Fire weakens this rock, and in time a fire-affected area erodes. Bush-fires may result in (flaking) erosion of a few millimetres. We think fires lit for cooking, to keep warm, for light, or for ritual may eventually damage an approximately circular area of the rock to a depth of a few centimetres. We conducted some experiments to find out more details, but it is obvious that many things affect the resulting scar, including the size and shape of the fire, its temperature, and the build-up of ash which insulates its heat from the rock surface and how often it is lit in the same place.

Figure 4. A heavily flaked sname. The rock has cracked, but has not eroded away. This may be a little difficult to identify but you can see the cracks, the slabs and the vegetation growing out of the soil that has collected in the cracks.

Figure 5. A small, wash filled, sname. The wash is supporting a heavy moss growth.

There is a great deal of rock art in the Sydney area, including many engravings, which you know as “petroglyphs”.

Figure 7 (left). An engraving of a woman. You may notice that she is on tippy-toe. This may have ritual significance. Photo courtesy of Adam Black.

Figure 8 (right). An engraving of Daramulan, an ancestor figure. Daramulan is recognised by his profile view, one arm, one big footed leg and an emu bum. He is mostly bigger than this engraving and may have a headdress. Photo courtesy of Adam Black.

Unfortunately there are very few documentary records of the Aborigines of the Sydney area, who suffered enormous physical and cultural damage when the European colonists arrived in 1778. So most of our information about the engravings comes from formal archaeological study. For the first 214 years, that study concentrated on finding the engravings and speculating what they might mean. This paper is the first report of a slightly more emic approach; trying to learn how they were used. We are employing old-fashioned science, rather than high-tech science in our investigations. We try to make observations, propose and test hypotheses, and all that stuff.
John did some controlled (sort-of) experiments to find out about how fires damage rock, and how well fires illuminate engravings at night. We found that seeing is difficult to measure.

Figure 11. The engraved brick is 3 metres from the fire at maximum illumination. The engraving is a kangaroo track made by John.

Figure 12. Here is the same brick with less illumination.

There is a reference to a fire in ceremonial context at Macquarie Marshes:
'And nearby was an enormous sculptured figure of Baiame lying near a fire (mil'lendee, Baiame's fire) which was kept constantly burning.'
The figure was made of raised earth. In the Sydney area it makes sense that engravings would be used for comparable activities.
There are a few paintings that show Aboriginal rituals involving fire in the Sydney area during the 19th century.

Our idea was that some rituals may have been performed at night in association with rock engravings.
First we had to define what we were going to measure, so we spent a day looking around several sites. We worked out that we wanted to record everything we could find that could be a firescar, so we had to define what we were looking for. The name “firescar” got in the way, so we had to invent a new name for a pretty well circular depression in the rock surface of about the right size. We chose the meaningless word SNAME, and decided to measure their diameters, (an average of 2 or 3), depth, slope and position.
Then we chose a big rock platform with many engravings, close by another with few engravings. Our hypothesis that snames occur with engravings would be confirmed if there were many snames on the rock with many engravings, and few snames on the rock with few engravings. That’s what happened, with the added accident that we found some snames on platform 2, where we did not know there were engravings. Some turned up close to the snames.
We made maps of the exposed rock platforms, showing where there are engravings and where there are snames.

We also did some stats on the numbers and measurements we had collected, and YES! There are significant associations of snames and engravings, as well as no engravings, no snames.

Next we need some expert science, to find out more about what really made the snames, (We think it may have been fire; it was not ponding water, because many snames slope),
Given our results so far, it may even be possible to get a grant for a geomorphologist to do some independent investigation into the origin of snames.
The whole exercise has been productive, which is an attribute of good science. Our research links the physical archaeology to the sparse ethnography, and allows the bare stones to be more evocative. Spaces may be as significant as marks. It has opened up more questions for further investigations, for instance:
1. Whether snames collect round particular engravings and are placed as though they avoid others (they are, they do). The engravings without snames seem more mundane – depicting fish, reptiles, and shields.
2. A very few engravings are in snames and a few snames interrupt engraved lines. This interaction between snames and engravings may indicate a long concurrent utilisation of both. There is much productive work to be done in this area.
3. Through studies of snames in relation to freshening up, and to erosion, we can ask which engravings had most attention paid to them, and which went out of favour. (The very faint Fat Man at Elvina is a case in point: it is surrounded by snames, so was once a centre of attention, but he has not been regrooved for a very long time.)
4. Are the few snames away from engravings different from the rest? (yes, sort of).

Conclusion.

Surely people before us have noticed snames, but have not been aware that they indicate foci of ancient interest. Snames must become important to those who manage and look after rock art, as well as to those who are interested in the stories they have to tell about the use of engravings and whole sites.
Our research began with a simple question: where are snames in relation to engravings? The demonstration that nearly all snames are distributed within a few metres of some selected engravings is productive in many ways.
Through discovering snames we have opened a door to formal archaeological research into the use of some rock art. This is a small step towards an emic understanding. Previous approaches were limited to purely etic assessments, finding, recording and speculating about the making and meaning of these engravings.

John Clegg: jcless@mail.usyd.edu.au
Michael Barry: m.barry(at)iinet.net.au
2002