Interpretative Frameworks and the Study of the Rock Arts

This chapter explores issues regarding the interpretation of rock art. The chapter considers what interpretation is about, how we define and identify it, and what various ways rock art researchers have engaged with interpretation. Here we mention how they have drawn on concepts of style, structuralism, or shamanism as well as on formal and/or informed methods. There is consideration of the uses of analogy and the direct historical method. Overall, the chapter is framed within the question of what constitutes an ‘authorized’ interpretation and how might we evaluate various interpretations for their validity and insights.

The Production of Ethnographic Records and Their Use in Rock Art Research

This chapter explores the characteristics, limits, and diversity of ethnographic records produced and/or used in rock art research. By critically examining the ethnographic archives on rock art available in the global literature, the chapter addresses the conditions and processes involved in the making of these records. The authors argue that analyzing the particular social circumstances of their production is not only a prerequisite for any methodological discussion on how to use ethnographic records in interpreting rock art, but also a way to promote self-reflection about the way that we perceive, experience, interact with, and create knowledge about rock art.

Rock Art of the Pacific

This chapter sets out to provide an overview of the rock art of the Pacific region, previous studies having focused largely on particular techniques or specific areas within the region. The study expands the frame of analysis to encompass the wider geographical setting of Oceania and seeks to place the region’s rock art within a series of contexts that might enhance our understanding of its significance. These contexts include ethnographic access to continuities in the production and meaning of art and an appreciation of the embeddedness of rock art within a suite of other symbolic media, allowing for the intertextual exchange of motifs and meanings.

The Rock Art of Sub-Saharan Africa

This chapter presents key dimensions of sub-Saharan African rock art (pictograms and petroglyphs). Particular attention is paid to recent approaches, the application of physico-chemical analyses, and stylistic determinations used to establish reliable chronologies. Stylistic approaches have been particularly influential in the interpretation of rock imagery, as has the identification of specific motifs (such as loincloths and aprons) that serve to indicate ritual and initiatory roles, particularly for women. The preservation of rock art and access to sites are topics of renewed concern that tend to increasingly involve local communities. In sub-Saharan Africa as in other parts of the world, rock art research is well poised to build on a long history of research, and to benefit from new techniques such as digital enhancement that are likely to considerably improve knowledge and increase the known corpus of art.

The Rock Art of Sub-Scandinavian Europe

Upper Palaeolithic art is found across much of Europe as portable (mobiliary) art, pictographs or engravings in deep caves, or as engravings in open-air sites. European Upper Palaeolithic art was among the first prehistoric art to be discovered by researchers, and it remains among the oldest dated art in the world. Since the late 1800s, a range of theoretical approaches have been used to comprehend its meaning(s), with most effort aimed at the construction of chrono-stylistic frameworks by which to understand the art’s origins and evolution over time. More recently, new analytical techniques such as radiocarbon and uranium-series dating, digital imaging, and 3-D recording have improved our abilities to analyse the art. The Iberian Peninsula is especially rich in post-Palaeolithic assemblages of varied ages, including some that progress into the Neolithic. In this context, current discussions are focused on continuities of deeply rooted Palaeolithic traditions into the Mesolithic and on ruptures at the onset of the Neolithic.

Archaeomorphological Mapping

Understanding the rock art of a cave or rock shelter requires positioning the art in its landscape setting. This involves both spatial and temporal dimensions because a site’s layout changes through time, necessitating an examination of site formation processes. In this chapter, the authors present a new approach—archaeomorphology—that unites archaeological and geomorphological methods to explore the history of the objects and spaces that make up a site. Archaeomorphological mapping allows researchers to track through time the changing configuration of sites, including rock surfaces, the morphogenic forces at work, and, with this, the changing spatial contexts of the art on its surfaces. Archaeomorphology shifts attention away from the site as a ‘natural’ canvas upon which inscriptions were made to its social engagement as an actively constructed architectural and performative space.

Introduction

This Introduction to The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art highlights a number of conceptual themes and issues that go to the heart of rock art research. Rock art research in the early twenty-first century is daunting in its complexity and scope due largely to major technological advances in digital recording and chronometric dating, the increasing employment of sophisticated methods and theories harnessed not just from archaeology and anthropology but also from a wide array of disciplines, and greater awareness of Indigenous voices, ethical responsibilities, and political sensitivities of working collaboratively with Indigenous communities. As archaeological and anthropological approaches to rock art mutually inform each other’s research agendas, new methodological and theoretical ways of approaching, conceptualising, and historicising rock art symbolism, biography, authorship, gender, sexuality, spiritualism, agency, and relationality continue to develop to shape future research agendas.

Characterizing Rock Art Pigments

The materials used to make rock art contain important evidence about the cultural practices of the people who created it: their technologies, movements, and social interactions. The number of studies of archaeological pigments in the recent literature demonstrates how fruitful such enquiries can be. In this chapter, the authors discuss the physicochemical characterization of rock art pigments, outline the history of research in this area, differentiate key concepts and terminology, and describe principal methods. They conclude with illustrative case studies from France, South Africa, and Australia to demonstrate the kinds of archaeological information that can be preserved in rock art pigments.

A New Framework for Interpreting Contact Rock Art

This chapter addresses the challenge of seeing beyond the motif. Based on a case study in the Mid North of South Australia, this chapter presents a new analytical framework for analyzing style in rock art and using stylistic characteristics to identify authorship. The framework can be customized to different sites and/or regions to provide more nuanced understandings of specific contact trajectories. The results of this study suggest that innovation in contact rock art initially occurs in a single aspect of style and that a sequencing of innovations may be able to provide a temporal succession for contact motifs. The wider value of this framework is that it provides a basis for developing regional or site-specific models of style that may help researchers obtain greater insight into the authorship of contact rock art in different parts of the world.

Rock Arts, Shamans, and Grand Theories

The shamanistic or neuropsychological model for interpreting rock arts generally, and hunter-gatherer rock arts in particular, emerged in South African rock art research. It has since been applied more widely, notably in efforts to explain the origins of art. The model has evolved over three decades, adapting to critiques and incorporating new ideas and theoretical advances. This chapter is concerned with its development, from its structural-semiotic origins to an account that attempts to incorporate history, diversity and the temporality of human action. The model’s adequacy as an account of visual production and whether it has escaped from the generalizations of grand theorizing are also considered.