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Re: How is Rock Art aged?
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Sanctuary wrote:
tiompan wrote:
Sanctuary wrote:
Two questions for our experts. Is it possible to 'age' unrecorded rock art and at the same time differentiate between two distinct periods (age) of art on the same rock?


Roy , at the moment European rock art is dated by association and stylistically there is no technology like RC dating for dating although OSL (optically stimulated luminiscence ) provides hope .
Apart from the association and style it might be possible to differentiate the use of stone or metal for engraving ,whilst not absolute , i.e. the engraving could have been done with stone last week ,it could be helpful .


Thanks George. So broadly speaking is there a likely or definitive age it all kicked off and are purely cupmarked stones 'likely' to be of an earlier period to the more artistic ones?


Once again it's down to association the earliest date we have for a cup marked rock from a secure context in Britain is Dalladies long barrow 3240 BC .( there are cup marks in India that are probably Upper Paleolithic ) , although there are also worn engravings found in monuments from much the same period suggesting that they were old when re-used in the monumnet. It's possible to argue for a change in style as seen from engravings in the same passage grave but it would be unwise to suggest that cup marks necessarily predate or post date more complex markings .


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tiompan
Posted by tiompan
16th December 2012ce
12:25

In reply to:

Re: How is Rock Art aged? (Sanctuary)

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Re: How is Rock Art aged? (Harryshill)

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