Rock Art Research

The Kalatrancani petroglyph complex is one of several rock art concentrations located at the foot of Tunari Mountain near Cochabamba, Bolivia. So far twenty-seven sites have been located and examined in an area measuring under 2 km2, all of them on glacial erratics of schistose rock dispersed over an alluvial fan. The petroglyphs are dominated by cupules and abraded grooves, but other petroglyphs also occur, especially in the earlier phases of the rock art. Microerosion analyses secured age estimates from several sites, indicating that the production of petroglyphs continued well into historical times, and in one case even to nearpresent times. The very recent use of some of the sites raises the subject of their ethnography, which is placed within the regionally available record of traditional belief systems. At the other end of the time scale, empirical evidence is presented suggesting that petroglyphs were created at Kalatrancani well beyond the time from which they could have survived the rapid weathering of the schistose rocks comprising all sites.