France-US Joint Conference on New Methods in Rock Art Research

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides support for a 3 day conference to be held at the Lower Pecos Texas rock art research center, SHUMLA. It brings together French researchers and US-based scientists to share new and emerging methods in the documentation, archiving, preservation, and interpretation of rock art. Rock art refers to images made on rock walls, rock shelters, inside caves or architectural structures. It is found globally with concentrations in North America, Africa, Australia, Europe, China and many other locations where one finds rock surfaces. This marking on rock has been a part of the human cultural repertoire for at least 30,000 years and takes many forms, including engravings and use of pigments for paintings and drawings. In recent decades, research attention on rock art has been increasing with a correspondingly rapid development of multiple methods of photography, digital and GIS recording, and web-based documentation and archiving. Given the fragility of many images and rock art manifestations, and given the increasing attention to what one can infer about human cultural lives from rock art, this is an ideal moment to bring together some of the most active researchers who are developing sophisticated and innovative methods and techniques. This collaborative project will include researchers from both US and French based institutions to permit sharing of methods and approaches across several research traditions. The US and France are two world centers for rock art research and to date there has been relatively little interaction between them. This conference will explicitly provide researchers with increased exposure to a multiplicity of scientific approaches and methods that can be taken back to a variety of scholarly and lay public communities in both France and the United States, as well as Australia. The conference itself is being held at a non-profit educational research center (SHUMLA) where the results of the meeting will be integrated into the newsletters and educational activities. These include K-12 events and audiences. The conference will be filmed by one of the participants who is also the Director of a for-the-public production company in France that presents archaeology to the lay public through films and other media. The participants at the conference include a broad range of researchers (e.g., half are women and one of the U.S. researchers is an active member of a Native American tribe) from a variety of institutions including a small liberal arts public college in the US, private research consultancy, the SHUMLA educational center, and from European museums. Materials from the conference, such as powerpoint presentations on new methods and their applications, will be made available to avocational as well as professional groups.