Rock Art Research

A survey conducted in June and July 2014 in three regions of China, Henan, Ningxia and Jiangsu Provinces, has profitably utilised the country’s wealth of rock surfaces suitable for microerosion calibration, especially soundly dated rock inscriptions. A large team has managed to secure several calibration curves and twenty-seven age estimates from petroglyphs of these regions. While these results offer no more than a preliminary glimpse of the time depth of Chinese rock art, they do provide a first opportunity to test previous archaeological age estimates for some of the best-known Chinese petroglyph complexes, such as those of Helanshan and Jiangjunya. The findings are briefly presented and some of their implications are offered for consideration.