The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II

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 "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Rock art is enigmatic and iconic, its visual aesthetic being used across academia to promote everything from book covers to merchandise, but beyond this, rock art is undervalued for the contributions it can make and the knowledge it can provide. Current rock art research is interdisciplinary, drawing methods from various fields and knowledge from multiple lines of evidence. These approaches augment and enhance rock art documentation, offer new strategies for evidence site management, and facilitate new interpretive insights for rock art provinces around the world. With continuing, innovative, and progressive methods of analysis, documentation and study, rock art is moving into a new era of research, enabling it to not just support archaeological endeavours, but lead in them. The Rock Art Interest Group- sponsored session provides a forum to share recent rock art research and pedagogy from a wide range of topics that help us to better understand and contextualise rock art, highlighting and showcasing current research to promote the value of rock art to the wider academic community.

Other Keywords
Dating Techniques • Iconography and Art: Rock Art • Digital Archaeology: 3D Modeling • Worldwide

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-11 of 11)

  • Documents (11)
Documents
  • Central Wyoming Rock Art and What it Reveals about the People Who Used this Region (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mavis Greer.

    This is an abstract from the "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Central Wyoming is surrounded by distinctive rock art styles — Dinwoody to the west, Plains Ceremonial and Biographic to the east, and styles south into Colorado previously attributed to Fremont, Ute, and Comanche. Presence of these distinctive styles locally...

  • The Horses of Chauvet Cave: A Horse Girls Perspective (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Leitch.

    This is an abstract from the "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Horse Panel from Chauvet Cave is world-famous and has been analyzed from many perspectives. This research paper is based on what is known about equine behavior and genetics and addresses the individuality of the horses in the panel. It provides evidence suggesting...

  • A Methodology for the Visualization of 3D Petroglyph Data (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Forcier.

    This is an abstract from the "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock markings have long captivated the public imagination. More recently, the archaeological field has witnessed a renaissance in rock-marking scholarship as researchers recognize both the continued importance of these features to descendant communities and their...

  • Montana’s Early Hunters: TwoTypes of Atlatls in the Vissotzky Petroglyphs (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only James Keyser.

    This is an abstract from the "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Vissotzky petroglyphs are located in the northern Rocky Mountains of western Montana. During our 2023 recording project we documented more than 300 representational petroglyphs at the site, but the most unexpected finds were a dozen atlatls, demonstrating that the...

  • The Most Ancient Representation of the Mesoamerican Plumed Serpent in Rock Art: A Critical Interpretation (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Julio Amador.

    This is an abstract from the "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> We carry out a detailed iconographic study of one of the reliefs that was carved on the slopes of Cerro Chalcatzingo, in the Mexican State of Morelos, during the Middle Formative period, as well as of several paintings in caves of the State of Guerrero and painted...

  • Rock Art 3D Modeling: Documentation and Presentation of Federal Sites (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Day.

    This is an abstract from the "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock art documentation strategies often focus on extracting individual panels out from the whole of a rock art site to photograph, document, and study the site. This approach has provided the majority of rock art site documentation on Bureau of Land Management public...

  • Rock Art as a Paleoenvironmental Proxy: Using Animal Depictions to Determine Differences in Environmental History Between Two Colombian Regions. (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mirte Korpershoek.

    This is an abstract from the "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rock art research has traditionally focused on the identification and interpretation of motifs, both representative and non-representative. In recent times, scholars have increasingly started to investigate how rock art can inform on the environmental history of the...

  • Rock Art Landscapes: Identification of Rock Art distribution patterns at different spatial scales in La Lindosa, Guaviare Colombia (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Judith Trujillo.

    This is an abstract from the "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation shows an initial approach to rock art landscapes in Nuevo Tolima, Serranía of La Lindosa, based on a systematic study of rock paintings. The analysis supposes that multiple human activities left traces currently visible in the rock art landscapes...

  • San Pablo Villa de Mitla, Rock Art and The Prehistoric Caves Initiative: Effectiveness of Polycentric Governance in Managing Cultural Heritage (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ricardo Higelin.

    This is an abstract from the "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> <b>This study presents the outcomes of applying the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to define focal action situations within the Mexican Cultural System (MCS). Through a detailed examination of San Pablo Villa de Mitla, Rock Art, and The...

  • Semiotics for Rock Art (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Olsen.

    This is an abstract from the "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Semiotics applied to rock art is useful when it is part of an archaeological project because semiotics contributes a framework of principles of communication, methodology and definitive vocabulary from linguistics for analyzing imagery in a substantive manner. Using...

  • Use of the Landscape as a Route Marker and Symbolism Associated with the Geoglyphs of the Middle Casma River Valley, Peru. (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel Sanchez-Borjas.

    This is an abstract from the "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent investigations in the middle Casma River valley have uncovered a series of geoglyphs used as guides and markers within a desert landscape crisscrossed by pathways. This landscape likely hosted fertility-related rituals by valley populations. Unfortunately, this...