Doing it the old-fashioned way: Dating Paleoindian Rock Art in Eastern South America

Summary

Rock painting flourished in several parts of the world, including eastern South America. Traditions that can be important evidence not only of development of art, society, and religion but also of science and technology. Techniques for direct dating are in active development these days, but archaeological stratigraphy and radiometric dating can give an important baseline to compare with other methods. We present an example of this strategy and its results at Monte Alegre, Brazil and briefly summarize evidence from sites in the larger region. At Cavern of the Painted Rock, people dropped paint and prepared pigment on the ground below art panels, and sediment subsequently covered them. We radiocarbon dated charcoal and carbonized plants with the paint, thermoluminescence-dated burned lithics, and OSL dated sediment. At the open site of Panel of the Painted Rock of the Pestle, paint stone and carbonized wood were left on the ground next to the painted walls and these became buried in sediment. The sediment was shaded, so could not be OSL dated, but the charcoal was radiocarbon dated. Both sites paint-bearing layers dates averaged c. 13,150 cal years BP., making the art and its archaeoastronomical alignments among some of the oldest yet dated.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Methodology and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art

Keywords

Spatial Coverage