The Art of Archaeology

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Art of Archaeology," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Many regions of the world have extensive rock art records that archive the symbolic lives of the people who have produced them through time. Many of these areas have been the objects of fascination by avid amateurs and early chroniclers, but it has only been in the last few decades that these vast repositories of visual and symbolic action have been mobilised as archaeological evidence. This session presents recent research from Australia and the USA where large systematic recording projects are documenting vast rock art repositories, mobilising a range of anthropological and archaeological approaches and new digital, scientific and visualisation techniques. These projects are engaging with decades of legacy data and creating enormous data-rich collections of archaeological material to inform new understandings of these extraordinary heritage resources.