Radiocarbon dating of Kimberly rock art

Abstract

Throughout the world, ancient rock art records some of the earliest attempts at complex human communication. However, constraining the age of older rock art has remained a largely intractable scientific problem thereby limiting our ability to integrate rock art into the rest of the archaeological record. Researchers have studied the globally significant Aboriginal rock art in the Kimberley region of Western Australia for more than 40 years and have comprehensively documented a sequence of rock art stylistic periods. It has long been thought that the oldest styles in this sequence date back to the Pleistocene but only two such dates, relating to identifiable motifs, have been published and ..