Many hand stencils on numerous panels in thousands of rock shelters occur ubiquitously in different social settings across the globe. While hand stencils directly represent modern humans in landscape settings, their social and cultural contexts are often overlooked due to a lack of ethnography associated with the artwork. This paper explores the hand stencils from Kundumbue and Pundimbung rock art sites, situated within the traditional boundaries of the Auwim people of the East Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. Combining rock art studies and ethnography reveals that the hand stencils are a priority in each clan’s place-making, around which they construct the community’s social narratives. Rock shelters and their rock art also show a form of communal history that is evoked in contemporary settings, in addition to having been a form of esoteric magic in the past. We conclude that hand stencils can have multiple meanings over time and across space as a widespread cultural marker. However, aspects of the identities of those individuals, groups, and communities who created the now static hand imagery, through either ritual or mundane activities, remain in place.