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Rock Art (rock + art)
Selected AbstractsROCK ART AND RITUAL LANDSCAPE IN CENTRAL SPAIN: THE ROCK CARVINGS OF LA HINOJOSA (CUENCA)OXFORD JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 1 2003MARGARITA DÍAZ-ANDREU Summary. In this article the rock art carvings of La Hinojosa in central Spain are examined. Their connection to a major transit route recorded at least from the medieval period is explored, as well as their location in a valley located at the confluence of two primary river basins in the Iberian Peninsula separated by less than five kilometres. It is argued that this singularity of the landscape seems to have been perceived by the people who marked the stones. From the 17 decorated rocks recorded in La Hinojosa valley, three were exceptionally elaborately decorated. They were situated at regular intervals in the valley. The site with the greatest number of motifs, the large rock of San Bernardino, occupies a central location. This site is also exceptional because of the transformations which the rock shows throughout the day, pointing to a narrative in which cups and anthropomorphs seem to have a primary role. It is suggested that gender may have constituted one of the main guidelines of the narrative, given the apparent replacement of feminine by masculine human representations throughout the day. [source] ON SHORELINE DATING OF ROCK ARTACTA ARCHAEOLOGICA, Issue 1 2003Kalle Sognnes First page of article [source] Rock Art: A Potential Source of Information about Past Maritime Technology in the South-East Asia-Pacific RegionINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 2 2007Peter V. Lape It is possible that most or all boats and rig-types used in prehistoric times in the South-East Asia-Pacific region have completely disappeared from the record, and that those recorded by Europeans in the 17th century may have been relatively recent innovations. The purpose of this paper is to introduce to the literature a new source of information on ancient boat and rig designs. This source is the information encoded in rock-art depictions of watercraft. This paper provides a technical appraisal of 18 images of watercraft from the Tutuala region of East Timor. © 2007 The Authors [source] Access, Style and Imagery: The Audience for Prehistoric Rock Art in Atlantic Spain and Portugal, 4000,2000 BCOXFORD JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 3 2002Richard Bradley The prehistoric rock art of western Iberia is normally divided into several styles with different associations, distributions and chronologies. Some are associated with monuments and others are found in the open air. A more basic division may help to account for the degree of overlap between these separate groups. This paper suggests that it may be possible to learn something of the significance of the painted and carved designs by considering their accessibility and the audiences to whom they could have been addressed. The argument is illustrated by recent fieldwork at Monte Penide and El Pedroso. [source] Comparison of sedimentation and occupation histories inside and outside rock shelters, Keep-River region, northwestern AustraliaGEOARCHAEOLOGY: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 1 2006I.A.K. Ward This paper compares archaeological evidence of Aboriginal occupation inside rock shelters and outside in adjacent sand sheets, focusing on two locations in the Keep-River region, northwestern Australia. Luminescence and radiocarbon dating reveal that occupation sequences inside rock shelters are generally younger ( < 10,000 yr B.P.) than outside ( < 18,000 yr B.P.). Differences in occupation chronology and artifact assemblages inside and outside rock shelters result from depositional and postdepositional processes and shifts in site function. An increase in regional sedimentation rate from 10 cm/ka , 1 in the Pleistocene to 20 cm/ka , 1 in the Holocene may account for late buildup of sediments within rock shelters, increased artifact accumulation, and reduced postdepositional disturbance in some settings. More intense use of rock shelters in the Late Holocene is indicated from a change in hunting technology and greater production of rock art. The results indicate that some cultural interpretations might be flawed unless archaeological evidence from rock-shelter and open-site excavations is integrated. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Animal urine as painting materials in African rock art revealed by cluster ToF-SIMS mass spectrometry imagingJOURNAL OF MASS SPECTROMETRY (INCORP BIOLOGICAL MASS SPECTROMETRY), Issue 8 2010Vincent Mazel Abstract The rock art site at the village of Songo in Mali is a very important Dogon ritual place where, since the end of the nineteenth century until today, takes place the ceremony of circumcision. During these ceremonies, paintings are performed on the walls of the shelter with mainly three colors: red, black and white. Ethnological literature mentions the use of animal urine of different species such as birds, lizards or snakes as a white pigment. Urine of these animals is mainly composed of uric acid or urate salts. In this article, time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) is used to compare uric acid, snake urine and a sample of a white pigment of a Dogon painting coming from the rock art site of Songo. ToF-SIMS measurements in both positive and negative ion modes on reference compounds and snake urine proved useful for the study of uric acid and urate salts. This method enables to identify unambiguously these compounds owing to the detection in negative ion mode of the ion corresponding to the deprotonated molecule ([M , H], at m/z 167.01) and its fragment ions. Moreover, the mass spectra obtained in positive ion mode permit to differentiate uric acid and urate salts on the basis of specific ions. Applying this method to the Dogon white pigments sample, we show that the sample is entirely composed of uric acid. This proves for the first time, that animal urine was used as a pigment by the Dogon. The presence of uric acid instead of urate salts as normally expected in animal urine could be explained by the preparation of the pigment for its application on the stone. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The first Raman spectroscopic study of San rock art in the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg Park, South AfricaJOURNAL OF RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY, Issue 5 2008Linda C. Prinsloo Abstract San rock art sites are found throughout southern Africa; unfortunately this unique heritage is rapidly being lost through natural weathering processes, which have been the focus of various studies conducted in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park since 1992. It has recently been shown that the ability of Raman spectroscopy to identify salts on rock faces on a micro, as well as nano scale, can make a contribution to these projects. In order to test the feasibility of undertaking on-site analyses, a small rock fragment with red and white pigments still attached, which had weathered off the rock face, was analysed with Raman spectroscopy under laboratory conditions, using a Dilor XY Raman instrument and a DeltaNu Inspector Raman portable instrument. A small sample of black pigment (<1 mm2), collected from a badly deteriorated painting and a few relevant samples collected on site, were analysed as well. It was possible to identify most of the inorganic pigments and minerals detected with previous XRD and EDX measurements including whewellite and weddellite coatings, which could be a tool for carbon dating purposes. Two carotenoid pigments were detected for the first time in San rock art pigments. Animal fat was also observed for the first time on both red and white pigments, on the rock face adjacent to the paintings and in highest concentrations on the back of the rock fragment. The spectra quality makes successful on-site measurements a good prospect. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Wheels in a land of camels: another look at the chariot in ArabiaARABIAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND EPIGRAPHY, Issue 2 2009M.C.A. Macdonald A rock drawing in north-west Arabia shows a rider, a chariot and a foot soldier in battle. It is exceptional not only for its subject (at present unique) but for its use of a mixture of the artistic conventions employed in Arabian rock art and those used in Neo-Assyrian and Egyptian art. The three different parts of the composition have ,captions' in the Thamudic B script identifying the artists and the subjects, including the first occurrence of an Ancient North Arabian word for chariot. [source] | |||||||||||||