Rock Art Research

It has long been suggested that the development of writing played a key role in the formation of primary states. This exploratory paper asks whether other technologies of communication, such as rock art, played an important role in early state formation. A comparison of the chronological, geographic and macrosocial contexts of rock art use among early states in different parts of the world — Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus River valley, China, Mesoamerica and the central Andes — demonstrates that rock art not only served as an index for various processes of state formation such as trade and warfare, but that it also complemented the role of writing as a system of cultural expression.