The interpretation of the iconography of rock art, that is, what it is thought to depict, its meaning and its cultural role in ancient societies have been the primary preoccupations of researchers for centuries. There are, however, significant limitations to our access to these intractable dimensions of rock art. Most rock art motifs are not sufficiently adequately detailed naturalistic depictions of objects to permit reliable identifications, and such pronouncements are almost never testable for prehistoric rock art. The only blind test ever conducted of the ability of an alien researcher to effectively identify meaning in rock art, by N. W. G. Macintosh in 1977, concerned the rock paintings in Beswick Cave, Northern Australia. More than 20 years after he, an anatomist, had ‘identified’ the numerous zoomorphs and anthropo-morphs depicted at this site, he discovered that some of the artists or their immediate relatives were still alive, so he took these experts to the site to tell him what each motif depicted. He found that 90% of his identifications were wrong, and he discovered that a beholder who is not an intimate participant of the culture could not determine the relationship of apparently juxtaposed images. He also reported that to correctly associate and integrate individual motifs into a whole to ‘‘express the purpose and thought context of the paintings’’ was totally dependent upon direct cultural information. Such access is of course impossible to prehistoric cultures; therefore, it would be imprudent to rely on the ‘identifications’ of scenes, figures, or artistic intentions by contemporary scholars posing as experts. Our own perception does not define reality, and even less can it define the realities perceived in other cultures. Our interpretations are freestanding constructs involving autosuggestion, reflecting our interpreting intellect and perception. They are not necessarily false, but their veracity is untestable and on balance they need to be regarded as reflections of the way we interpret reality - which we need to assume differs from the reality construct, cognition, and visual or mental perception of the now mute artist.
Valid ethnographic interpretation of rock art is very limited indeed, and is largely restricted to Australia, although a few isolated cases elsewhere are known. It has been given much less prominence than the fanciful interpretations of rock art by humanist scholars, which usually involve shamans, trance visions, space travelers, rituals, religion, head-hunting, cannibalism, and a whole gamut of less entertaining variations. These interpretations provide insights into the perception, cognition, and cultural and academic conditioning of the interpreter. Because of the inadequate state of rock art dating we can in most cases not even know to which period, culture, and people the rock art in question is attributable.
Other forms of rock art interpretation have been neglected but are more promising. For instance, semiotic analysis to examine the syntax of rock art seems viable, and the study of work traces and of contextualizing rock art within spatially related evidence of other activities is most promising in cave sites. Psychological interpretation, for example, in terms of graphic universals, is likely to yield testable information. Perhaps most importantly, the systematic application of such universal principles as those of taphonomic logic would lead to a variety of useful scientific propositions about rock art, but its potential has not been explored so far. As in all areas of rock art research, there is much room for improvement, which is precisely what renders this discipline so exciting and promising.
See also: Asia, South: Paleolithic Cultures; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Dating Methods, Overview; Oceania: Australia; Sites: Conservation and Stabilization.
World History
