Dr. Karina Arifin, the author of Rock Art in West Papua, completed a Bachelor of Letters in Archeology, Faculty of Letters, the University of Indonesia, with a thesis entitled: Reservoirs and Canals at the Center of the Majapahit Kingdom, Trowulan, East Java.
She continued her Master of Arts education in Archeology at the Australian National University, Australia. In 1983 with a thesis entitled: Social Aspects of Pottery Manufacture in Boera, Papua New Guinea. Then in 2004, she took Ph.D. in Archeology, The Australian National University, Australia. With a thesis entitled: Early Human Occupation of the East Kalimantan Rainforest.
For the past 30 years, Dr . Karina has been a member of the teaching staff at the Faculty of Letters, the University of Indonesia (now Faculty of Cultural Sciences). She has a significant focus on Prehistoric archeology and with interest in rock drawings and Austronesian distributions. Has conducted various archaeological studies, especially concerning rock drawings, in Papua, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, and Sumatra.
Karina Arifin’s Footsteps
On December 8, 1959, Karina Arifin was born in Jakarta. The University of Indonesia in Jakarta is where she earned her first degree in archaeology. She joined the “Kayan Mentarang Culture and Conservation Project” by the WWF in East Kalimantan. She joined it after earning her master’s degree at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra.
Her enthusiasm for Kalimantan’s prehistoric past inspired her to do more study along the upper Birang River in East Kalimantan’s Berau District. She is now working with Professor Dr. P. Bellwood in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at ANU to complete her doctoral thesis.
She had a fantastic opportunity to visit rock art sites in her nation thanks to a UNESCO project to assess those in West Papua. Karina is a lecturer at the University of Indonesia’s Department of Archaeology, where she instructs students on West Papuan rock art and other subjects.
About Rock Art in West Papua
The findings of five seasons of research on the Tripolitanian pre-desert plateau, which is shown by the ruins of old walls and farmsteads, are presented in this two-volume book. The Berau Gulf, Bitsyari Bay, Triton Bay, and the Baliem Valley, four of West Papua’s most significant rock art regions, have all been included in one book for the first time.
Among other islands like Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Muna, they comprise one of Indonesia’s wealthiest areas for rock art and have several recently found sites. Along the South Coast and in the Baliem Highlands.
This book features hundreds of unique pictures of West Papuan hand stencils, Matutuo, faces, and abstract designs. It also contains recent findings of rock art in West Papua, most of which are found in caves or galleries created by wave action in limestone.
Karina’s Foreword on Rock Art in West Papua
With its thorough visual treatment of rock ‘art’ expressions, the publication of Rock Art is a noteworthy addition that significantly expands our understanding of the subject. Its comprehensive study of Indonesia’s West Papua region complements previous rock art publications. Those publications mainly concentrated on other parts of the globe.
We are thankful to the two writers of this book for taking the time to visit and record all the rock art sites. Many of them are situated in remote and difficult-to-access areas. They provide a broad summary that mainly adopts an archaeological method while sometimes including anthropological ideas. This general overview may serve as an inspiration for future anthropological research on the West Papuan people.
This book also briefly mentions the rock art in West Papua. It may be seen on many islands in the Sea of Arafura. Interrelatedness, it is possible to infer from the rock art of tribes like Papua, Timor, Flores, Kei, and Muna that the sea—in this case, the Arafura—acted as a mediating and maybe even a uniting force for the ethnic groups with a monetary connection.
Thus, it may be deduced—or hypothesized—that the rock art expressions that can still be seen on the rocks in these locations are, in some ways, traces of earlier interethnic communication. Investigating the continuity or discontinuities of those cultural phrases’ application in rock is thus a task in and of itself.
Wrapping Up
Dr. Karina shows that the scope of the area in Rock Art in West Papua helps conservation authorities construct any operational plan with more clarity. The fact that some rock art locations are still revered as sacred places by the local populations must be taken into account as part of any conservation strategy. This book might be a valuable data source for comparative research on rock art. It is because it is an accurate list of the many rock art forms found in West Papua.
