Rock art of Latin America & the Caribbean

Rock art is the oldest form of art, and has experienced the longest and widest development in terms of time and in space. Rock art is distinguished from other forms of art by the fact that it has been preserved at the place where it was carried out and by the fact that the place very often determined the scope and realisation of the art. In evaluating rock art, it is essential to take into account, not only its artistic quality and cultural importance, but also the quality of the place where it is found and particularly its natural environment. Rock art sites, as a corpus of work, have huge potential for understanding human activity, both spiritual and temporal, over many millennia. The aesthetic value of rock art can be appreciated without knowledge of associations. However, the full value of rock art sites, and their comparisons with other sites, usually only emerges once images have been documented and studied, to reveal an understanding of sequences, associated human activity and in some cases beliefs and traditions. Without adequate inventories it is difficult to analyse rock art sequences and make comparative analyses. Many rock art sites have many thousands of images, considerable numbers of layers and can be said intuitively to represent vanished societies. A clearer understanding of their specific significances, geo-cultural context and relationship to present day societies is needed to evaluate them fully and this usually emerges only after systematic analysis and recording.