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So this article has been popping up on my feed the last few days. It's an incredible discovery but there are some big issues with the conclusions drawn from the rock art in the original publication. For #RockArtWednesday a thread 1/ https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/nov/29/sistine-chapel-of-the-ancients-rock-art-discovered-in-remote-amazon-forest?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
I want to start by saying, this discovery is incredible. The panel of rock paintings is breathtaking and whether it's 12,500 or 100 years old, it's amazing and clearly of significance. /2
But there are 3 things that are problematic. The first is the identification of the animals as extinct megafauna. Identifying animals in rock art is notoriously difficult. It's difficult even when you have 100s of similar paintings/carvings to help you /3
When the images are rare like these, it's even more difficult. Most of the zoomorphic figures they found seem to compare to other Amazonian sites. There are only a few they identify as 'Ice Age megafauna'. They could represent the giant sloth, mastodon, etc as they claim /4
But they could equally represent other animals - not extinct megafauna. None of the identifications are that convincing. What would have made them convincing is a direct date on the paintings dating them to 12,500 years old. This brings me to problem no 2 /5
The authors of the article date the paintings to 12,500 years old based on two things: the identification of megafauna and the discovery of ochre in layers dating to 12,500 yrs ago. The first is problematic and leads to circular reasoning. The second was stated as: /6
"fragments of ochre were recovered from the lower levels, suggesting that paintings were produced from the oldest occupations as an early strategy of creating and defining the cultural landscape." /7
There is no reason to assume a link between the ochre found in the excavation and the paintings. To securely link the two, the researchers could have analysed the mineral composition of the ochre and the paintings to compare them. They also could have dated the paintings /8
There are a few methods to date paintings, including 14C and uranium-thorium dating (which actually dates the calcite over or under the painting). Having mostly worked with petroglyphs (carvings) I'm quite jealous of these possibilities. /9
This discovery (and their claims) would have been so much more spectacular if they had taken the time to use these various techniques to properly contextualise the rock paintings. Which brings me to the 3rd issue /10
Rock art studies have in the past been overlooked and not taken seriously by archaeologists because rock art is open to so many interpretations and has long been difficult to date and contextualise. This has changed over the last couple of decades... /11
thanks to the incredible work of many rock art scholars, more interdisciplinary studies, and more scientific techniques being applied to studying rock art. But studies like this one, that sensationalise rock art without giving its proper due, give rock art research a bad name /12
Part of the problem lies in the journalists that report on these findings with sexy headlines and no critical investigation, like the @guardian and @newyorkpost. The @nrc article by @hendrikspiering was the only newspaper article I read that added a critical note /12
But as archaeologists we're used to this and need to aware of how we're quoted on our findings. The bigger issue I think lies in the original publication that made some very bold claims based on this rock art, including: /13
"The extensive rock art not only hints at the coeval presence of humans and megafauna in the landscape, but also that megaherbivores were a component of the hunters’ diet" /14
Again, the panels are spectacular and the dream discovery of every rock art researcher. Whatever their date, the paintings can tell us so much about their makers and their relationship with the landscape and fauna. I don't want to downplay the significance in any way /15
I just hope that in the future rock art will be taken as seriously as any archaeological source - which means subjecting it to rigorous scientific research before publishing it. That would be sensational 
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