Impacts of scientific approaches on rock art research: Global perspectives. Editorial

Abstract

Rock art is one of the most fascinating and widespread cultural expression in human history, constituting a unique, special and significant visual archive of past and present societies, their environments and landscapes, their material culture and their practices, as well as their symbolic worlds. This cultural form of non-verbal communication has been used by many generations of artists and their counterparts to exchange information about the natural, the cultural and the symbolic worlds, offering a more permanent platform for sharing messages and experiences than oral communication (Domingo, 2020). Rock art has an extensive global presence, and shows a significant variability in terms of chronologies, techniques, subject matters and geo-cultural contexts, with iconic and world-renowned sites (like Altamira in Spain, Chauvet in France or Cueva de las Manos in Argentina) and concentration of sites (like Levantine rock art in Spain, Valcamonica in Italy, Tassili n'Ajjer and Tadrart Acacus rock art sites in north Africa, Kakadu National park rock art in Australia, Mountain Huashan in China, to name a few).