Rock Art Research

Allusions to a close nexus between forensics and rock art science have appeared occasionally in the literature. For this contribution, the author provides ample evidence for the analogous nature of these investigations and proposes a preliminary outline for a standardised methodology for the scientific study of the evidential corpus directly and indirectly associated with the iconography. A review of some of the scientific methods already in use in rock art science will bring another supporting argument in favour of expanding the discipline beyond the iconocentric limitations of an iconography-focused approach and into the forensic-like analysis of a volume of evidence which, until recently, was either ignored, effaced or erased, whether unknowingly, accidentally or systematically.