Impacts of scientific approaches on rock art research: global perspectives

This volume emerges from a session held at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the EAA conference Building Bridges which took place in Maastricht (Netherlands) between the 30th August and 3rd September, 2017. Under the title Rock art research is archaeology or it is nothing and as part of Theme ‘Third Science Revolution’ in Archaeology, this session intended to break a long-term inertia of these and other major international congresses of archaeology to limiting the discussion on archaeological and scientific approaches to rock art. It brought together international scholars from more than 10 countries to discuss how and to what extent recent science and interdisciplinary approaches to rock art and other forms of ancient art are improving our understanding of this particular and fragile cultural heritage. Papers presented at this session included discussions on: - the potential of digital technologies not just to improve rock art recording but also as a tool to explore old and new research questions from a new perspective, such as, for example, to analyse the ‘chaîne operatoire’ for rock carvings, as a tool to explore and monitor rock art conservation; etc. - different analytical techniques applied for dating and characterizing pigment and bedrock components in rock art, of use to advance knowledge on painting compositions, to identify raw materials and potential sources, to explore the painting technologies and practices of past artists and to understand the conservation history of this heritage. - the contribution of quantitative and spatial analysis and GIS applications to understand and analyse the locations and landscapes of rock art, and to identify potential features bringing prehistoric artists to choose specific places and no others.