Rock Art Research

In the short history of scientific approaches to estimating the age of rock art there have been many fascinating developments already. Here I provide a brief personal account of some of these developments, focussing especially on the more recent, Recent experiences in the use of carbonaceous substances for carbon isotope analysis, the experimental use of field XRF spectrometry to determine the age of mineral crusts covering petroglyphs, recent developments in the use of microerosion analysis in various contexts, and the development of digitised colorimetry to achieve seriation dating of ferromanganese patinae all show promise.