Figurative art presents lifelike representations of subjects. Using a new laser technique, we’ve dated figurative rock art painted 51,200 years ago.
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Articles on Rock art
Displaying 1 - 20 of 47 articles
Archaeologists have amassed a huge database of giant engravings in South America.
The theme of cattle in ancient rock art is one of most important pieces of evidence for a bygone age of the “green Sahara”.
New research reveals signs of ancient human habitation in a vast cave beneath the Arabian desert. It may have been used as a waystation by Stone Age herders travelling from one oasis to another.
Rock art directly represents how our ancestors saw the world. A new approach involving the history of the landscape brings fresh meaning to Arnhem Land rock art.
Elephants can be viewed as geological engineers that create minor tectonic forces on the substrate they walk on.
Rock art from a Malagasy cave hints at some remarkable cultural connections.
A close look at 7,000-year-old grinding stones left in ancient firepits shows wandering herders in northern Saudi Arabia carried heavy tools for working on bones, plants and rocks.
To the ǀXam and San people, being in the world as a person includes “the sky’s things” - an understanding of and deep connection with the cosmos.
New dates for the rock art in the Gua Sireh cave in Malaysia reveal resistance to frontier violence between 1670 and 1830.
Some explorers believed they had found unicorns depicted on rocks. The truth behind the paintings is far more interesting.
Beneath the floodplains of Arnhem Land lies a hidden landscape that has been transformed over millennia as seas rose and fell.
Hunter-gatherers were an important part of the development of the Mapungubwe Kingdom in southern Africa – a fact that history has tended to neglect.
Changes in southern African rock art reflect the mixing of groups of people after they came into contact with each other.
A new exhibition in Johannesburg focuses on the beliefs and paintings of the San people.
Instead of displaying myths, Samburu rock art reveals real-life stories and is made as a leisure activity.
Local communities and national authorities are working to develop sustainable tourism in Colombia’s Chiribiquete National Natural Park, a Unesco World Heritage Site since 2018.
Cyclones, floods and other climate change-linked events are threatening Indigenous heritage tens of thousands of years old. Unless we act, they’ll be gone for good.
A major fertiliser plant is set to be constructed in the Pilbara, potentially impacting as many as 20 ancient rock art sites.
Australia’s stunning galleries of rock art are vast repositories of knowledge that can teach us much.
Top contributors
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Chair in Rock Art Research and Director of the Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit (PERAHU), Griffith University
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Director, Centre for Rock Art Research + Management, The University of Western Australia
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Professor of Archaeological Science, Griffith University
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Professor of Archaeology, Griffith University
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Rock Art Australia Ian Potter Kimberley Chair, The University of Western Australia
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Senior Researcher, University of the Witwatersrand
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PhD Candidate in Archaeology, Griffith University
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Associate Professor, University of Adelaide
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Postdoctoral research fellow, University of the Witwatersrand
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Senior research fellow, Flinders University
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Director, Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University
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Lecturer in Clinical Communication, University of Liverpool
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Support staff, University of the Witwatersrand
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Emeritus professor, University of the Witwatersrand
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Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University
