Rock Art Research

The Lower Palaeolithic cupules in the small cave of Daraki-Chattan are of different shapes and sizes. How they were made is the subject of this investigation. The hardness of the quartzite rock of the cave adds to the complexities in understanding the production process. The study of the more than 500 cupules on the vertical walls of the cave is a joint venture of Indian and Australian scientists, the EIP Project. The senior author commenced a program of replicating the cupules, in an effort to understand the circumstances of their creation, on an experimental rock panel close to Daraki-Chattan in 2002. The project of replicating different kinds of cupules encountered in Daraki-Chattan has been continued since then and was joined by the second author in 2004. This paper presents the gist of the replication project from 2002 to 2012.