Rock Art Research and World Heritage
Rock art is found on every habitable continent dating back thousands of years. Researchers have been asking for over a century: where did this rock art come from and what does it mean? These sites tell stories that give hints to what life was like in the past. Interpretations of rock art range from shamanistic practices to artistic and aesthetic purposes to the rock art being a form of storytelling.
Historically, rock art studies have been characterized by research issues and even bias. One assumption that influenced rock art studies for decades was that rock art and its forms followed a unilinear track of development. In other words, it was believed that rock art progressed over time from simple forms to much more complex forms. By using this idea rock art researchers believed that they could date sites simply based on the forms of rock art that were found at a site: the more simplistic the form of art the older the site (Moro-Abadia 2008). This viewpoint presents problems because it takes a very generalized and oversimplified statement and applies it to the world at large. This viewpoint assumes that changing styles of rock art occurred because of an advancement in painting techniques. This is dangerous to assume because there are many possible explanations, such as changing aesthetic views or even the emergence of a different culture into the area. The discovery of Chauvet Cave in 1994 dispelled this theory by showing refined and advanced art works that dated to approximately 32,000 years ago. Because of this discovery we now know that rock art development cannot be described as a gradual evolution from a simple art form to a more complex one (Moro-Abadia 2008).
The second theory, or debate, that characterized early rock art studies was whether or not to categorize the paintings at these sites as “art”. During the early years of research, rock art was classified as “art” because it was believed to be a form of “artistic expression”. This classification led to rock art mostly being studied in an art historical fashion and not an archaeological one (Moro-Abadia 2008). Some scholars also criticized the use of the word “art” because the societies that created these images were too “primitive” to create “art”. Still others fought for the validity of the term because, as they saw it, “art” is a worldwide phenomenon that is distinctly human (Moro-Abadia 2008). The definition of “art” varies from culture to culture but the term “rock art” is the most widely accepted term to describe the phenomenon of which this article is about. Because of this wide variety of interpretation professionals from many different fields have studied rock art including archaeologists and even chemists.
New technologies are helping to uncover rock art stories. Results of radiocarbon dating can estimate when the rock art was made, and other chemical tests can determine the composition of pigments used in pictographs (Chalmin 2004). 3D laser scanners can help capture rock art in high detail and even create virtual models so that the public can visit rock art sites that may be inaccessible or fragile in nature. Chauvet Cave, which has been closed off to the public because of preservation concerns, has been scanned using this technology. These scans have been used to creat a virtual model of the cave that the public can “visit”. The study of rock art is an exciting and growing field that can give us valuable insights into humanities’s past.
What is rock art?
Rock art are images and depictions that have been either painted or carved. There are two types of rock art.
Pictographs: rock art that is painted.
Petroglyphs: rock art that is carved.
Rock art can come in many forms, such as anthropomorphic figures that appear human in shape and design, zoomorphic figures which look like animals, and abstract designs which it is unknown or difficult to determine what they represent. Many sites around the world have more than one rock art type found at them and often times the different forms and types are found side by side.
Rock Art at World Heritage Sites
A total of 34 places with rock art have been nominated to UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites list. A World Heritage Sites site must possess “universal value”, or in other words the sites need to hold some type of significance for humanity as a whole. A site holds universal value if it is significant enough to be of importance to multiple groups of people across national boundaries and has great meaning for current and future generations (Meskell 2013).
What is more universal than an art form found and practiced all over the world for thousands of years?
One well known world heritage petroglyph site is the Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape in Azerbaijan which holds over 6,000 rock engravings. Excellent examples of pictographs are found in the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet in France. These caves contain some of the oldest and best preserved rock art in the world. The Australian Uluru site has examples of abstract figures. Zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figures are both found at Mesa Verde National Park in the United States, and in Maloti-Drakensburg Park in South Africa.
These examples illustrate that rock art is varied in form and style and found all around the world. Rock art holds the mystery of a long ago past and because of this rock art has continually mesmerized people. They are universal and unique and speak to us as individuals and as the human race as a whole.
