Stratigraphy, Harris matrices & relative dating of Australian rock-art

Abstract

Rock-art, despite much ingenious effort (e.g., among many, Watchman et al. 1997), remains difficult to date by absolute methods, so relative dating has a central importance much as applied to dirt archaeology in the era before routine radiometric dating. It is sound relative dating which will show just what the entities are to which absolute dates may be connected. The first basis for relative dating is the determination of sequence: what motifs done by which techniques in which materials precede and follow each other; and the first basis for sequence is physical superposition, in which one figure plainly overlies another or - in the case of rock-engravings - one figure clearly cuts through another. But often figures do not cut or superpose each other so no relation of sequence exists: and sometimes figures are cut through each other without sequence being clear, or are so much overpainted that the older figures are impossible to discern.