New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This session will feature recent advances being made around the world in direct, indirect, and contextual dating of pictographs, petroglyphs and other forms of human rock markings. Pictographs in caves or on rockshelter walls and petroglyphs in various outdoor settings have the potential to provide remarkable insights into the visual worlds of early human cultures globally. Extraordinary developments in various scientific fields have enabled researchers to progress age estimations for the earliest human art-making. The ability to understand non-destructively pigment use in symbolic behaviours also engages contemporary community interest. Scientific innovation necessitates collaborative approaches to ensure these highly technical methods are deployed in culturally appropriate and methodologically rigorous ways. Advances in scientific methods are often presented in the absence of theory: meaning that these new − especially old − dates create debate in the public domain rather than through scientific due-process. This session highlights the scientific advances being made in understanding deep-time and more recent symbolic behaviours across the planet and provides a forum for debating how science must align itself with theoretically grounded archaeological interpretations as well as Indigenous perspectives.

Other Keywords
Iconography and Art: Rock Art • Archaeometry & Materials Analysis: XRF/pXRF • Dating Techniques: Radiometric • Worldwide

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-15 of 15)

  • Documents (15)
Documents
  • Advances in using oxalate-rich mineral coatings as dating tools in Australian rock art shelters (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Green.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Oxalate-rich, glaze-like mineral deposits are commonly found on low-angle surfaces in Australian rock art shelters. The synchronous growth of individual layers in these deposits across the Kimberley region of northwest Australia, suggests an environmental control, though the exact nature of this link is unclear. Some glazes,...

  • Alternative Methods for Dating Rock Varnish at Murujuga, Western Australia (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ying-Li Wu.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Placing robust age constraints on the production of rock art is difficult because the lack of suitable material for sampling. This is especially true in the case of petroglyphs where ‘paints’ are unavailable. The ARC-funded project ‘Dating Murujuga’s Dreaming’ faces this challenge by trying to identify a chronology for rock...

  • Beyond age determinations: Building theoretically informed contextualised understandings of deep time rock art in Sunda and Sahul (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Tristen Jones.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Innovations in methods that target datable materials using radiocarbon (Finch et al. 2019; Green et al. 2021) has enhanced the capacity of rock art researchers to date rock art in Australia, producing a range age determinations for a diversity of rock art motifs (Finch et al. 2020; 2021; Jones et al. 2017). Similarly age...

  • Comparative Dating of Carbon-based San Rock Art Samples Using AMS Radiocarbon Analysis and Plasma-Chemical Oxidation (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth Ann Armitage.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> Over the past ten years, extensive characterization of San rock art has been conducted, leading to the identification of a wide range of coloring materials. The black paintings are composed of four classes of carbon-based materials: soot, charcoal, carbon black, and burnt bones, providing a potential avenue for...

  • Contextualising Great Basin Rock Art: dating symbolic behavior in a changing landscape (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucia Clayton.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Volcanic Tableland in the Great Basin houses a rock art province with a wide array of archaeological sites created by First Nations peoples since the Late Pleistocene/Holocene transition. I look at how people in the past situated themselves in the landscape and structured their occupation patterns in the changing...

  • Dating Rock Art – Context is everything (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jo McDonald.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The developments of microscopy and in other scientific fields over the last five decades have changed the face of rock art research enabling researchers to make huge leaps and bounds in understanding early human art-making. Long term collaborations with Aboriginal communities in Australia have also allowed for continuing...

  • Evidence for a 20,000-year sequence of Australian Aboriginal Rock Art (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Damien Finch.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A decade long research project has revealed the chronology of a sequence of Australian Aboriginal rock art styles that spans, at least, 20,000 years. The Kimberley region in north-western Australia is renowned for its rich concentration of painted rock art, traditionally believed to originate from the Pleistocene. Direct...

  • Evolution of sandstone rockshelters and the age of rock art in Australia’s Kimberley region (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Gleadow.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock art shelters within the Warton Sandstone in the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia follow a developmental sequence that ultimately controls survival and age of paintings within them. The rockshelters develop by initial undermining followed by one or more major slab-falls of unsupported sandstone beds from the...

  • A Method to Date Rock Engravings Using Luminescence: Tested at Murujuga, Western Australia (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Luke Gliganic.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock engravings are a valuable component of the global archaeological record. They are significant to modern populations and are a visual archive of past cultural expression that can reflect material culture, practices, ideologies, territoriality, social organization, and environments in ways that other archaeological remains...

  • A multidisciplinary approach to access temporality of use of rock art sites (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ségolène Vandevelde.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock art is one of the oldest forms of symbolic expression, offering unique insights into the human spirit and providing a window into the worldview and cosmogony of its creators. Despite extensive study worldwide, many questions remain unanswered: What is the temporality of use of rock art sites? Is there multiple creation...

  • New Advances in Dating Rock Paintings (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Steelman.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. New research is overcoming challenges associated with dating pictographs. The Shumla Archaeological Chemistry Laboratory uses a novel approach with two independent methods to provide secure dating results for paintings. The first method employs plasma oxidation to isolate organic carbon directly from the paint layer for...

  • Oxalate minerals for radiocarbon measurements: further studies on chemical pre-treatment. (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Vladimir Levchenko.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> <sup>14</sup>C AMS allowed targeting oxalates growing on rocks (mainly whewellite and weddellite) as potential dating material for rock art. Studies have confirmed that carbon in oxalate crusts comes not from the substrate on which they grow, but most probably originate from microbiota on surfaces. Additionally,...

  • Petroglyphs Age Estimates Using Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Measurements (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Meinrat Andreae.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Petroglyphs are often created by removing the dark rock varnish that covers rock surfaces in arid and semiarid regions. Subsequently, the varnish redevelops over time. We have developed a non-destructive in-situ technique, using portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF), for the measurement of the areal density of Mn and Fe on rock...

  • U-Th dating of cave carbonate overgrowths: indicators for establishing closed system reliability (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Hellstrom.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Uranium-thorium dating of speleothem calcite has become a spectacularly effective geochronometer underpinning important Quaternary climate records. The method is at its strongest on clean, macrocrystalline calcite, typically stalagmites found deep underground. U-Th depends on closed-system accumulation of thorium, as a decay...

  • Unveiling Time: Advancements and Challenges in Rock Art Dating Across South America (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Guadalupe Romero Villanueva.

    This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. South America was the last continent to be explored by humans. While its rock art is globally important, it remains largely undated by absolute methods. However, over the past decade, the field of pigment art dating in this region has experienced a remarkable surge, with more than half of the extant dates generated during...