Rock-Writing, Picture-Writing, Petroglyphs, Rock-Art; And the Importance of the Hyphen‪.‬

We thank B. K. Swartz, Jr. for his excellent contribution to the debate we recently generated. He makes a number of valid points and enlightens us with important American developments in a field we all are most passionate about. As Swartz emphasises, it was Garrick Mallery's 1893 classic, Picture-writing of the American Indians, that was pivotal in launching interest in what we call 'rock-art' or 'rock art' of western North America. But earlier, in 1886, Mallery also published Pictographs of the North American Indians, another meticulous volume that focuses on different forms of drawing but includes 'petroglyphs'. Swartz refers to Mallery's attribution of the use of 'petroglyph' by Richard Andree in 1878. Given that some readers may wish to pursue this we provide the full reference details here (see Andree 1878) but also reproduce the full text of the pertinent section within Mallery 1893, page 31: It is interesting to note that Mallery placed a hyphen in 'rock-writing' and 'picture-writing' and that Thomas Ewbank's publication was in 1866. This predates European publications, with serious European interest in 'cave art' beginning in the 1860s with Felix Garrigou (see Bahn and Vertut 1997: 16). Indeed, as far as we can tell, the first published term for what most refer to as 'rock art' had a hyphen in it, Ewbank's rock-writing! In Australia, interest in petroglyphs began soon after Europeans arrived in many parts of the country (Tacon 2001). For instance, the first documented European encounters with rock art occurred during the initial months of settlement at Port Jackson (Sydney) in 1788. When Governor Arthur Phillip and his men began exploring the land surrounding the harbour, petroglyph sites impressed them enough to describe them in their diaries: