Rock Art Dating and the Peopling of the Americas

Abstract

The peopling of the Americas is both the oldest and most frequently researched question in American archaeology. Although rarely considered, early art has the potential to provide insight into questions that may be obscured by other kinds of evidence, particularly stone tools. What part did art play in the peopling of the Americas? This question is addressed starting with a reconsideration of rock varnish chronometrics as applied to Great Basin, eastern California, petroglyphs. This demonstrates, conservatively, that the petroglyph tradition began before 11,100 YBP, probably before 12,600 YBP, and potentially in the 14,000 years range. Comparison of these ages with evidence from other regions in the hemisphere demonstrates substantial artistic and stylistic variation in rock art by the Paleoindian period (circa 10,000–11,000 YBP). This suggests that, while art may have been part of the baggage of the first immigrants, regional cultural traditions had already been developed by the Terminal Pleistocene, if not earlier. The result is evidence for the development of regional cultural diversity in the Americas by Paleoindian times.

Geochemical studies on rock varnish and petroglyphs in the Owens and Rose Valleys, California

“…Rock art production likely began around the Pleistocene/Holocene transition (ca. 11 ka BP), with abstract designs and some types of bighorn sheep being the earliest motifs [ 28 , 36 , 52 ]. At the other end of the time scale, rock art production appears to have continued well into the Numic period, possibly into the ethnographic period [ 36 , 63 ].…”

“…Given the relative success of our approach in Saudi Arabia, we intended to examine the possibility of extending it to other regions. We chose the southern Owens Valley and the adjacent Rose Valley, both parts of the Mojave Desert in southern California, as an initial test site because of its prominent role in the scientific study of rock varnish [e.g., 2 , 19 ], the existence of radiometrically dated rock surfaces [e.g., 19 , 28 , 48 – 50 ], and the presence of well-documented rock art [e.g., 24 , 51 ], including a large corpus of dated petroglyphs in this and nearby regions [ 36 , and references therein, 52 ]. The rock art in this area has been the subject of vigorous–and sometimes acerbic–debate over decades, both with regards to its meaning and function [e.g., 24 , 51 , 53 – 59 ] and its time of creation [e.g., 24 , 28 , 36 , 52 , 54 , 55 , 60 , 61 – 63 ].…”

Iconografía en el paisaje. Vida cotidiana y prácticas sociales en el arte rupestre en el noreste de México

“…11000 BP). Esto no significa que no existan, sino que o bien no se han encontrado o no se han identificados como tales, sobre todo porque la mayoría de las dataciones han sido tradicionalmente cuestionadas por los defensores de la tesis Clovis (Whitley, 2013). No obstante, el ejemplo de Winnemucca Lake (Nevada, Estados Unidos), con dataciones entre 14800 y 10500 BP, en paralelo con la ocupación humana de la región, atestigua la presencia de arte rupestre desde los primeros momentos del poblamiento (Benson et al , 2013; Whitley, 2013) y sustenta la hipótesis que probablemente sucediera lo mismo en otras partes de Norteamérica a medida que fue poblándose.…”

How Do Surficial Lithic Assemblages Weather in Arid Environments? A Case Study from the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile

“…Rock varnish can be identified by the superficial darkening of lithics and may be glossy, the latter due to a smooth micromorphology combined with manganese enrichment (Dorn, ). Rock varnish as a numerical dating method has been the subject of debate, particularly when applied to petroglyphs and archaeological lithic materials (Liu & Broecker, , , ; Watchman, ; Dorn, , ; Baied & Somonte, ; Somonte & Baied, ; Whitley, ).…”