A bird in the hand: response to Franklin and Szabo

Abstract

We thank Franklin and Szabo for their timely response to our paper. Indeed, their response highlights the challenge of identifying depictions at rock art sites, in this case even if they are stencils. Macintosh (1977) was one of the first in Australia to warn us about the difficulty of assigning species designations to rock art images and this issue continues to dominate debate in rock art research. In this regard, opinions from a range of scientists and Indigenous people from the area in which sites are found are valuable in advancing ideas about subject identification.