Strata: Deserts Past, Present and Future

This book documents a collaborative, environmental art project on Puritjarra, a rock shelter in the Cleland Hills in western central Australia. The project incorporates the perspectives of scholars of archaeology, ecology, environmental history and the history of science as well as those of contemporary artists drawing upon the heritage of Indigenous peoples and settlers. It explores diverse ways of representing and understanding a place where desert oaks may well have been a continuous feature of the landscape for the last 100,000 years, while plant and animal species introduced more recently have caused significant change within the span of a single human lifetime. Recurring themes include water, food, shelter and spiritual renewal. The aim of the project: “co-understanding… valuing the different ways each of us sees a single place that is significant, but differently so, for each perspective.