The earliest directly dated rock paintings from southern Africa: new AMS radiocarbon dates
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Bonneau, Adelphine
Pearce, David
Mitchell, Peter
Staff, Richard
Arthur, Charles
Mallen, Lara
Brock, Fiona
Higham, Tom
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Bonneau A, Pearce D, Mitchell P, et al., (2017) The earliest directly dated rock paintings from southern Africa: new AMS radiocarbon dates. Antiquity, Volume 91, Issue 356, pp. 322-333
Abstract
Rock art worldwide has proved extremely difficult to date directly. Here, the first radiocarbon dates for rock paintings in Botswana and Lesotho are presented, along with additional dates for Later Stone Age rock art in South Africa. The samples selected for dating were identified as carbon-blacks from short-lived organic materials, meaning that the sampled pigments and the paintings that they were used to produce must be of similar age. The results reveal that southern African hunter-gatherers were creating paintings on rockshelter walls as long ago as 5723–4420 cal BP in south-eastern Botswana: the oldest such evidence yet found in southern Africa.
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Copyright © 2017 Antiquity Publications Ltd and reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International