The Dating of Rock Art: a Critique

The methods for estimating the antiquity of rock art are reviewed critically, dividing them into traditional and scientific approaches. The reliability of both is examined critically. It seems that the most promising options have attracted only limited interest, while those methods that have been afforded the most sustained research efforts have been discredited or provide only tenuous results. Thus the continuing difficulties in this field are to some extent attributable to opportunistic use of sophisticated but not always appropriate technology, combined with a systematic neglect of more modest but dependable methods.