Rock Art Research

The representational art of the Upper Palaeolithic continues to be viewed largely from a sociocultural perspective. This paper takes a radically different approach by investigating graphic mark-making in early humans as a behavioural outcome contingent on a species-specific perceptual predisposition. This is premised on the view that the human perceptual pathways will have been established by the same evolutionary determinants that have shaped the perceptual faculties of other primates. It is the interrelationship between humans, faunas and environment throughout evolutionary time that will be held as the critical factor mediating these systems. Accordingly, because Palaeolithic art, as a visually guided activity, must necessarily engage perceptual mechanisms, it must also be related to the functional constraints appertaining. It is to the nature of these constraints, and the relationship between perceptual factors and palaeoart, that the substance of this paper will be directed.