Unveiling Time: Advancements and Challenges in Rock Art Dating Across South America

Summary

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 this period. While this progress is promising, now is an opportune moment to critically assess the key challenges faced in these case studies, alongside the theoretical and methodological advancements that this chronological data has contributed to the exploration of regional rock art studies. In this review, we examine the existing published direct dates of rock art paintings from South America by analyzing the foundational questions, protocols, analytical techniques, technical results, and archaeological interpretations. Accurate and reliable dating of rock art paintings is crucial for understanding how these traditions emerged, developed, and spread, deeply intertwined with the socio-ecological and historical dynamics of local communities. Finally, we discuss the significance of this body of chronometric data in enhancing our understanding of ancient visual communication strategies for landscape marking and information exchange in the last continental region to be colonized by humans.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53070