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Replication in Rock Art Past and Present: a Case Study of Bronze and Iron Age Rock Art in the Altai, Eastern Eurasia

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Abstract

Change to rock art has been treated as an unforgiveable act in many contemporary cases; however, rock art in many parts of the world was most likely not created with the intention that it would endure for eternity unaltered. This paper highlights three ways in which the rock art creation process has been ‘replicated’ in the past and present. These forms of replication behaviours—of form, place, and action—are identified in the case study of the rock art of the Bronze Age and Iron Age Mongolian Altai. Additionally, examples of modern imagery that represent continuity of tradition are also presented. I argue that the cognitive processes suggested by these forms of replication have been influential in forming the rock art record, and they can be used to explore contemporary, regional worldviews. In eastern Eurasia, replication behaviours in rock art reference place-making strategies and regional cosmological traditions that see the landscape as occupied by non-human beings. The goal is to provide a constructive framework by which alteration and change can be considered innate aspects of the archaeological record, as opposed to mere vandalism, in our interpretation of prehistoric rock art.

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Notes

  1. The author observed this on several occasions during fieldwork to Övörkhangai in 2014 and Bayan-Ölgii in 2016 and 2017. The practice was explained at various times by D. Tumen, Ya. Tserendagva, and R. Kortum.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to express her thanks to Jessica Rawson for procuring funding, the organisers of the TAG 2015 session in Bradford where these ideas were first presented, and the many people who assisted the author during fieldwork in Mongolia, including Tsagaan Turbat, Bikhumar Omirbek, Medinah, Ekaterina Devlet, and Richard Kortum. Thanks are also due to Courtney Nimura for her critique of several versions of this article. Any remaining errors are obviously the fault of the author.

Funding

This research was conducted during DPhil research at the University of Oxford funded by the Leverhulme Trust, and fieldwork was conducted in 2017 thanks to a grant provided by the China and Inner Asia Research Group of the University of Oxford. Writing was completed thanks to funding from Jilin University and the Office of China Postdoc Council (No 20204A1289).

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  1. School of Archaeology, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun, 130012, Jilin, China

    Rebecca O’Sullivan

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The original version of this article was revised: the images of Figs. 3 to 11 did not match to their captions.

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O’Sullivan, R. Replication in Rock Art Past and Present: a Case Study of Bronze and Iron Age Rock Art in the Altai, Eastern Eurasia. J Archaeol Method Theory 28, 387–412 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09460-z

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