesis is to define a model for cultural interaction…
Symbolic behaviour and the peopling of the southern arc route to Australia
State of the Art
Murujuga, Northwestern Australia
The Dampier Archipelago (Murujuga) in northwestern Australia is a rich rock art province located in an arid-maritime cultural landscape. The archipelago juts into the Indian Ocean just north of the Tropic of Capricorn. When people started inscribing this rugged granophyre landscape it was an inland range more than 100 km from the coast. Murujuga rock art is contextualized by a 47,000-year-old occupation sequence from the Pilbara, a model for styl…
Rock Art In Arid Landscapes
This paper develops a testable model for understanding rock art within archaeological phases of the arid northwest Pilbara and Western Desert bioregions. It also presents the first multivariate analysis of foundational recording work undertaken almost 50 years ago, and deploys more recently recorded assemblages from the Burrup Peninsula (Murujuga) and the Western Desert. It establishes a framework for testable hypotheses about how art production …
Dampier Archipelago petroglyphs
In 2007 the Dampier Archipelago petroglyph province was included on the National Heritage List. This paper outlines the process of determining the province's scientific values. We briefly describe our findings, which are based on all existing site data lodged with regulatory authorities. We synthesize published and unpublished systematic survey and rock art recording data collected over three decades for research and environmental impact assessme…
Results from the first intensive dating program for pigment art in the Australian arid zone
Dreamtime Superhighway
Dreamtime Superhighway presents a thorough and original contextualization of the rock art and archaeology of the Sydney Basin. By combining excavation results with rock art analysis it demonstrates that a true archaeology of rock art can provide insights into rock art image-making in people’s social and cultural lives. Based on a PhD dissertation, this monograph is a significantly revised and updated study which draws forcefully on rich and new d…
The first archaeological evidence for death by spearing in Australia
An Aboriginal man done to death on the dunes 4000 years ago was recently discovered during excavations beneath a bus shelter in Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches. The presence of backed microliths and the evidence for trauma in the bones showed that he had been killed with stone-tipped spears. Now we know how these backed points were used. A punishment ritual is implied by analogies with contact-period observations made in the eighteenth cen…
Dreamtime Superhighway (TA27)
I remember the visit with clarity: it was 1991 and my first trip to Australia. One day was spent at Sydney's West Head with the young and enthusiastic Jo McDonald, where we toured some of the rock engraving sites and the painted Great Mackerel rock shelter. I can still see the large flat curving rocks at West Head on which animals had been engraved -fish, kangaroos, a goanna. And, as is so often the case when I visit rock art sites, my imaginatio…
The Archaeology of Memory
Bob Tonkinson's anthropological work in the Western Desert provides archaeologists with a unique insight into the totemic geography of the Martu. Part of his explication of the long-distance relationships that Martu maintain with remote homelands and sacred sites involved crayon drawings which showed the travels and actions of the Wati Kutjarra around the Jilakurru Ranges. These drawings, made remotely 300 km from the country being described, hav…
Dating Of Bush Turkey Rockshelter 3 in the Calvert Ranges establishes Early Holocene Occupation of the Little Sandy Desert, Western Australia
Systematic excavation of occupied rockshelters that occur in ranges along the Canning Stock Route of the Western Desert has seen the establishment of both a Pleistocene signal (c.24ka BP) as well as the fleshing out of a Holocene sequence. Recent dating of a perched rockshelter in the Calvert Ranges, east of the Durba Hills, has provided a Holocene record filling in previous occupational gaps from the Calvert Ranges. The extrapolated basal date o…
Bedrock notions and isochrestic choice
This paper explores stylistic variability in engraved art in the Sydney region. It is argued that engravings operated in a distinctive social context, fulfilling a regional bonding function and providing the opportunity for large scale group cohesion. Conversely the sheltered pigment art, produced in an arguably domestic social context, is thought to have provided the opportunity for individual and localised group identifying behaviour.The region…
The Great Mackerel Rockshelter Excavation
Several excavations have been conducted at the Mackerel Beach site for exploring the gender differences that were observed in the culture of prehistoric population. The various experiments that were conducted and the findings that were derived out of the study are all discussed in the article
Dreamtime superhighway
The research examines prehistoric rock art which occurs in the Sydney region in coastal south-eastern Australia. The rock art is located in two distinct contexts provided by the sandstone bedrock which defines this region. Engravings, or petroglyph, sites occur in open locations. In rockshelter locations the art consists of drawings, stencils, paintings and engravings. The principal aim of this thesis is to define a model for cultural interaction…
A Strategy for Assessing Continuity in Terrestrial and Maritime Landscapes from Murujuga (Dampier Archipelago), North West Shelf, Australia
Over the last 20,000 years, one third of the continental land mass of Australia, or 2.12 million km2, has been drowned by postglacial sea-level rise. Much of this drowned territory is thought to have been occupied by humans. Where archaeological remains have survived inundation, they can be investigated by underwater and airborne remote sensing, survey, and ground-truthing. This study of the Dampier Archipelago of North West Australia is contextu…
Identity signalling in shields
This paper explores inter-group signalling behaviour of hunter-fisher-gatherers living in arid and temperate coastal regions in Holocene Australia. We examine shield designs in the rock art of two visually similar engraved art provinces on opposite sides of the Australian continent: Port Hedland and Sydney. We explore the question of inter-group social signalling behaviour in arid versus fertile environments by testing the stylistic heterogeneity…
Faith and health self-management of rural older adults
Lithic Artefact Distribution in the Rouse Hill Development Area, Cumberland Plain, New South Wales
For several years systematic test excavations have been conducted in the open landscape of the Rouse Hill Development Area (RHDA), as part of development impact mitigation projects. Data on artefact distribution and density from these projects are combined here to identify patterns which might signal Aboriginal people’s preferences for artefact discard in their landscape. Topographic and stream order variables correlate with artefact density and …
The integrated cultural landscape of North Gidley Island
Recent studies conducted in Murujuga Sea Country have confirmed that Indigenous Australian archaeology does not end at the modern shore. Since the earliest peopling of the Australian continent, sea levels have fluctuated significantly, dropping as much as 130 m below modern mean sea-level during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). During this period, the continent (including Australia and New Guinea) represented a landmass one-third larger than prese…
Seeing the Landscape
The Dampier Archipelago (Murujuga) is on Australia’s National Heritage List because of its significant rock art and numerous stone structures. When people first started living in this arid landscape of the north-west coast, 50,000 years ago, the shoreline was 160 kilometres further north-and west. The Archipelago was created around 7,000 years ago, with sea-level rise following the termination of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Photogrammetry and…
Stone artifacts in the intertidal zone, Dampier Archipelago
Stone artifacts recently identified in the intertidal zone at Dolphin Island, Dampier Archipelago, suggest Aboriginal Australian occupation before inundation from early to mid-Holocene sea-level rise. If these artifacts do pre-date inundation, they would be the first evidence for a submerged coastal site on the Dampier Archipelago—substantiating persistent Aboriginal use throughout major environmental changes. The find provides supplementary evid…
Testing predictions for symmetry, variability and chronology of backed artefact production in Australia's Western Desert
The “Backed Artefact Symmetry Index” (BASI) provides a measure with which to describe geometric variation in Australian backed artefacts, and Peter Hiscock has suggested that desert versions of this artefact type will be more symmetrical than their coastal counterparts. The re‐excavated Serpent's Glen (Karnatukul) site and nearby site of Wirrili have produced a large assemblage of backed artefacts. These Western Desert assemblages allow for the t…
The Discovery Of A Heat Treatment Pit On The Cumberland Plain, Western Sydney
The Discovery Of A Heat Treatment Pit On The Cumberland Plain, Western Sydney." Australian Archaeology, 38(1), pp. 46–47
Was Aboriginal population recovery delayed after the Last Glacial Maximum? A synthesis of a terminal Pleistocene deposit from the Sydney Basin, New South Wales, Australia
The dependable deep time Acacia
Films
Journal Article Films Get access JOHN McDONALD JOHN McDONALD The American Film Center Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 4, Issue 3, September 1940, Pages 519–522, https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/4.3.519 Published: 01 September 1940
On Relative Income Shares in the Pasinetti and Samuelson-Modigliani Systems
Journal Article On Relative Income Shares in the Pasinetti and Samuelson-Modigliani Systems Get access A. Woodfield, A. Woodfield The Flinders University of South Australia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar J. McDonald J. McDonald The Flinders University of South Australia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 89, Issue 354, 1 June 1979, Pages 3…
Dampier Archaeological Project
(1988). Dampier Archaeological Project: Resource Document, Survey and Salvage of Aboriginal Sites, Burrup Peninsula, Western Australia, by Patricia Vinnecombe. Australian Archaeology: Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 117-117
Dampier Archaeological Project
DAMPIER ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT: RESOURCE DOCUMENT, SURVEY AND SALVAGE OF ABORIGINAL SITES, BURRUP PENINSULA, WESTERN AUSTRALIA, by Patricia Vinnicombe." Australian Archaeology, 27(1), p. 138
Rezensionsteil
Helping the police with their inquiries
In New South Wales the legal provisions for the protection of Aboriginal skeletal remains are clear. However, when human remains were discovered at the Aboriginal site of Angophora Reserve rockshelter in Sydney, the situation became complex and confused as coronial investigations and legal procedures dominated archaeological methodology and principle. In this paper we discuss how normal archaeological techniques had to be modified, often beyond a…
The Great Mackerel Rockshelter Excavation
Several excavations have been conducted at the Mackerel Beach site for exploring the gender differences that were observed in the culture of prehistoric population. The various experiments that were conducted and the findings that were derived out of the study are all discussed in the article
The Discovery Of A Heat Treatment Pit On The Cumberland Plain, Western Sydney
The Discovery Of A Heat Treatment Pit On The Cumberland Plain, Western Sydney." Australian Archaeology, 38(1), pp. 46–47
State of the Art
Bedrock notions and isochrestic choice
This paper explores stylistic variability in engraved art in the Sydney region. It is argued that engravings operated in a distinctive social context, fulfilling a regional bonding function and providing the opportunity for large scale group cohesion. Conversely the sheltered pigment art, produced in an arguably domestic social context, is thought to have provided the opportunity for individual and localised group identifying behaviour.The region…
Media and social context
This paper explores some inter-relationships between style, media and social context in a regional prehistoric art style in the Sydney Basin in coastal south-eastern Australia. Engravings on open sandstone platforms and a predominantly pigment tradition within sandstone shelters represent a dual media style which operated in the recent prehistoric past. These combined media provide insight into how style may have been used in the pursuit of diffe…
Faith and health self-management of rural older adults
Archaic Faces to Headdresses
This chapter contains section titled: Introduction The Arid Zone Art Graphic Arid Zone Rock Art Research Rock Art Chronology Correlating Rock Art with Other Arid Zone Land Use Patterns Archaic Faces Note References
The first archaeological evidence for death by spearing in Australia
An Aboriginal man done to death on the dunes 4000 years ago was recently discovered during excavations beneath a bus shelter in Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches. The presence of backed microliths and the evidence for trauma in the bones showed that he had been killed with stone-tipped spears. Now we know how these backed points were used. A punishment ritual is implied by analogies with contact-period observations made in the eighteenth cen…
Dreamtime Superhighway (TA27)
I remember the visit with clarity: it was 1991 and my first trip to Australia. One day was spent at Sydney's West Head with the young and enthusiastic Jo McDonald, where we toured some of the rock engraving sites and the painted Great Mackerel rock shelter. I can still see the large flat curving rocks at West Head on which animals had been engraved -fish, kangaroos, a goanna. And, as is so often the case when I visit rock art sites, my imaginatio…
Dating Of Bush Turkey Rockshelter 3 in the Calvert Ranges establishes Early Holocene Occupation of the Little Sandy Desert, Western Australia
Systematic excavation of occupied rockshelters that occur in ranges along the Canning Stock Route of the Western Desert has seen the establishment of both a Pleistocene signal (c.24ka BP) as well as the fleshing out of a Holocene sequence. Recent dating of a perched rockshelter in the Calvert Ranges, east of the Durba Hills, has provided a Holocene record filling in previous occupational gaps from the Calvert Ranges. The extrapolated basal date o…
Symbolic behaviour and the peopling of the southern arc route to Australia
Deadly weapons
A recently excavated skeleton dated to 3677 cal BP provides an extraordinary opportunity to determine the function of its associated backed artefacts. Seventeen stone artefacts were recovered during salvage excavation of an adult male Aboriginal skeleton from a sand dune in Narrabeen, a coastal suburb of Sydney. The skeletal and artefact evidence indicate death by spearing. Three artefacts were refitted, and, of the 14 near complete artifacts, 12…
Dampier Archipelago petroglyphs
In 2007 the Dampier Archipelago petroglyph province was included on the National Heritage List. This paper outlines the process of determining the province's scientific values. We briefly describe our findings, which are based on all existing site data lodged with regulatory authorities. We synthesize published and unpublished systematic survey and rock art recording data collected over three decades for research and environmental impact assessme…
Lithic Artefact Distribution in the Rouse Hill Development Area, Cumberland Plain, New South Wales
For several years systematic test excavations have been conducted in the open landscape of the Rouse Hill Development Area (RHDA), as part of development impact mitigation projects. Data on artefact distribution and density from these projects are combined here to identify patterns which might signal Aboriginal people’s preferences for artefact discard in their landscape. Topographic and stream order variables correlate with artefact density and …
L'iconographie du désert occidental d'Australie
Les voyages des êtres ancestraux connus sous le nom de Wati Kutjarra (les deux hommes-lézards) occupent une place centrale dans la cosmologie du Désert occidental. Les résultats de leurs actions, leurs marques et leurs formes métamorphosées sont souvent visibles dans des aires géographiques socialement ‘ouvertes’, et recouvrent et relient des éléments topographiques disséminés sur d’immenses étendues de terre. Le long de la Canning Stock Route qu…
Dreamtime Superhighway
Dreamtime Superhighway presents a thorough and original contextualization of the rock art and archaeology of the Sydney Basin. By combining excavation results with rock art analysis it demonstrates that a true archaeology of rock art can provide insights into rock art image-making in people’s social and cultural lives. Based on a PhD dissertation, this monograph is a significantly revised and updated study which draws forcefully on rich and new d…
Smeltertown
Journal Article Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community Get access Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community. By Monica Perales. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. xvi, 333 pp. Cloth, $65.00, ISBN978-0-8078-3411-4. Paper, $22.95, ISBN978-0-8078-7146-1.) Jason McDonald Jason McDonald University of Southampton Southampton, England Search for other works by this author on: Oxford A…
Western Desert Iconography
The travels of the ancestral beings known as Wati Kutjarra (two lizard-men) are central to Western Desert cosmology. The results of their actions, markings and transmogrified forms are often seen in socially 'open' domains and cover and connect features over huge tracts of land. On the central Canning Stock Route of Western Australia there are detailed ethnographic records and ongoing observances of Wati Kutjarra by custodians at a number of rang…
Research Issues and New Directions
This chapter contains sections titled: Rationale for this Volume and its Structure Research Issues and New Directions References
Archaeology (57 works) · Geography (53 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (44 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (38 works) · Geology (36 works) · History (26 works) · Rock art (23 works) · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies (22 works) · Paleontology (20 works) · Art (18 works)