The Centre for Rock Art Research + Management is committed to continuing research on projects within the University of Western Australia as well as in collaboration with national and international universities.

Rock art is laden with cultural information that is used to learn more about people's stories, history, relationships to land, social boundaries, belief systems, and interaction or communication with others.

These images are an enduring and visual historical record of people’s symbolic lives. The study of rock art helps us bring the human landscape to life. Australia is home to more than 100,000 known and documented rock art sites, and many more remain unrecorded.

Knowledge about rock art remains strong amongst Indigenous Australian groups: stories about symbolism and meanings are passed down from generation to generation, and in some cases directly from the artists themselves.

Western Australia features some of Australia’s most spectacular rock art galleries. Few landscapes offer as much tangible evidence of human history as the Pilbara, Kimberley and Western Desert regions. This situation presents archaeologists and rock art researchers with an extraordinary opportunity to learn more about the rich visual histories associated with rock art.

TEDxPerth

In 2015 Director Jo McDonald gave a talk at TEDxPerth highlighting how the value of rock art, as a record of our human journey, needs to be appreciated if we are to protect this heritage from destruction.