Rock Art and Art History

My career in Rock Art studies has been bound up with old-fashioned typology and statistics, and studies of drawing. Most of my Australian colleagues dislike (or misunderstand) these approaches to Rock Art. I find their approaches too limited, and I see a need for information and input from disciplines other than archaeology. Two examples illustrate this situation. Scattered over half Australia and perhaps from 40.000 to 20.000 (dating difficult) is the Panaramitee. My studies showed tiny changes. Franklin has discovered spatial patterns in the variation. I argue that many factors induce variation in such a rich data sets, and we should seek ideas from other disciplines. If the progression of Rock Art was helped by creative master-artists, we would expect to find pictures that differ from their norm, but were recognisable. I discuss five possibilities I have found at one site near Sydney. (C) 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.