Rock Art Research

Pareidolia (seeing meaningful things in patterns) is regarded as a concept that can help identify and interpret rock art. However, its usefulness is deceptive and, consequently, can give rise to significant problems with interpretation because it is such a fundamental attribute of the human visual system. In this paper, I show that the heuristics that underpin pareidolia can mislead researchers into accepting natural rock marks as examples of rock art. Nevertheless, the concept can, to some extent, be leveraged to provide a useful means to identify and interpret rock art by considering the tendency in the context of other types of imagery. By utilising the concept of ‘hyperdolia’, where the human visual system is primed by a range of evolutionary, psychological and socio-cultural factors, I demonstrate how that concept can provide a more reliable means than pareidolia that rock art researchers can exploit when assessing, for example, Upper Palaeolithic depictions of animals. By drawing attention to the similarities and differences between pareidolia and hyperdolia within the broader context of projective mental imagery, this paper shows how the differences can be valuable in furnishing a more nuanced understanding of the subtle characteristics that underpin the experience of imagery in different circumstances and psychological states that can be useful to rock art researchers.