Rock art and its ethnography provide important insights for understanding people’s connection to place. People’s connection to place through rock art imagery is especially significant for understanding past-present human cognitive behaviours. This is often shaped by people’s cultural belief systems, which differ across places and cultures. Internationally, ongoing research in North America, South Africa and Australia has captured vital aspects of the context of rock art production from an ethnographic perspective. In the Indo-Pacific, various rock art concepts relating to the Austronesian migrations across Southeast Asia into the Pacific have been established. However, ethnographic studies as a methodological tool for understanding certain aspects of rock art imagery and material culture that cannot be interpreted from excavated archaeological contexts have not been attempted comprehensively. In particular, the ethnoarchaeology of rock art in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is significant because it can provide another dimension to our understanding of the concept of place. Many well-documented sites are focused on excavated archaeological materials, leaving rock art a neglected aspect of PNG archaeology until recently. An overview indicates that rock art sites in PNG have been only briefly documented by their site descriptions, general motifs and whether the site or motif was painted, stencilled or engraved. Additionally, ethnographic data have not been collected for most sites, but those with ethnographic information highlight that rock art is created in association with rituals or ceremonies, clan markers or boundaries, stories of migratory routes and pathways, and communal history. However, many of these rock art sites still require ethnographic datasets and systematic recording to thoroughly understand individual motifs and the social and cultural insights afforded by sites across PNG. Therefore, focusing on four stencilled rock art sites of Auwim, namely Apuranga, Kundumbue, Pukan and Pundimbung in the Upper Karawari-Arafundi region, East Sepik Province, PNG, this dissertation provides new findings on the archaeology of the region through ethnoarchaeological studies of rock art. This investigation has been framed by local community perspectives on specific rock art themes to enhance our understanding of rock art production in contemporary settings.