Blurb:

We address ‘differences’ in rock art production at the Klamath Basin in Oregon/California, USA. Rock art designs are not distributed uniformly across the landscape, even at the level of a given motif. Taking one widespread motif – the nucleated concentric circle – as a key symbol, we show how it varies across settlement sites, special-use areas and frequently-used areas, and how its symbolic significance differs according to the context in which it appears. This landscape context model suggests that within-group variation is better understood in terms of what Richard Wilk has called ‘common difference’, rather than ‘stylistic differences’.