INTRODUCTION

In a review of contemporary rock art research, Paul Tacon and Christopher Chippindale (1998) make a useful distinction between two fundamental approaches to the study of rock art: ‘formal methods’, which do not depend on any kind of ethnographic insight, and ‘informed methods’ which draw on

In our day, the production of rock art in traditional societies has come to an end almost universally. Access to a living tradition concerning the meaning of rock art has become exceedingly rare, although the Dogon rock paintings of Mali (Kleinitz & Dietz 2006) and some regions of Australia (Layton 1992) can be mentioned as cases where ‘inside information’ is still available. Somewhat more numerous – but nonetheless rare – are direct references to beliefs and practices related to rock art in ethnographic literature. With a few exceptions (such as Reichel-Dolmatoff 1967), such references are limited to short and obscure footnotes, as few early ethnographers or explorers have shown any great interest in studying the production and meaning of rock art. However, great advances in the study of rock art have been accomplished even with the aid of such fragmentary and elusive material, as exemplified by the work of David Lewis-Williams on the San rock paintings of South Africa (Lewis- Williams 2003; Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004) and David Whitley's studies on the rock art of the southwestern United States (Whitley 1998, 2000).

With the exception of Medieval graffiti, and other inscriptions of the historical period, this kind of ‘direct’ ethnographic information does not appear to be available for any corpus of rock art in Europe (Chippindale 2000: 70). However, in the definition quoted above, Tacon and Chippindale leave the door open for a third, more speculative kind of informed knowledge: insights gained through a “modern understanding known with good cause to perpetuate ancient knowledge”.