THE MAIN PROBLEMS IN ROCK ART RESEARCH

This paper presents the principal problems faced by rock art and rock art research today. All of these are in some way connected to the discipline of archaeology. The greatest single threat to world rock art comes from professional archaeologists who facilitate, and in some cases conduct, destruction of rock art or rock art sites. The study of rock art has for over a century been retarded by its dependence upon archaeology, and yet most archaeologists are not equipped to deal with rock art effectively. For instance, the taxonomies and interpretations archaeology has created for rock art traditions are generally unscientific. Excavations at petroglyph sites are vandalistic, having destroyed key evidence required by rock art science. Most archaeologists can be shown to have no adequate understanding of either the dating or the taphonomy of rock art, and the number of misidentifications in the archaeological literature speaks for itself. The establishment of a separate discipline of rock art science is therefore inevitable with the help of concrete data the paper explains the causes and consequences of the various problematic situation in the domain of rock art research efforts.