Common Symbols and Their Usual Meanings
In Aboriginal Art, a simple set of symbols, such as dots, concentric circles and curved and straight lines are often utilized. While symbols vary widely between the various Aboriginal cultures found across Australia, there are a number of useful starting points that can help identify potential meanings.
Concentric circles usually represent campsites or rock holes. Straight lines between circles illustrate the routes travelled between camps or places while wavy lines across a painting usually mean water or rain.
How People Are Depicted
Humans are often depicted as a U shape, representing the ground when a person sits cross legged on the earth. The tools portrayed beside them define whether the U shape represents a male or female. A woman may have a coolamon bowl and a digging stick next to her. This combination of symbols may look like this: UOI. A man would carry spears and possibly boomerangs, so his symbols may look like U || (.
Groups of people are generally marked as a circle or a set of concentric circles. These circles may represent a meeting place, a campsite, a fireplace, or a watering hole. The travel of people between several locations may be depicted as parallel lines linking up between the circles.
Furthermore, one of the most common symbols used in Aboriginal Art is the circle, which can represent cosmological aspects of cultural and spiritual places. Circular impressions left on rock surfaces also indicate forms of sacredness and expressions of connections to cultural representations within the mind, body, and emotions.