#### **7.5 Discussion: Deconstructing Invisibility from the Peripheries**

The histories of rock art research in Eastern Canada and Patagonia show a number of similarities and differences linked to the global development of the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology in relation to Europe. In Eastern Canada, 17th and 18th centuries references to rock art based in religious discourses disregarded rock images as nonartistic idolatrous manifestations of the beliefs of 'degenerate' Indigenous peoples. In Patagonia, early European settlers did not mention rock art sites.

In the nineteenth century, earlier Enlightenment notions of 'progress' were reinforced by anthropological applications of evolutionist theories which promulgated colonialist notions resulting in Indigenous peoples (in both Eastern Canada and Patagonia) being considered culturally inchoate (e.g. 'noble savage') or else degenerate versions of ancestral groups (e.g. 'lazy Indian'). In this context, Indigenous rock images were described as 'fgures' or 'drawings' and conceived as 'signs,' 'inscriptions,' 'picture-writing' or 'hieroglyphs,' associated with early forms of writing considered indicative of pre-modern cultures. In Eastern Canada, this resulted in evolutionist interpretations in which rock images refected the stagnancy of Indigenous cultures (e.g. Schoolcraft 1851–1857; Mallery 1893), whereas in Patagonia rock images were framed within both degenerationist (e.g. Moreno 1876) and evolutionist (e.g. Moyano 1887) terms. In either case, Indigenous rock images were framed within Eurocentric chronologies using Palaeolithic/prehistoric sequences as a key comparative standard (e.g. Mallery 1893; Outes and Bruch 1910): thus, past and living Indigenous peoples were cast as analogies of prehistoric European populations. However, some scholars began to accept the 'artistic' nature of rock images by implicitly applying the European notion of 'art for art's sake'—a clear example of how globalization of archaeological theory was already following a unidirectional path (e.g. Burmeister 1892; Mallery 1893, 469). In the application of the 'art for art's sake' concept we also detect heterogeneous and even paradoxical attitudes towards Indigenous peoples: while some authors considered that Indigenous societies could afford the 'leisure time' to make rock images, other authors stereotyped Indigenous people as 'savage' and 'lazy'. In this context, the socio-economic hegemony wielded by colonial governments allowed anthropologists and archaeologists to relegate Indigenous ontologies to the positions of mistaken epistemologies (see Alberti and Marshall 2009).

While rock art research experienced a lull in Canada during the early part of the twentieth century, Patagonian rock art research experienced an increase in empirical approaches relating to the recording of sites. Later, this would culminate with the start of the 'stylistic era' in Patagonia, setting a key milestone in the archaeology of South American rock art. Such a milestone, however, was based on culture-history approaches imported from central Europe by a suspected Nazi: as noted above such an event epitomises the effects of globalization over the periphery. In both Eastern Canada and Patagonia, the culture-history approaches that dominated research from the late 1950s to early 1970s developed models of regional rock art styles and various relative dating methods. However, the correlation between styles and diachronic cultural levels that characterised Patagonian work gained less traction in Eastern Canada where largely abstract imagery, a lack of superimpositions and ability to associate images with secure archaeological contexts hindered attempts to produce chronological and macro-regional classifcations.

From the 1980s onward, the impact of processualism was modelled in original ways in both regions. In Patagonia it was mostly adapted towards the characterisation of rock art production processes (e.g. Aschero 1983), which was later complemented with the use of French concepts. In turn, some Canadian researchers had begun to recognise the limits of deductive epistemology, since the distribution of rock art sites could not be predicted solely on the basis of archaeological and environmental criteria (e.g. Reid 1980; Rajnovich 1981).

Both regions also pioneered approaches to key aspects of rock art which later constituted mainstream frameworks in the archaeology of rock art. Some researchers in the Canadian Shield showed an early interest in the landscape archaeology and materiality of rock art sites (e.g. Vastokas and Vastokas 1973; Molyneaux 1980) which heralded more contextual approaches that recognised the importance of Indigenous worldviews in the interpretations of images. In Patagonia, early proposals on how to delve into the technological, economic and landscape features of rock art have largely superceded empirical accounts to tackle ways in which people engage with the materiality of images (e.g. Aschero 1988; Fiore 2007). Later, diverse approaches to the systematic study of the communicative aspects of rock art viewed from ecological-evolutionist perspectives (e.g. Scheinsohn 2011 and others quoted above) opened new conceptual and methodological insights. Interestingly, each country has led these changes from different epistemologies and towards different directions. Thus, Canadian researchers anticipated elements of post-processual approaches, such as the focus on the phenomenological aspects of archaeological landscapes, as well as the importance of Indigenous knowledges to rock art interpretation as emphasised in the 'ontological turn' over the past decade. Conversely, while in Patagonia Indigenous knowledges have been only partially incorporated into academic rock art studies (Moreno 1876; Casamiquela 1960), some Argentinean researchers have developed ecological approaches to art as communication based on neopositivist epistemologies. Others have contributed from an early stage to the 'material turn,' which is currently in full swing at an international scale. Interestingly, in both countries, rock art research stresses the socio-ideological dimensions of rock art. Both Eastern Canada and Patagonia also show an increase in the archaeometric studies of rock art, occasionally engaged with other 'former peripheries' in the Canadian case (e.g. South Africa; see Bonneau 2016) and with 'current centres' of the global system in the Patagonian case (e.g. Europe and USA). Collaborations between both 'peripheries', such as the Canada-Patagonia partnership led by Wainwright and Podestá mentioned above, also emerged during this process.

When comparing these two histories of research, the growth of original insights that emerged from Eastern Canada and Patagonia is quite apparent. Nevertheless, there are several barriers that have hindered the effective fow of ideas from these 'peripheries' to the historic 'centre' of rock art research—Europe—and to the new 'centres' of rock art research that emerged in the 1990s as part of the latest globalizations—i.e. USA, Australia, South Africa. It is evident that, historically, rock art has been poorly known outside of the regions under discussion—the Patagonian case being the least well known. It is also evident that the centre/peripheries academic interactions have reproduced the logics of the globalised world-system triangular market: Europe and the USA have long operated as active centres of theoretical and methodological innovation, while peripheries (many of which are former colonies of European states) have tended to be relegated to passive roles of 'consumption' of such innovations, with their contributions to conceptual discussions in rock art research often unacknowledged and unused. Thus, peripheries have been reduced to the role of suppliers of the only apparently possible relevant contribution to global archaeology: empirical data, particularly those dealing with early sites and imagery of such outstanding signifcance that is worth considering as 'world heritage'.

To conclude, we argue that the limited visibility of Eastern Canadian and Patagonian rock art research is related to the existence of three main barriers: language, funding and implicit cultural biases operating within academia. First, a major impediment continues to be the language barriers that exist in the processes of global archaeological publishing. Given the prevalence of English in academia, research written in Spanish and French (e.g. Québec) remains, relatively, less visible, resulting in scholars from the 'linguistic periphery' facing obstacles when seeking to publish their work (Canagarajah 2002, 34–43). This linguistic barrier hinders the connectivity and fow of ideas emanating from the peripheries where English is not dominant. Moreover, even when non-native speakers publish in English, their literature tends to be less frequently cited, which, for example, exacerbates the invisibility of the theoretical and methodological contributions made from Argentina (Ramírez-Castañeda 2020 and references therein).

Second, the scarcity of funding evidently affects the development of rock art research—this factor is more evident in the Patagonia case, given its location in a developing country. However, while lack of funding limits feldwork, laboratory work and, particularly, archaeometric analyses (which are currently standard in international academia), the development of theoretical concepts and low-tech methods can be—and has been—achieved even in low-funding 'peripheral' contexts. It is their dissemination, discussion and use at an international scale, what is still lacking at present.

This leads us to the third key factor: global academia, led by the 'centre,' has fetishised 'peripheral' rock art by placing an emphasis on certain properties such as its antiquity, size, complexity or perceived 'authenticity', thus celebrating the exotic rather than valuing the richness, and depth of analyses, interpretations and management strategies associated with them. In these terms, much of the rock art of Eastern Canada has failed to capture the attention of international audiences, while rock art in Patagonia is often narrowly identifed with the Cueva de las Manos World Heritage site. Such attitudes contradict the academic published discourses regarding multivocality and decolonisation, insofar as, in practice, the voices of researchers working from peripheral countries often remain invisibilised and unheard by those at the centre. However, recent publications do show an increasingly open attitude towards contributions from these 'peripheries' (e.g. Troncoso et al. 2018; Nowell and Davidson 2021; Moro Abadía and Porr 2021; Smith 2021).

It is evident that Eastern Canada and Patagonia have long and rich histories of research, that not only demonstrate the similar historical relationships that these so-called 'peripheries' have had with the global world-system 'centres'—i.e. Europe, USA –, but which also produced innovative approaches that attend to the unique characteristics of the rock art of both regions. Such approaches have much to offer international rock art research, including a contribution to the ongoing readjustment of the historic centre/periphery model that has long dominated the discipline—in which this very book plays a part—and an open attitude towards a truly international dialogue that fosters a constructive interaction involving academics, Indigenous groups and communities as a whole. Yet publishing original theory and methods authored by academics from developing/peripheral countries is only a frst step: if colleagues in developed/central countries are not prepared to read them, cite them and open a dialogue with them, then the virtuous circle will never be completed, and invisibility will prevail.

As part of such dialogue, this chapter has sought to raise awareness of a fundamental paradox created by globalization: while its discourse promotes homogeneity of rights and respect for cultural heterogeneity within the 'global village', in practice, it reproduces inequalities rooted in colonial times. If we are to break away from the negative globalization effects in constructive partnership with colleagues at the global 'centres', it is by challenging those discourses and practices from the very margins of the world-system.

**Acknowledgements** We are grateful to the three anonymous reviewers for their detailed and useful comments, and to the book editors for their invitation and for their patience while waiting for the submission of the revised version of our manuscript.

#### **References**

———. 1980. Landscape images: Rock paintings in the Canadian shield. *Rotunda* 13 (3): 6–11.

———. 1994. *Reading rock art: Interpreting the Indian rock paintings of the Canadian shield*. Toronto: Natural Heritage/Natural History Inc.

**Danae Fiore** is an archaeologist. She graduated at UBA (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina) and received her MA and PhD from University College London. Danae is currently a researcher at CONICET (National Council of Scientifc and Technological Research, Argentina) and an associate professor at UBA. Her main research interests are the archaeology of art, archaeological theory and methods, visual archaeology, and cultural heritage studies carried out in collaboration with Indigenous Communities. Her work has mainly focused on regional projects in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, where she combines archaeological and ethnographic lines of research. She has published numerous papers in academic journals and chapters in edited books; she has also coedited four books and co-authored one book. Danae has also published three books for children, several articles for the general public, and book chapters in school textbooks.

**Bryn Tapper** is a PhD candidate at Memorial University of Newfoundland. His research interests focus on the rock art (petroglyphs) of Mi'kmaq and Wolastoqiyik First Nations of the Canadian Maritime provinces.

**Dagmara Zawadzka** (PhD) studies Canadian Shield rock art and Indigenous arts. She has taught courses on Indigenous arts at Université de Montréal, University of Ottawa, and Université du Québec à Montréal. She has collaborated on the frst-ever virtual exhibit of rock art in Canada 'Images on Stone' that was launched in 2019 (https:// imagesdanslapierre.mcq.org/en/).

**Agustín Acevedo** completed his PhD in Archaeology at Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA, Argentina) and is currently a researcher at CONICET (National Council of Scientifc and Technological Research, Argentina). His research interests are focused in the study of visual communication, landscapes, and niche construction through rock art in hunter-gatherer societies of Patagonia and southern Mendoza.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **8 The Framework for Ochre Experiences**

Elizabeth C. Velliky, Tammy Hodgskiss, Larissa Mendoza Strafon, Heidi Gustafson, Ann Gollifer, and Magnus M. Haaland

**(Foes): Towards a Transdisciplinary Perspective on the Earth Material**

**Heritage of Ochre**

#### **Abstract**

Ochre is a mineral pigment that has been used by humans for more than 300,000 years. It appears in archaeological, historical, and contemporary settings across vast distances of time and space, and increasing evidence shows ochre use by ancestral hominins as well as by certain animal species. Because of its unique behavioral, functional, contextual, and temporal breadth, it is a topic of study from a range of disciplines. There has been considerable debate amongst them; in particular, on which concepts and empirical methods are the most useful in deciphering ancient ochre practices on an individual, societal, or evolutionary level. However, if we want to understand the signifcance of ochre from a range of perspectives, we frst must acknowledge that ochre formation and use involves different processes operating across all these domains simultaneously. The diversity of ways in which humans interact with ochre relies largely on individual backgrounds and experiences, which is often reviewed at an operational level. Here, we offer an ambitious framework to describe and explore the exceptionally broad role of ochre throughout geological, biological, and cultural evolution, titled the Framework for Ochre Experiences

E. C. Velliky (\*) · L. M. Straffon University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS><EMAIL_ADDRESS>
T. Hodgskiss Braamfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa

H. Gustafson Everson, Washington, USA e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
A. Gollifer Thapong Visual Art Centre, Gaborone, Botswana

M. M. Haaland Universitetet i Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
(FOES). We use this framework to realize the complex histories, properties, and uses of ochre; not within a specifc domain – but of the entire earth-human system, operating from deep time and into the future. To do this, we bring together several voices to promote a refective and insightful interaction between different types of *ochre actors*. We believe this experiential and transdisciplinary approach is not only important for improving our understanding of ochre use in the deep past, but also necessary if we are to appreciate, preserve and actively engage with this unique earth-material heritage now and in the future.

#### **Keywords**

Ochre · Pigment · Transdisciplinary · Archaeology · Human-environment interactions · Visual art

#### **8.1 Introduction**

#### *Elizabeth Velliky, archaeologist*

Ochre is a unique material. It came into my life during my bachelor's degree, where I became fascinated by the cave paintings from the European Upper Paleolithic. I followed this fascination by continuing to a Master of Arts where I examined rock paintings in British Columbia that were created with red ochre, and the possible sources of ochre that were the origins of the pigments used the pictographs. One PhD and postdoc later, I am still studying ochre, albeit on a different continent, in a different period, which both speak to the breadth of ochre in human existence. I have excavated ochre at numerous archaeological sites. I have looked at ochre with my eyes in the landscape, on rock walls, in caves, in my hands, under a microscope. I have measured thousands of pieces diligently, describing their shapes and features, colors, and textures. I have looked at the insides of ochre pieces

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2024 109 O. Moro Abadía et al. (eds.), *Deep-Time Images in the Age of Globalization*, Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54638-9\_8

as they were captured in micromorphological and geological thin sections. I have crushed ochres for various analyses to understand the complexities of their composition and movement across landscapes and across time. I have crushed ochres to create my own "paint" to put on my skin, and to mix with different binders to see which ones worked better than others. I have even eaten ochre to relieve a stomachache, as was suggested to me by someone who does it regularly (it worked). I have seen ochres on ancient shell beads, ivory beads, stones, bones, in hearths and used to create thick ochre surfaces, an archaeological feature in and of itself. I have seen ochre for sale in markets, being used as a paint mixture or colorant by contemporary artists, and as a dye or additive in beauty products being sold on the shelf today. The use of ochre by humans is vast in time, space, and experience. Just as ochre pigments permeate rock walls, bones, and beads, it has permeated many aspects of human life, potentially before our evolution into *Homo sapiens sapiens*. Ochre pigments form such a part of our identity that it is diffcult to disentangle the use of ochre from the human experience.

When publishing aspects of my research on ochre, only about 1% of the written work encompasses what I have physically experienced and witnessed when interacting and engaging with this material. On the one hand, as a researcher, I know that transferring knowledge from the real-world to a paper is limited by the very nature of the prevailing academic discourse, of the scientifc strive for "objectivity". Furthermore, I believe that empirical observations of prehistoric ochre use are vital for establishing robust interpretative frameworks of the past, and thus permitting us to infer what past ochre behaviors were possibly like. On the other hand, I cannot help but think that there is a profound inconsistency in how researchers like myself and how people in general, both in the past and at present, experience(d) ochre and how we share and discuss these experiences amongst ourselves, and I am certainly not the only one. Over the last few years, after publishing several papers on the geochemical properties of ochre, amongst others, there seems to be a fundamental gap between how active ochre actors (i.e., users) engage with ochre, as opposed to how passive ochre actors (academic observers) investigate and report these materials through peer-reviewed dissemination channels. I have asked myself why is this the case?

Due to the nature of the scientifc discipline, the only scholarly acceptable results from ochre studies are those that are objective, empirically based, observable and replicable. For these observations to be of archaeological value, they must in turn be contextualized within the larger scope of predefned models of prehistoric human behavior, whether it be subsistence, symbolism, societal and cultural structures, paleoenvironments, or climate. The room for exploring a more varied range of human experiences within these fxed behavioral frameworks can be quite limited, a theme which has been raised and discussed in archaeology already (Sterling 2015; Schneider and Hayes 2020; Atalay 2006; Conkey and Spector 1984; Supernant et al. 2020). One's interactions with materials, in this case ochre, the emotional engagement and narratives, self-taught and indigenous ochre expressions, the phenomenology of ochre landscapes or the physical preservation and accessibility of geological ochre sources are all examples of ochre-related topics that do not seem to ft the academic standards or expectations of discipline-specifc journals. Scientifc results are thus primarily read and evaluated by ochre actors that have the same type of background and experiences. As such, we are talking in a restricted, regulated arena with little room for personal experiences, refections, and expressions.

#### **8.2 The Limitation of the Current Ochre Discourse**

The current academic knowledge production concerning past ochre use is often disconnected from the fact that ochre or pigments are still in use today, and that the full value of prehistoric ochre does not solely rest in its status as a memory-inducing artifact of the past or the present (i.e., a passive ochre perspective). Ethnographic accounts of ochre use in indigenous or descendant communities are frequently reported, but the link between these seemingly *authentic* communities and our past is usually emphasized more than their link to our contemporary societies in general. This type of asymmetric analytical disconnect also works the other way. Archaeological ochre artifacts can, in theory, also be appreciated and evaluated based on a less scientifc, more experiential engagement, rather than only from their historical value or signifcance. Contemporary artists and children are experts in these types of engagements, not because they relate pigments to their abstract meaning, but because they relate emotional, sensory, and visual appeal to the shapes and color of pigments. Seldom, however, are their experiences, thoughts or perspectives used to enhance that of the scientifcally calibrated narrative of ochre use in mainstream discourse.

The authors of this paper believe that the lack of transdisciplinary conversations among different types of ochre actors is limiting the thematic breadth of the current archaeological ochre discourse. There is the *intuitive* use of ochre by some animals and our earliest ancestors, the *intentional* use of ochre from the more recent past until today, the perpetual creation and recycling of ochre through geological processes on the planet, and the permeation of color use into numerous aspects of many daily lives in all parts of the world. Many of these aspects are often scientifcally acknowledged, yet only by using methods, models, words, and channels that are accepted and understood by very few. In this paper, we argue that many of the disciplinary discussions within archaeology and ethnography have not been able to fully grasp or address the temporal, geological, biological, cognitive, aesthetic, and cultural diversity associated with earth pigment use. We hypothesize that to understand the signifcance of ochre use in human history and evolution, we frst need to acknowledge that ochre formation, acquisition, and use involves different processes operating across all these domains simultaneously.

Art studies, from contemporary to deep time, are answering the call for plurality brought about by the challenges of globalization. Ochre as a substance is more frequently seen as a component or raw material of art rather than a form of art in and of itself. However, we believe ochre has been fundamental in shaping and allowing modern human art and aesthetics to emerge and develop. Moreover, ochre use may well be the longest-lasting human artistic behavior. We engage with the globalization of ochre-use studies in the two directions highlighted in this volume: as a human universal, and as a topic whose research requires cross-cultural and transdisciplinary perspectives. In an effort to explore new ways of "seeing and thinking ochre" we delve into the spectrum of ochre exploitation, from intuitive to intentional, and from passive to active, and examine a diversity of collective and subjective ochre experiences and practices at a planetary level.

The integration of these different approaches into a single framework of ochre experiences, spanning from deep time to the present, allow us to defne ochre as a veritable earth material heritage. This framework brings ochre studies into a twenty-frst century global perspective, while acknowledging its temporal depth and including all communities of ochre actors. Bringing together diverse entities and levels of ochre experiences may prove instrumental to developing a global deep art history in which "what has been called 'prehistoric' may participate in a dialogue with the contemporary" (Kaufmann 2021).

#### **8.3 Creating an Experiential Ochre Framework**

Arguably, the greatest difference between an academic and beyond-academic approach to ochre is the degree of physical and emotional engagement between the actor and the material. While an archaeological researcher might personally engage with the artifacts they study, most scientifc reporting remains largely devoid of private or even subjective observations, despite calls for more humanistic and even posthumanistic approaches in archaeology (see Supernant et al. 2020). This mode of ochre experience we refer to as *passive* because the core of the experience stems from the act of describing, measuring and abstractly analyzing the material. Within the discipline of archaeology, these practices are routinely conducted on assemblages with the sole purpose of scientifcally describing, analyzing, and interpreting the materials.

For (non-academic) *active* ochre actors, their core ochre experience largely starts with a personal initiative, often involving collecting, producing, experimenting, sharing experiences, and exploring materials. It should, however, be emphasized that an academic with passively acquired knowledge of prehistoric ochre use most certainly can also have actively induced ochre experiences, e.g., through experimental archaeology. Similarly, it is not impossible for an engaged artist or knowledgeable citizen to team up with researchers, such as by providing informed, experiential views on the tactile properties of ochre or identifying the location of possible sources.

The challenge is not necessarily the lack of multi- or interdisciplinary communication between active and passive ochre actors – archaeologists and artists routinely engage with descendant communities (and vice versa) for knowledge and experience sharing (e.g., Joyce 2020). The main challenge is discovering how to integrate the breadth and diversity of all types of ochre experiences found within both informal and formal knowledge-producing systems in a transdisciplinary way. Alternative to multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaborations, which represent different degrees of cross-thematic, largely scientifc collaborations; a transdisciplinary team acknowledges that there are multiple ways of gaining meaningful knowledge of the world. The team may consist of a much broader range of members, with each member contributing their own specifc knowledge and experiences in a joint effort to create new conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and translational innovations. Each members' perspective transcends each other to form a new framework of knowledge, in which the outcome or result is not simplistically predicted based on the individual disciplinary contributions.

In this chapter, instead of reviewing ochre as a research feld within and outside of archaeology, we worked towards a transdisciplinary framework, covering a range of *ochre experiences*, not limited to just the accepted or traditional scientifc ones. Through this framework, we frstly aim to highlight the contributions of specifc disciplines in ochre research, while simultaneously evaluating their inevitable blind spots and encouraging the expansion of certain thematic foci. We hope the framework will help facilitate people from different disciplines and societal contexts to connect more easily and openly by facilitating a common language and allowing different ochre actors, from artists to scientists, to identify with at least one part of the framework. Our second aim is to map the *earth history of ochre* from deep time until today as to better appreciate the rich and complex relationship that exists between our physical earth, animals, humans, and the ways in which all these actors experience ochre and each other. This is what we refer to as the *collective ochre experience*.

We acknowledge that our attempt to create a transdisciplinary collective ochre framework is highly ambitious, and we therefore explicitly state that it should only be viewed as a thinking tool. That is, we have attempted to account for a wide array of possible interactions and different participants involving ochre materials, but we do not regard it to be exhaustive, fnal, or universally valid. Our largest obstacle while making the framework was to overcome the anthrocentric perspective that ochre is primarily a human construct: for example, the formation of ochre by geological processes happens regardless of whether humans collect and manipulate the end-product. Furthermore, animals, such as bearded vultures, use ochre (Margalida et al. 2019; Tributsch 2016) and bacterial life forms create useable ochre (Hashimoto et al. 2012) independent of human infuence. We also consider the scope of time – ochre creation by geological processes occurred before any hominin species sought to acquire it, and its geological existence will outlive our lineage. The framework, as we currently present it, includes ochre experiences taking place in deep time, the recent past, the present and the future.

#### **8.4 The Framework of Ochre Experiences (FOES)**

With the purpose of articulating and visualizing the variety of ochre experiences on earth, we created the Framework of Ochre Experiences (FOES) shown in Fig. 8.1. The framework is formed by the ochre actors (those directly or indirectly interacting with ochre) and ochre practices (the actions defning the relationship between the ochre and the actors). The framework is divided into four quadrates and encircled by the round earth. This circle encompasses the geodiversity of ochre, or the cycle of ochre creation, from formation in primary contexts, to weathering and transportation, to redeposition and formation of secondary deposits, which are perpetually ongoing. It portrays the notion that iron oxide-bearing materials on this planet exist even if humans or other animals do not. It also encapsulates chemotropic bacteria that produce iron oxides, such as the genera *Leptothrix* and *Gallionella* (Hashimoto et al. 2012; Kunoh et al. 2015).

Contained within the earth-ochre-cycle are the ochre actors and their respective practices or activities. The actors' general mode is described as either *active* or *passive*, and their specifc activities are described as either *undefned* or *defned*. A summary of each of these roles, their respective time depths, and the types of ochre users contained within them are outlined in Fig. 8.2. We outline each of the types of actors and activities in more detail in the following sections.

**Fig. 8.1** The Framework of Ochre Experiences (FOES)

#### **8.4.1 Active and Undefned: The Intuitive Ochre Actor**

The Active and Undefned role describes the *intuitive* ochre actor whose intentions of use are evident but neither the action or the material involved has been consciously or abstractly defned (e.g., in terms of language or concepts). We recognized this as a category when considering the use of ochre by certain animal species, such as the ochre-rich mud bathing elephants in Tsavo National Park (Fig. 8.2), the bearded vulture engaging in ochre baths (Margalida et al. 2019; Tributsch 2016), or the alteration of ochres by plants, lichen, fungi, insects, and invertebrates, to name a few. While we do not fully know the specifc drivers or motives, if any, behind their behaviors, their use of ochre is not random but based on actions whether driven by pure intuition (in the case of bacteria or fungi, for example) or intuitive choice (in the case of bearded vultures). Our lack of understanding these activities/actions is most likely a refection of our own limited knowledge, rather than the complete absence of intentionality or forethought behind some of these actions. Hence, we use the term *intuitive* to account for the awareness of these ochre actors, even though we are limited in our interpretations of these behaviors.

In considering the hominin record, we ascribe the intuitive ochre role to possible behaviors prior to ca. 300 kya (kya = thousands of years ago). From around this time there seems to be a gradual yet notable increase in direct evidence for ochre use as found at archaeological sites in both Africa

**Fig. 8.2** Summary of roles and descriptions of these within the OEM. Photo credits, from left to right, are as follows: image by A. Socha, photo by M. Kucharczyk, photo by E. Velliky (author), photo by E. Velliky (author)

and Europe (Barham 2002; de Lumley 1966; McBrearty 2001; Roebroeks et al. 2012; Van Peer et al. 2003). We defne direct evidence for ochre use as the presence of anthropogenic use-traces or modifcations found on the surface of ochre pieces, suggesting intentions beyond that of intuitive or opportunistic use. The reports of ochre materials from contexts older than 300 kya generally describe much smaller assemblages with either no or questionable evidence of direct modifcation or a lack of assured stratigraphic provenience (Brooks et al. 2018; Chavaillon and Berthelet 2004; McBrearty and Tryon 2006; Watts et al. 2016). However, the absence of direct modifcation evidence does not necessarily constitute evidence of the absence of abstractly defned, behavioral intent. Ochre was indeed intentionally collected and transported by archaic hominins, which very well could have resulted in several intangible practices, which are indiscernible archaeologically speaking. We envision that the physical evidence for the transition from intuitive to defned ochre use may be mosaic, lacking, or, in any event, diffcult to recognize; effectively limiting our ability to map and understand the development from the one to the other.

#### **8.4.2 Active and Defned: The Cognizant Ochre Actor**

The Active and Defned role describes the *cognizant* ochre actor whose intentions were/are known and can be partially identifed by us today. The *cognizant* actor has adopted both a physical and abstract awareness of ochre and its properties, and it is this awareness that informs the intentions and frequency of use. From a timeline perspective, we envision that one example of *cognizant* ochre use began after 300 kya, where modifed archaeological ochre contexts are encountered more frequently with the emergence of the African Middle Stone Age (Henshilwood et al. 2009; Hodgskiss 2013, 2020; Rosso et al. 2016; Watts 2009, 2010).

This example of the cognizant ochre actor could therefore be viewed as a (modern) *human ochre user* with the behavioral complexity and depth that is associated with our species (and with likely closely related hominin ancestors, as well). From our perspective on prehistory, ochre appears to have been primarily processed by early humans for its pigment powder, yet many unmodifed nodules are also found from similar contexts (Hodgskiss 2013; McGrath 2020; Nivens 2020; Rosso et al. 2017; Salomon 2009; Velliky et al. 2018; Watts 2009). Residues of ochre are also reported on a range of artifact types including shell, bone and ivory beads (Bouzouggar et al. 2007; Cristiani et al. 2014; d'Errico et al. 2005; Velliky et al. 2021), bone tools (Henshilwood et al. 2001), lithics (Henshilwood et al. 2018; Villa et al. 2015; Wojcieszak and Wadley 2018), ceramics (Capel et al. 2006; Eiselt et al. 2019) and most notably, on cave and rock walls (Aubert et al. 2014; Chauvet et al. 1996; Cuenca-Solana et al. 2016; Iriarte et al. 2009). Ochre was used relatively consistently from the prehistoric past until contemporary times, where ochre is present in a number of different settings, including in various indigenous and descendant communities as a symbolic or medicinal item (Abrahams 2010; Rifkin 2015; Russell 1993; Taçon 2004; Velo 1984), as a "paint" for contemporary art (see contributions below), as an industrial pigment (Kokins and Kostjukovs 2017; Prim et al. 2011), as a component in steel production, and as a colorant in cosmetics, to name a few.

Outside of prehistoric contexts, these *cognizant* ochre actors also include, but are not limited to, artists, people using it in religious or cultural ceremonies, industrial workers, engineers, and chemists, and museum workers in various capacities. Though the use of ochre is often discussed solely in relation to its role in the past, this is misleading as its use has never ceased and is used in a wide range of practices today.

#### **8.4.3 Passive and Defned: The Observant Ochre Actor**

The *Passive and Defned* role describes the *observant* ochre actor who can monitor, measure, or indirectly infer the intentions ascribed to defned and undefned ochre-related practices, but they are not direct agents in these actions themselves. As such, the framework attempts to differentiate between a frst degree of ochre use (e.g., direct use in communication, painting/coloring, social signaling or other symbolic practices) and second (meta) degree of ochre actions (e.g., observing, measuring, reporting, mapping of frstdegree ochre behaviors). In other words, *observant* actors are those who can abstractly refect on (or at a minimum perceive) either active or passive forms of ochre use, or both. Also characteristic for many *observant* ochre actors is their ability to sort and catalogue the physical properties of ochre materials (texture, composition, size, color, source location, distribution) without necessarily considering their behavioral implications. Examples of these types of observant ochre actors are geologists, biologists, chemists, archaeologists, ethnographers, art historians and various other researchers engaged in understanding the material properties of ochre or the ways in which other actors use or interact with it.

The *observant* role is ascribed to researchers because they normally seek to understand the properties and complexities of ochre and its associated practices without actively altering or using the materials for another purpose or behavior. It is worth noting, however, that the time depth of the *observant* ochre actor is likely contemporary to that of the *cognizant* ochre actor. From an early human or hominin perspective, observant ochre actors would refer to individuals who perceive ochre being used and perhaps understand the message that it conveys, but without directly using the ochre themselves. An example of this is seen in certain indigenous contexts, where ochre was worn as a body paint in specifc styles or patterns only on certain occasions (Grosse 1894). This coded, time- and event-specifc message was then seen and understood by those who were *observing* the actor wearing ochre, either as a pigment directly applied or as part of a paint mixture compound. However, as with the *intuitive* ochre role, it is problematic to give a temporal estimate of when *observant* ochre practices began, as some of these currently lie outside of the boundaries of what we have direct evidence for or what we know of the direct evidence to be. Indeed, one could argue that the ochre-using bearded vultures (Margalida et al. 2019) are also able to observe those with ochre-stained feathers and those without, perhaps conveying meanings and behavioral implications that we cannot decode.

#### **8.4.4 Passive and Undefned: Unaware Ochre Use**

The *passive and undefned* role describes those circumstances where one is not currently aware of the ochre behavior and intention. Included in this category are most present-day humans and animals, who either do not know about or interact with ochre in any way. We propose that this role is the starting point for all ochre experiences, and from a temporal perspective, it is also the most long-lasting situation, considering the vast absence of ochre amongst most of our hominin ancestors.

However, this role, like the others, is not fxed, as many once *unaware* actors can become *cognizant* or *observant* ochre actors. This is notable with museum visitors or workshop participants who had no prior knowledge of ochre and its uses before engaging in programs that encourage physical or knowledge-based interactions with ochre. During this transformation, *unaware* participants become *observant* actors, or even *cognizant* and aware ochre actors. This scenario is also applicable to the past, where it is probable that certain groups with no ochre practices encountered those with, and were thus transformed into *observant* actors, and possibly beyond. Indeed, some level of this transformation likely occurred throughout the migration of hominins out of Africa, given the occurrence of ochre materials at the earliest archaeological sites associated with anatomically modern humans outside of the African continent (Hublin et al. 2020; Hovers et al. 2003; de Lumley et al. 2016).

#### **8.5 The Function of the FOES: An Ongoing Transdisciplinary Discussion**

The FOES was developed through a transdisciplinary process involving discussions amongst both *cognizant* and *observant* ochre actors, including contemporary ochre-based artists and writers, a geoarchaeologist, a museum curator and archaeologist, a cognitive archaeologist and an archaeometrist. We consider the process of formulating the framework to be as important as its end function. Therefore, we created a set of basic questions for ourselves to consider, which we designed to highlight the variety of experiences, perspectives, and knowledge amongst us. These questions are:

The frst question establishes our initial, intuitive, basic understanding of ochre, with the purpose of grounding a transdisciplinary discussion within each of our personal starting viewpoints. The second question explores how these viewpoints may have arisen, and to demonstrate that our perspectives are most likely limited to our individual experiences. The third question is more specifc and meant to showcase how different knowledge systems can produce a variety of observations that may be equally valid and meaningful. Taking the frst three questions into consideration, the fourth question challenges us to bridge our knowledge systems and experiential gaps to promote unconventional collaboration, curiosity, exploration, and to push our personal and academic boundaries. The fnal question encourages us to think of specifc, hands-on initiatives, plans or outputs that can be used to encourage a transdisciplinary approach to ochre use, not just for the sake of the ochre actors, but for the sake of celebrating and protecting its unique role as earth material heritage that makes our world more biologically, geologically, culturally, and historically diverse.

#### **8.6 Through the Eyes of the Ochre Actors: Thematic Refections on the FOES**

#### **8.6.1 The Observers – Archaeologists, Scientists and Museum Specialists**

#### **<IP_ADDRESS> Tammy Hodgskiss – Museum Curator, Archaeologist**

I use the term "ochre" as an umbrella term used to describe a range of geological materials that leave colored streaks, mostly reds, oranges, yellows, or purples. They are composed primarily of iron oxides (hematite, Fe2O3) and iron oxyhydroxides (goethite, FeOOH (Cornell and Schwertmann 2003). The category includes shale, hematite, ferricrete, limonite, mudstone, siltstone, earthy sandstones, specularite and many others.

I discovered ochre through the ancient uses of it. This meant that my initial interaction with ochre was through science – a perspective of looking at the evidence, weighing the facts, testing hypotheses, and drawing conclusions. It was about black and white (or, more appropriately, red, and yellow). But human nature isn't that easy to defne, and ochre as a material is incredibly versatile. Then to add to the mix the uncertainties about and complexities of the cognitive abilities of early *Homo sapiens*, and the proverbial water can get muddy. Lyn Wadley guided me through my postgraduate studies and always encouraged me to think of all angles of thought – what we inadvertently assume from archaeological evidence based on our current understandings, versus what the tangible evidence can support and how can it be interpreted with minimal bias. As I learnt more about contemporary, ethnographic, and past ochre applications and started to further appreciate the artistic aspects of ochre use – and the users and artists themselves, I grew to feel quite connected with this material.

My main area of expertise with ochre is the physical analyses of archaeological ochres, using use-trace (use-wear) analysis and experimental methods to inform archaeological interpretations. My archaeological investigations have involved various chemical analyses and my interpretations involve cognitive and behavioral theory, since I have focused on the Middle Stone Age in southern Africa – a period of signifcant development of our species. For the last few years, I have run public ochre workshops for the Origins Centre Museum. These have led me to interact with the landscapes to fnd ochre sources – an important part of the ochre use process, which I had not thought about much before.

My role within the FOES started as a Middle Stone Age researcher, and the actors I related with were other Middle Stone Age researchers and archaeologists. I started as a passive observer largely, studying early modern *Homo sapiens* material culture. Interaction with other actors was also mostly defned passive – other archaeologists studying ochre and trying to understand the past human experience. Ethnographic studies and understanding contemporary uses of ochre allowed me to interact with others, mostly in Africa, who had an active involvement with ochre and who used ochre as s sunscreen, a supplement to ease a sore stomach, during traditional healing training, for paint or for ritual (e.g., Rifkin et al. 2015; Rudner 1982; Watts 1998). This knowledge can enable archaeologists to better understand functional choices and reasoning behind ochre use processes in the past.

As an archaeologist and scientist, I was comfortable working with the solid evidence and reconstructing an understanding of the past from that, mostly passively. As I moved into experimental analyses and later public outreach programs and ochre workshops, I had a more active involvement in ochre – touching, feeling, and experiencing it, so I moved towards a cognizant, active involvement. Experimental archaeology is highly informative, and it has allowed for a deeper understanding of how ochre "behaves", the best ways of using it for certain tasks and what the conceptual and practical steps are in a process (Hodgskiss 2010; Rifkin et al. 2015; Wadley 2005).

I was skeptical of humanistic interpretations, like the Female Cosmetic Coalition (Watts et al. 2016) as an extreme, or purely ethnographic analogies, which often didn't seem to be based on the archaeological evidence but are rather just theoretical or subjective. Initially I felt that contemporary art use and understandings of ochre were not necessarily relevant to interpretations of ochre use in the deep past. The museum sector and experimental archaeology allowed me to connect with so many more members of the public, artists, and creatives – all with their own knowledge and experiences about ochre and pigments (many active, defned participants in ochre use, but many also passive observers). These interactions have been important in me gaining a more complete understanding of potential ochre use strategies in archaeological contexts – from use of landscapes and collection (Fig. 8.3d), to processing and how ochre interacts with other cultural materials, such as stone tools, grindstones, rock art paint and paint brushes.

Different perspectives offer insight, and both passive and active interaction with ochre can help inform how it was used in the past. These insights are important in ochre research when dealing with a material that has such a wide range of potential applications. Increased understanding of how different types of ochre can be (or may have been) collected, processed, and manipulated, allows for a potentially deeper understanding of its use through time.

Academically, my work could improve by collaborating with actors who know the cognitive and emotional processes

**Fig. 8.3** Different modes of ochre experiences through the authors of this paper. Photos are as follows: (**a**) ochre and pigment workshop by HG; (**b**) ochre in an archaeological profle by MMH; (**c**) experimenting with paint at an Origins Centre workshop by TH; (**d**) collecting ochre samples in South Africa by Karen van Niekerk; (**e**) painted rock art at

Cueva de la Serpiente, Baja California Sur, Mexico by LMS; (**f**) interacting with Bronze Age petroglyphs in Norway by MMH; (**g**) Mma Motsei and AG in the Nkwemabala yard, Mochudi, Botswana; (**h**) beach ochre collection by HG; (**i**) red oxide woman – Mochibidu on Kgale Hill, Botswana by AG

involved in ochre use – or how to 'see' those processes. Collaborations with actors who use ochre in their everyday life, especially using traditional methods, would greatly advance my understanding of the material. This should be done not with the intention of drawing connections between 'traditional' uses by modern societies and uses in the deep past by early modern humans (Pargeter et al. 2016), but rather with the intention of developing a greater understanding of the interaction between humans and ochre, and the different ways and reasons ochre may be used.

Personally, and for public outreach, I would like to be able to portray a fuller ochre experience to the public. Ochre offers a great meeting place for science (archaeology, chemistry, theory) and art. Museum content must be understandable and meaningful on different levels and for all age groups (Fig. 8.3c). For example, it is easier to visually portray the uses of ochre as an ingredient in paint for rock art than it is to portray that the red ochre residues found on a 60,000-yearold stone tool may have been added to resins to haft tools (Wojcieszak and Wadley 2018), but both are signifcant features of our human journey. The process of allowing actors to become active and cognizant participants in the ochre experience, and therefore in the past, can bring about a shared memory and shared feelings of what the landscape can provide for us, and how our ancient ancestors created with it.

#### **<IP_ADDRESS> Larissa Mendoza Strafon – Cognitive Archaeologist**

The term ochre to me invokes the deep historical relationship between humans and color, and the color red in particular. There are several naturally occurring minerals that may be used for pigment production such as gypsum and kaolin (white), charcoal and manganese dioxide (black). However, red ochre seems to have been preferably exploited by our species since very early on (Watts 2009), which is intriguing in and of itself and requires an explanation.

I frst came across the ancient cultural applications of ochre during my study of the Great Mural rock art of Baja California (Fig. 8.3e) one of the oldest dated art traditions in the Americas (Viñas-Vallverdú et al. 2021). Later, my research interest in the origins of visual art and aesthetics invariably led me to encounter ochre as a protagonist.

While reviewing the possible earliest aesthetic practices displayed by humans, it soon became clear that the use of red-color minerals was deeply rooted in *Homo sapiens* cognition and behavior. Seemingly, the exploitation of ochre was occasionally practiced by African hominins preceding the emergence of our species (Watts 1999) whose oldest fossils are now dated to about 300 kya (Hublin et al. 2017). However, after the appearance of *H. sapiens*, there is a clear increase in the use of large quantities of iron-oxide minerals (Barham 1998; McBrearty and Brooks 2000) and by 140 kya the presence of ochre is the third most frequent material fnd in many modern human sites in Africa, behind lithics and animal bones (Watts 2009; Wolf et al. 2018).

The key question is what were these early humans doing with red pigment? What uses and contexts can we infer from the archaeological record of ochre? The evidence of pigment use may be considered ambiguous in that we are normally presented only with traces of ochre processing, or just the raw material itself, with little clues as to what it was applied to or for (d'Errico et al. 2012). Some intrinsic visual qualities of red ochre may explain why it was preferred over other color minerals. The saliency of red in human attention has been confrmed in studies with young children (Franklin et al. 2008) and adults from different cultural backgrounds (Elliot et al. 2013). Biased attention towards red may be rooted in evolutionary selective pressures for color vision in primates related to the detection of fruit patches at long distances (Dominy et al. 2003).

The recurrent presence of red ochre in early funerary contexts around the globe furthermore points towards its probable importance in ritual activity (Bowler et al. 2003; Hovers et al. 2003). For instance, red ochre is the most recurrent cultural material in Upper Palaeolithic burials across Europe (Martínez González and Straffon 2017). This suggests that the intrinsic visual qualities of ochre may account for human perceptualaesthetic biases for the color red due to its potential emotional associations with blood, and concepts like life and death (Watts et al. 2016; Wreschner et al. 1980).

The attentional bias for the color red likely coevolved with human sensory and cognitive systems, in an environment that allowed this color to be perceived as salient (Johnstone 1997). *H. sapiens*, then, made use of preestablished perceptual capacities and biases to culturally create an effective signaling behavior (Krebs and Dawkins 1984). Gibson's concept of affordances refers to the perceivable properties that allow organisms to make use of things in the environment (Gibson 1979). In that sense, ochre affords several human behaviors. Its texture and clay-like properties, for instance, allow for skin protection and ingestion for therapeutic purposes. The saliency of ochre minerals also afforded humans the possibility to culturally exploit and use the color red for communication purposes, i.e., as a visual signal to attract and focus conspecifc attention to themselves and/or particular objects. Why other hominins did not make use of such an affordance, or not to the same extent as our species, might be related to the evolutionary environment of *H. sapiens*. Despite the possibility that an attentional bias towards red may be shared with other primates and other members of our lineage, the cultural exploitation of ochre seems more closely associated with us than to any other hominin. Both in Africa and in Europe, the appearance of *H. sapiens* seems accompanied by an increase in the frequency and quantity of red ochre presence in the archaeological record (Wolf et al. 2018). For this reason, the habitual occurrence of ochre may in fact be considered as a defning trait of our species (Watts 2009). It should not surprise us, perhaps, that the earliest drawings made by modern humans known to date are made from (Henshilwood et al. 2018) and on ochre (d'Errico and Henshilwood 2011).

Within the Framework of Ochre Experiences (FOES) early modern humans probably began applying ochre as intuitive active agents, just like other non-human animals (elephants, antelope, etc.). Members of hominin populations that would eventually give rise to *H. sapiens* acquired and transmitted ochre use behaviors, perhaps for medicinal or skin protection aims, fne-tuning their perceptive and cognitive systems towards the color red. The earliest members of our species then became cognizant active actors for whom the colorizing properties of ochre minerals afforded them the ability to culturally exploit red as a signal.

What I fnd special about ochre is that, in human hands, it goes from a natural earth mineral to an active creator in and of the cultural universe. In rock art, ochre allows humans to create and recreate their origin and other myths, to communicate with other realms, record and teach their worldview, and bring generations together across time. When applied to the body, it helps humans to differentiate themselves from other beings, to *become* people (Turner 2012). So ochre is a fundamental, active agent in and of human culture. To learn about these aspects, we need interdisciplinarity and insights from felds such as anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, art theory, and psychology. As an archaeologist, I am used to seeing ochre as a raw material or as the trace of some past human activity but learning from those other perspectives has helped me see it through the eyes of active ochre-using communities (either traditional groups, artists, researchers, or enthusiasts) as a social player and a creating force. However, I myself have rarely engaged in ochre-use outside of a research-based or observer context.

Conservation is one of the biggest challenges I see related to ochre-based practices. The current rapid extinction of small-scale societies, languages, and traditional ways of life brings with it the loss of a large corpus of human knowledge and cultural diversity. If ochre-based practices fall into disuse, we risk losing a large part of cultural memory, not only related to those particular groups but of humankind in general. As for past practices, ochre that was applied to a surface, for example a rock wall, is fragile. As archaeologists, our research activities and interventions often put at risk the very objects that we are trying to study and protect. Making an ochre source, rock art site, or ancient ochre-covered artifact known can make them vulnerable. On the one hand, having people view these objects can make them want to preserve them; on the other, it can generate damage and vandalism. Therefore, creating public awareness about the importance and fragility of living and past ochre practices and engaging with ochre-using communities is key.

#### **<IP_ADDRESS> Magnus Mathisen Haaland – Geoarchaeologist**

To me, the term ochre refers to a specifc type of archaeological material that has been used by humans across the world and throughout our history. Typical examples of ochre artifacts include brightly colored ground pigments (powder) or modifed rocks with various use-wear and color properties. In the Middle Stone Age contexts that I investigate, ochre material has been documented in large quantities, yet the contexts in which they occur, their shapes, modifcations, color, and geochemical compositions vary signifcantly through time.

From an early age I was introduced to prehistoric rock art, specifcally the red rock carvings found close to the fjords in Norway. As a child, I could easily relate to the inexplicable urge of making shapes and color to express myself. Being told that this was also true for people living in my hometown during the Scandinavian Bronze Age did not come as a great surprise; after all, who does not want to paint a red imprint of their hand once in a while (Fig. 8.3f)? However, it was only much later in life, as an undergraduate student in archaeology, that I learned that rock carvings in Norway had been traced and painted red by modern-day curators to enhance their visibility; a practice that today is discontinued and is currently being reversed at many locations. While my frst experience with prehistoric color-use turned out to be a huge deception, it nevertheless encouraged me to become an archaeologist driven by an intense curiosity about prehistoric minds and lifeways: what did people do in the past and why? Today, I study the elusive existence of some of our earliest human ancestors that lived in cave and rock shelters on the tip of southern Africa some 50–100 kya. These people routinely used ochre in their daily lives, yet we still do not fully know why.

As a trained geoarchaeologist, I employ methods to study the physical processes responsible for the creation, build-up and preservation of archaeological sites and contexts. Through my work, I routinely describe the microscopic content of prehistoric occupation deposits using micromorphology and a range of other analytical techniques (Fig. 8.3b). I usually observe and map fragments of bone, charcoal, shellfsh, and lithic debris; all which attest to the range of activities that occurred at the prehistoric campsites. Occasionally, I also come across angular, mm-to-cm sized iron-rich fragments of red rocks. To the naked eye, these rock fragments are smaller than a full-stop punctuation mark. Thus, they are often overlooked during conventional excavation and seldom reported. Yet the occurrence and distribution of microscopic ochre fragments within archaeological sediments are behaviorally signifcant because they do not form or occur there naturally. Consequently, we know that these ochre fragments – though they are small – must have been deposited by prehistoric people, who, for some reasons that we do not fully understand, intentionally collected and transported them back to the cave. The size and shape of the microscopic ochre pigments also suggest that the ochre was heavily processed and ground before it was incorporated into the archaeological deposits.

From a geological point of view, I consider the ochre fragments distributed within archaeological deposits to represent one of many sedimentary constituents from which – in combination with other sedimentary components – a range of *natural formation processes* can be inferred. From an archaeological point of view, the same ochre fragments also represent miniature archaeological artefacts from which episodes of *in-situ* past ochre use and behaviors can be inferred. Approaching the microscopic ochre assemblage from both a geogenic and an anthropogenic perspective, while keeping their depositional micro-context intact, allows me to improve the analytical scope of the traditional macroscopic approach.

As a researcher occupied with conducting feld-based studies of the remains left by prehistoric groups of people, I represent the *observer* within the FOES. Throughout most of my academic career, I have primarily collaborated with similar-minded, archaeologically oriented scientists, occupied either with the material science (geology, archaeometry) or the cultural and social science (anthropology, ethnography) of ochre. To some degree, I have worked with understanding the physical, tangible, and tactile aspects of ochre use through pre-designed physical experiments, carried out with the intention of referring to the archaeological material. To a lesser degree, I have worked with the psychological, aesthetic, or cognitive aspects of ochre. Not since I was a child have I used pigments actively in a personally fulflling, recreational or artistic way.

As an empirically based archaeological researcher, I always fnd it hard to bridge the analytical gap between the concrete and the abstract, between the singular observation (i.e., an ochre grain) and the implicit intention behind its existence (e.g., symbolism, identity, cosmology, visual satisfaction). Most archaeologists therefore – including myself – comfortably and routinely fall back on an analytical middle ground that often involves the formulation of *behavioral processes*. For example, inferring the *process* of paint-making, the *process* of art making, the *process* of grinding or scoring, or the *process* of ochre mining, acquisition, and transportation. While I believe that the systematic and empirical recording of all these processes is vital for our general understanding of past human ochre use, it has become clear to me – through discussions with other types of ochre actors – that it is important to be aware of the limitations that these types of "scientifc" narratives provide. The full scope of human ochre experiences stretches far beyond that of mechanical, depositional, or logistical processes that can be inferred from geoarchaeological investigations of occupation deposits.

I envision that the active engagement with ochre actors adhering to knowledge systems different from mine own, for example by emphasizing the phenomenological, psychological, motoric, and sensory effects of pigment use could serve as a valuable, life-enriching, and transdisciplinary mechanism that ultimately may lead to more insightful research and present-day awareness of the relationship between humans, ochre and earth.

#### **8.6.2 The Active: Artists, Teachers, Ochre Workers**

#### **<IP_ADDRESS> Heidi Gustafson – Artist, Ochre Worker**

Ochre, to me, defnes a spectrum of geologic material, dominated by the presence of iron and oxygen (laced with other trace elements forming personality or geochemical fngerprint), tied to a specifc place, part of an ecological system and that leaves enduring, colorful traces.

I also try to consider ochres across a behavioral and relational spectrum (not simply by color or chemical structure): what are their sensual impressions, textures, saturation, tone, feeling, hardness, binder affnities, mood, and other characteristics? How do they feel in the hand? What kind of marks do they make? What fora and fauna grow with them in their native environment? Highly effective, or more "powerful or spiritual" ochre, by my own defnition feels, simply, alive, and vibrant. In that way, I experience ochres as non-human actors, as ancestors and kin, with their own agency or "life force." I feel ochre is a primal way to better understand and bond with Earth's creative process and diverse expressions, our own image, story or metaphor, and refect knowledge about human capacities (and perhaps failures!) as an ironaddicted (i.e., steel), radically terraforming, species.

In retrospect, I frst "met" ochre's infuence several times throughout my life without realizing it until much later. It's hard to know exactly where or how my relationship with ochre began. I was born and grew up next to a swamp, rich in biogenic yellow ochre (ferrihydrite). A few miles away is an Indigenous Duwamish biogenic ochre spring (in nowcalled North Seattle). My frst day as a baby, I spent on the coastal Whidbey Island beach with my grandparents – a beach whose cliffs carry several kinds of ochre clays with red (hematite), yellow (goethite), blue (vivianite), black (magnetite) and many shades of chalky and clayey ochres in between. Unfortunately, as a trained visual and conceptual artist, I never knew or cared about "ochre," despite it being a primary part of all paint and drawing tools. Oddly, the primary way I was introduced to ochre was through active imagination (or intuitive visualization), then through a powerful dream that acted as a sort of map (to fnd ochre), and then through sustained relationship with ochre-rich places in the world today.

I started off as an intuitive ochre actor throughout my life. Ochre was a part of the ground I lived on, the artwork I made, make-up I loved and places I've been drawn to throughout my life. Now, led by my encounters with ochres themselves I am more often a cognizant ochre participant. Professionally, I still relate to ochres intuitively as an artist, an ochre forager, educator, and archivist. Most importantly, I consider my work akin to an Earth custodian or steward, bringing ochre and people together into a protective, dynamic, sanctuary (or working library) of exchange and connection. Ochre is my way to care about and honor Earth and my cultural heritage as a human.

I work to bring people closer to the creative power of earth places through foraging ochre and working with colorful pigments tied to places that touch them on a personal, often emotional or spiritual, level.

I do this transformation with others in a few ways. I gather and make ochre pigments for people all over the planet (Fig. 8.3a). As a pigment maker, I connect people intimately to ochre in their life and art, to "ochre-engage" them, in pigment form. As an educator, I bring people into geological landscapes, to forage rocks and soil in context (Fig. 8.3h), which provide intimate access to ochre, in a bigger ecological picture and through all of their embodied senses. As an ochre archivist, I collaborate with the whole circle of ochre actors.

Ochre is a particularly powerful material which speaks to Earth's diversity and inclusion: not only are ochre localities geodiverse (it forms nearly everywhere on Earth in unique ways) and spectrally wide-ranging as pigment (forms several hues across the rainbow!) ochre also infuences and encourages diverse forms of creative expression and shared memory in humans. More deeply, when I gather ochre in the landscape, I feel connected to an awareness of integrated Earth places, deep time knowledge, and sense of ecological wonder and responsibility. In particular, because ochre is a shared human aesthetic heritage, or common ground if you will, and available for discovery and use even in unexpected or urban places (sewage, rusty junkyards, rubble, graveyards, landflls, ditches, toxic mine wastes and more), I fnd that ochre plays a unique role in connecting people to Earth material systems, especially parts we tend to be less informed around, such as so-called "waste" cycles and bigger elemental, sedimentary, geochemical, evolutionary rhythms and experiments on Earth.

Ochre contributes greatly to our creative activity (imagemaking, communication, expression, display, movement) in the past, and into and beyond the future as we can imagine it. Ochres are a powerful metaphoric material that keep us in touch with Earth's geodiversity and our own creative diversity. My viewpoint supports people remaining connected and engaged with ochre, thus, staying engaged with many levels of engagement at once: active experience integrated with a deep time material perspective. My sense is that this continues to support the healthy cycling dialogue and vibrant exchange of ecological knowledge shared across individuals, cultures (human and non), deep time and space.

#### **<IP_ADDRESS> Ann Gollifer – Visual Artist, Writer**

Ochre is earth stained over millennia by iron deposits. Its use by humankind has always combined the practical with the spiritual.

I started using ochres in reference to racial stereotypes in my painting practice. This led me to narrow my palette to the earth colors and black and white. The move from the use of commercially produced paints to raw earth pigments was prompted by a visit to The Phuthadikobo Museum in Mochudi, a regional museum located 50 km north of Gaborone (Botswana). There, I saw several pigment cakes on display. Upon enquiry, the museum staff took me to several traditional sites of collection in the landscape of Mochudi village, where I was fortunate to meet a woman still practicing traditional house painting, an art that has almost completely died out in rural Botswana.

I met Mma Motsei Nkwemabala, a muralist/house decorator/painter and healer, in a riverbed where I had been taken by Aobakwe Moroko, an assistant curator from the Phuthadikobo Museum to collect yellow ochre. Mma Motsei was in the process of re-painting a small house in her yard that she intended to use as a space to massage pregnant women. She is a traditional artist and healer, working with women and children. Her husband is a full time *Sangoma*, or Traditional Healer. The couple welcomed me into their yard to observe the process of making and using the ochres as pigment on external earth walls. She told me that she worked with a wide range of colors and that she could provide me with them. She showed me how she processes the lumps of raw ochre, reducing them to a coarse powder by pounding them in a *kika*, and how she mixes it with kraal manure to make a thick liquid-paste, which she then uses as a decorative plaster on walls. She gave me permission to make a written record of her talking about the collection and processing of the ochres and I also flmed her plastering the walls of her out-building (Fig. 8.3g). I have been to visit her several times over the last few months, to collect ochres and continue our conversations. I pay her for each color she provides me with, in processed ochre cakes, ground ochre or sometimes in the raw earth state.

I fnd that when Mma Motsei and I just chat about things in general, we touch on interesting details of knowledge that I would never ask about from my position of cultural ignorance. For example, when she came to my studio, I showed her some of my work using red ochre that we found in a termite mound in a ward of Mochudi called *Dichibidu*, meaning the 'red place'. I commented on the purity and intensity of the color. She then told me that the red from the termite mound was sacred and brought good luck. It is used to call the ancestors. I did not ask why, how, when and by whom – that conversation will come later as I learn the best ways to ask these questions. I plan to go on walks with Mma Motsei and her husband who is a traditional healer, to the sites of collection and within this scenario talk about their names and uses of each color.

I have found that processing and painting with the ochres of Botswana has brought me into contact with people who still use them as a signifcant part of their daily lives. I fnd that this connection with others in the community still using the ochres gives my own practice a relevance and meaning beyond the personal. While collecting and then working with the ochres, I am continually making discoveries about the individual properties of each color, its vibrance, tone, smell, and consistency. For example, an ox-blood red from Senete is so hard when taken out of the ground that it must be stamped in a wooden *kika*, as the pounding necessary to reduce it to a powder would destroy a porcelain mortar and pestle. Once reduced to a fne powder, it is soft and smooth and has the most wonderful spreading power as a watercolor.  I plan to learn as much as I can about the ochres found in Botswana from the people who still use them for cosmetics, sunscreen, paint pigments, as a tool for accessing the spiritual, as well as from traditional healers who might be able to help me better understand the uses and naming of the ochres. I am in the process of cataloguing all the different colors of the ochres that I have obtained and will continue to do so as my ochre journey in Botswana continues.

As a visual artist, my attraction to ochre is both a fascination with its materiality and color properties, and a curiosity about its potency as a spiritual medium in human culture from ancient times to date (Fig. 8.3i). I am constantly in search of relevance within the feld of contemporary art, but more importantly I would like to engage with the much wider issue of where we came from, who we are and where we are going. I believe that my associations with ochre researchers, both in observant and cognizant roles, will give me much needed support in the academic feld. Their knowledge and insights would be invaluable to my understanding of the relationship between the ochres and human cultural evolution.

The research I carry out comes directly from the interests of a visual artist in terms of practical collection and application. I gain knowledge during collection of ochre, outside in the wider community and within my studio space while working with the pigments. This knowledge helps me build a conceptual framework within which I might contribute visually to the ochre story, making it one that is visible to a wider audience, beyond the scientifc and academic. The more we begin to understand and appreciate our home planet and the earth that sustains our lives the closer we might come to preserving it and ourselves.

#### **8.7 Discussion**

#### **8.7.1 Evaluating the FOES Through the Actors**

The experiences of the authors presented in this paper are arguably more diverse than what is usually reported in academic contributions. However, it is important to acknowledge that our compilation of perspectives is still primarily limited to the viewpoint of western-based, largely female actors. Indeed, there are numerous outlooks that have gone unvoiced. It is often useful to refect on why certain views are represented while others are not. In our case, we recognize that the group of people involved here is partly an opportunistic mix of loosely related academic colleagues, and partly the result of random encounters. However, this does not make our individual viewpoints less valid; yet the lack of cultural, gender, or geographic diversity should certainly be recognized as a factor that may limit transdisciplinary collaboration and outputs. Even so, we hope that our initiative can serve as a starting point for more inclusive and creative dialogue and be inspirational for different actors wanting to engage in similar types of discussions in the future.

The authors' written accounts describe how each of them initially became aware of, and then gradually became more engaged with, ochre. Though the actors can be thematically divided between *observant* researchers and *cognizant* artists, one common underlying thread amongst them is that key human traits such as learning, curiosity, and exploration played a signifcant role in the development of each actors' perception of ochre. These traits were involved in how they began, expanded, and nurtured their knowledge of, and interactions with, ochre. While some actors have preferred to gain information through formalized knowledge systems (i.e., laboratory-based material sciences or carefully designed cognitive testing), others have developed their ochre awareness by hiking and foraging in ochre-rich landscapes, through visual experimentation and expressions, through writing and thinking, through spiritual practice or by engaging with museum visitors or indigenous communities.

In their personal accounts, each actor has – in their own way – expressed and elaborated on their fascination of ochre, whether it being its versatile history, visual properties, or simply its capacity to be imbued with an abstract meaning. For archaeologists, their fascination tends to stem from the temporal link that ochre forms between humans today and people of the past, largely through the medium of rock art, but also through the presence of ochre at archaeological sites all over the globe. The fact that ochre can still capture our attention today speaks to the appeal it might have had on our ancestors in the past. For contemporary artists using ochre, their fascination lies both with its tactility and visual quality, but also with the emotional connections that arise from interacting with it, particularly at the intersections between perception and action and between imagining and expressing. For many artists and indigenous groups, the act of collecting ochre from a specifc place, within a specifc landscape, can create an additional layer of meaning, which then becomes part of the material's narrative and origin story. Regardless of the individual reasons or processes behind each actor's ochre experience, there seem to be a universal human desire to engage with this type of material, directly or indirectly, in the past and in the present. Ultimately it is this non-contextualized, ahistorical yet shared attraction that stimulated the creation of the FOES; as map or meeting place that can link and translate the insights gained from all types of ochre experiences, and not just from a few.

#### **8.7.2 In Light of a Humanistic Approach**

While we argue throughout this chapter that ochre experiences are not isolated to "the archaeological past" several of the authors are archaeologists by discipline and thus began their ochre stories within the archaeological past, mounted in (or even constrained by) the scientifc discipline that gave rise to their interest in the frst place. Discussions surrounding the limiting aspects of archaeology in the pursuit of maintaining objectivity are not new and are generally grounded in feminist and indigenous theoretical critiques (Atalay 2006; Conkey 2005). While these topics are pertinent to the study of ochre in the human past, it is not our goal in this paper to deconstruct the current methods, interpretations, and ultimately the narrative on past ochre use from different theoretic viewpoints. Rather, the stories told in this chapter revealed something wanting in the discipline, of how the strive for objectivity in archaeology does not seem to meet the emotional experiences and perspectives of the individuals engaging with these topics on a regular basis (which indeed has been refected elsewhere in archaeology, for examples see: Supernant et al. 2020; Pellini 2018). Those who work with ochre (and likely those who work closely with other materials) develop an emotional connection to it in one way or another, whether it be to the material itself or the situations arising from working with it (e.g.: relationships forged from collaborations, excitement or stress stemming from research). These *so-called* "emotional demands" could be fulflled in other ways (e.g., working with visitors in museums) but rarely are they shared through academic mediums. This is precisely the issue that we attempt to address and reconcile in this chapter and with the FOES: to provide a space for disciplinary-bound scientists and other ochre actors to speak and share their stories and experiences that are not so openly received or encouraged in other formats, with the intention of encouraging others to do so. Ultimately, the experiences unique to archaeologists could eventually, and collectively, work towards establishing "…an archaeology that took its humanistic goals seriously while not relinquishing its rigor nor its commitments to its audiences that are far more expansive than what one could imagine" (Conkey 2020, 271). Currently, our goal is to push towards this direction through the lens of the *collective ochre experience*, to express that this material is uniquely situated to tie together different threads of many different experiences and ways of experiencing throughout time and space.

We are, however, aware that these types of grandiose, transdisciplinary visions (crafted largely by western scholars) may be perceived by some as convenient and academically constructed concepts, containing many words but lacking humanized substance. In response to this, we emphasize that ochre is the only material we know of whose use over time, at least in a global and abstract sense, has continued. The multiple uses of and experiences with ochre pigments are one of very few non-biologically necessary human practices directly connected to the development of our species from the beginning of *Homo sapiens* (and even before) until now. To date, archaeologists have not defned distinct ochre technocomplexes; perhaps because the ways in which humans/animals used and use it is hard to defne and allot into technical categories. Instead, it can and often has permeated many aspects of the human experience – artistic, religious, symbolic, medicinal, and practical. The human experience on and of earth is literally and abstractly colored by ochre. As such, it represents a globalized material heritage, rather than a local cultural heritage, because people from widely different places, perspectives, backgrounds, and time periods can all – intuitively and naturally – fnd common ground in ochre. Thus, we believe that to consider ochre in all its many dimensions is a global approach.

With the variety of ochre experiences explored in this paper, this diversity is not exclusive to our prehistoric ancestors, and by extension to the academics that study them. Ochre is also not a material that belongs only to the historically interested, the creatively gifted or the spiritually engaged. No specifc cultural, religious, commercial, or disciplinary group has an exclusive right to defne how ochre may or may not be used. The true extent of ochre diversity lies in the fact that this single physical material is uniquely meaningful in all of these spheres of existence simultaneously, from the deep past up to today. In our view, there are no *authoritative uses* or *experiences* of ochre, only situational uses and experiences, which are represented equally in sustained lineages of traditional use as well as in the diversity in different living cultures and people today. Acknowledging this can be diffcult or uncomfortable because not only does it force us to speak and write less and listen and observe more, but it also challenges our very notion of how earth material knowledge is gained (scientifcally, visually, or abstractly) and how to link and validate it.

In this regard, we believe that the FOES can help to overcome some of these translational challenges and thus promote more extensive conversations amongst the *collective ochre experience*. That being said, if other ochre actors had been co-authors of this contribution, their framework and collaborative process and output would most likely have been quite different. We perceive this as a testament to the complexity of human ochre experiences, and not to the invalidity of our qualitative results. Finally, we believe that developing more transdisciplinary approaches to ochre, particularly those that integrate and activate multiple types of knowledge systems, is not only important for improving our understanding of ochre use in the deep past but is also critically necessary if we are to understand, preserve and actively engage with this unique earth-material heritage in the present and in the future.

#### **8.8 Conclusion**

Ochre is a mineral pigment that has been used by humans for more than 300,000 years. It appears in archaeological, historical, and contemporary settings throughout the world. Because of its unique behavioral, functional, contextual, and temporal breadth, the use and role of ochre in both past and present-day settings has caught the attention of researchers from a range of different disciplines, including archaeology. There has been considerable debate amongst them; in particular, on which concepts, methods and empirical observations are the most useful in deciphering ochre-related behaviors on an individual, societal, or evolutionary level. In this paper, our starting hypothesis was formulated based on the notion that the current scientifc ochre discourse, particularly in archaeology, does not fully account for the range of processes involved in the formation, acquisition, and use of ochre materials. For this reason, we have put forward a transdisciplinary ochre framework that we believe has the capacity to defne a much greater range of *ochre experiences* than has been previously reported within the archaeological scientifc community. The framework also allows us to better grasp the temporal, physical and abstract relationships between the different types of ochre actors as well as emphasizing the fact that the way humans gain earth material knowledge, and their reasons for doing so, is neither static nor binary.

We co-developed and co-evaluated our framework through the personal ochre accounts of both scientifc and non-scientifc ochre actors. Their statements highlight the contribution of discipline or perspective, while simultaneously revealing potential blind spots and unreleased collaborative potential. Yet, we do not wish to reduce the signifcance of our framework simply to a general scientifc contribution, or to its functional role in transdisciplinary collaborations specifcally. Our ultimate goal is to promote an awareness of the deep-rooted interconnectedness between ochre formation (geological processes), intuitive ochre use (animal behavior), and observant and cognizant ochre use (cultural behavior). We believe this can best be done by emphasizing that fact that the *earth material heritage of ochre –* from deep time until today – is characterized by complex, non-linear and multidimensional relational feld between the physical landscape, the animals that live in it, and humans.

Ochre is a powerful metaphoric material that connects earth's biological, geological, historical, and cultural diversity. Today, all parts of our earth-animal-human system are in danger of being lost due to the systematic removal of (and humans' general lack of exposure to) natural and cultural landscapes, intact geological environments, and the accelerated extinction of animal species and their habitats. Increased globalization and urbanization are contributing to the irreversible loss of distinct cultural practices, creative expressions and functional adaptations that are all built on different types of knowledge systems. To counteract this development, we should make a greater effort to emphasize the value of diversity in human material experiences. In terms of people with knowledge of ochre, this means that both *observant* and *cognizant* ochre actors ought to recognize their responsibility in joining their skills, perspectives and approaches to foster curiosity, creativity, awareness, sense of ownership and protectiveness of the earth material heritage of ochre.

#### **References**

**Dr Elizabeth (Beth) Velliky** is a Postdoctoral Fellow in archaeology at the University of Bergen SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE) in Bergen, Norway. She holds a dual doctorate in Archaeology from the University of Western Australia in Perth, Australia and the University of Tübingen in Tübingen, Germany. Her research focus is to combine methods and perspectives from archaeology, anthropology, geology, chemistry, contemporary art and ethnography to study the relationship between mineral pigment use and early human cultural evolution, expression and symbolism. She has applied her research perspectives to sites in Canada, Germany, Eswatini, and South Africa, where her current work focuses on the mineral pigment assemblages from Blombos and Klipdrift caves and how these behaviours impacted and shaped the culture and society of the earliest humans in Africa, and how these evolved over time. Aside from mineral pigments, she also engages in rock art, personal ornaments, raw material acquisition and transportation, and symbolic behaviours more generally. She has worked on sites in the USA, Canada, Germany, Israel, Oman, Eswatini, South Africa, and Norway.

**Dr Tammy Hodgskiss** is the Curator at the Origins Centre museum, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She was born and bred in Johannesburg, South Africa. Tammy is an archaeologist and received her PhD in 2013 from Wits University. She researches ochre use in the Middle and Later Stone Age in South Africa, employing use trace analytical methods supported by experimental understanding. She has worked at the Rock Art Research Institute (RARI), at Maropeng and Sterkfontein visitor centres, and at ETHER Heritage. She has been the curator at the Origins Centre since 2018 where manages permanent and temporary exhibitions, organizes lectures and public programming, and helps create engaging and interactive educational offerings and museum experiences. She is driven by a passion to learn about people, our pasts and our cultural knowledge systems – through cross disciplinary research, collaboration and honest conversations.

**Larissa Mendoza Straffon** is senior researcher at the Department of Psychosocial Science and is affliated with the Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE) at the University of Bergen, in Norway. She is a John Templeton Foundation grantee and PI of the project 'Visual signs as cognitive tools', based in Leiden University, the Netherlands. In her current research, she combines data from archaeology, developmental psychology, and comparative studies to gain insights into the origins of visual symbolism. She obtained her PhD at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. She did a Master's in Archaeology specializing in Human Origins at Leiden University, and holds a Licentiate degree in archaeology from the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, in Mexico, where she graduated with honors for her thesis on the Great Mural rock art of Baja California. Her main focus is the study of visual art and aesthetics as an approach to understanding the evolution of human cognition and culture. Other research interests include biological anthropology, rock art, and archaeological theory.

**Heidi Gustafson** is an artist, researcher, and ochre specialist who was born and lives in the rural Pacifc Northwest. Her highly collaborative projects include the ongoing creation of an ochre sanctuary with over 600 earth pigments from around Earth. Called the 'woman archiving the world's ochers' by the New York Times, and the 'ochre whisperer' in American Craft, her work has been featured in several books and publications including *The Dark Mountain Project, Colossal, The Soil Keepers, True Colors: World Masters of Natural Dyes and Pigment*, and many others. She's the author of *Book of Earth: A Guide to Ochre, Pigment, and Raw Color*. Her approach to ochre is founded in artsbased process and bioregional advocacy and she is particularly interested in bridging the gap between ancient ochre knowledge and contemporary ochre use and misuse, in an effort to actively protect sacred or threatened places and support interspecies communication, creative expression, and Indigenous futures. She received her BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art, minored in Forensic Science at the University of Baltimore, and holds an MA in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her work can be found on earlyfutures.com or on Instagram @heidilynnheidilynn.

**Ann Gollifer** is a visual artist whose practice includes painting, printmaking, writing, and photography. She has lived and worked in Botswana since 1985 and is a permanent resident of the country. In 1983, Ann graduated from Edinburgh University with a Master's degree in History of Art. She worked as a Senior Technical Offcer at the National Museum and Art Gallery, Gaborone, under the Directorship of its founder, Alec Campbell. She has also worked at the Phuthadikobo Museum in Mochudi with Sandy Grant, the Museum's founder and director. From 1991 to 2001, she was part of the committee and involved with the administration and facilitation of the Thapong Triangle International Artist's workshops that took place in Botswana, as well as the many smaller off-shoot art workshops that were organized annually by the Thapong committee. An Artist member of the Thapong Visual Art Centre, Gaborone, Ann was part of the executive committee, responsible for the building of the centre. She is the co-founder, with Maipelo Gabang, of the Art Residency Centre, Gaborone, Botswana. Ann is Vice Chairperson of the centre, running it with the support of a dedicated executive and board. The Art Residency Centre is an artistled initiative that offers space to creatives in the community and with them develop new platforms for the dissemination of their work. As well as being a physical entity, the Art Residency Centre is also a fourishing virtual space where artists from all felds can meet to network and exchange ideas, both nationally and internationally.

**Magnus M. Haaland** is the Head of Department for Collections at the Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger, Norway. He is also a post-doc at the University of Bergen, Norway and an affliated researcher at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He specializes in geoarchaeology and archaeological micromorphology. His general research focuses on evaluating site formation processes at Middle Stone Age cave sites dated to between 50,000 and 100,000 years. More specifcally, Haaland is interested in how discrete depositional events can inform us about prehistoric human campsite practices and domestic behaviours. His interest in stratifed archaeological deposits comes from his extensive feldwork experience in southern Africa. During the last 10 years, he has participated in excavations at sites such as Blombos Cave, Klipdrift Complex, Sibudu, Diepkloof Rockshelter, Bushman Rockshelter, and Pomongwe Cave. During his feldwork, Haaland has also been developing and implementing digital systems for more systematic, effcient, and comprehensive data collection, including the use of high-resolution 3D photogrammetry and GIS. In the laboratory, his efforts have been geared towards linking geochemical analyses of archaeological material (e.g. from XRF, FTIR, XRD, RAMAN) to their original micro-contextual feld setting.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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## **9 Why Do Old Dates Fascinate Prehistorians?**

Georges Sauvet

#### **Abstract**

Archaeologists have always been interested in placing things into chronological sequences. Prior to the discovery of numerical dating techniques, the sequence of prehistoric events was only known relatively within large approximations and with high degrees of uncertainty. From the 1950s onwards, radiocarbon dating appeared as the most important method to obtain the chronometric age of prehistoric materials. Later, accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) became the prevalent technique and began to be used to date rock art paintings. The precision of this method improved, and the age of much rock art was pushed back. New techniques based on luminescence (e.g., TL, OSL) and the disequilibrium in the U-series (e.g., U/Th) have been developed in the last years. Engaged in an international race toward the oldest dates, prehistorians from all over the world have seemed to move away from their primary objective, which is the understanding of past societies. In rock art studies, research is now shaped by the search for the 'earliest art' and the oldest manifestation of 'symbolic behaviour.' Through the examination of the different dating techniques developed in the second half of the twentieth century, several examples of this time-driven prehistory will be given. Behind an illusory mathematical rigor, the leaden weights of preconception and ulterior motive reappear in many cases, reminding us that prehistory is not only a 'human science,' but a science made by humans.

#### **Keywords**

Radiocarbon dating · U-series dating ·

Thermoluminescence · Calibrated dates · Preconceptions · Social networks

#### **9.1 Introduction**

Once upon a time, early Anatomically Modern Humans drew images on the walls of their rock-shelters and caves.  Thus, the present and the past are mirroring infnitely, and the notion of time is a mirage. Nowadays, in our modern world, time is at the center of all human actions and is invading our lives. A clear effect of this trend may be seen in the National Geographic project entitled "*In search of Europe's oldest art.*" This indicates that research surrounding the oldest dates has in itself become a goal for prehistoric archaeologists, implying that the ultimate goal of archaeologists is to go back in time further than their colleagues. In recent years, archaeologists have engaged in a race to discover the oldest art in the world. While this is not something new, the competition is now global. Rock art older than 40,000 years has been discovered all around the world and the universality of the phenomenon is now recognized (Moro Abadía and González Morales 2013).

An example of this tendency is a recent paper published by Hoffmann et al. in *Science*. In this article, the authors suggest an antiquity of ca. 65,000 years old for the cave paintings of three Spanish caves (Hoffmann et al. 2018a). Since Neanderthals were the sole occupants of Europe at that time (Anatomically Modern Humans -AMHs- did not arrive before 42–40 ka) this chronology implies Neanderthal authorship. The announcement, though exclusively based on the measurement of the U/Th ratio in calcite crusts overlying paintings using a sophisticated mass spectroscopy method, was presented as scientifc evidence, even if several

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2024 129 O. Moro Abadía et al. (eds.), *Deep-Time Images in the Age of Globalization*, Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54638-9\_9

G. Sauvet (\*)

Centre de Recherche et d'Etudes pour l'art préhistorique, Maison des sciences de l'homme et de la société, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France

**Fig. 9.1** Dated hand stencils (directly or indirectly) by radiocarbon and by U/Th (Table)

**Fig. 9.2** Hand stencils found in a dated Gravettian archaeological context in France and Spain (Table)

archaeologists, paleontologists, and specialists in U/Th dating have expressed a number of scientifc objections to these dates (Sauvet et al. 2017; Pearce and Bonneau 2018; Slimak et al. 2018; Aubert et al. 2018a; White et al. 2019).

The main problem with Hoffmann et al.'s paper is that the authors do not take into consideration a number of archaeological arguments. For instance, they do not refer to the knowledge that anthropologists and archaeologists have accumulated about Neanderthals for an entire century. Similarly, they do not mention that most of the hand stencils known in France and Spain have been dated by radiocarbon and U/Th, directly or indirectly, to a period between 35 and 25 ka (please see Figs. 9.1 and 9.2). This fact is particularly relevant since the authors discuss a date of 66.7 ka reported for a hand stencil from Maltravieso cave (Cáceres). However, the uniqueness of this date (that is 30,000 years older than the oldest previously known dates) is not even mentioned in the paper. At the very least, the singularity of the date in question should have been critically discussed and argued.

In the same way, Hoffmann et al. avoid recalling the potential sources of error linked with the U/Th method. U/Th dating is based on the hypothesis that calcite behaves as a closed system. However, calcite is open to exchange with the environment and some uranium can be eliminated due to its solubility in water (this phenomenon is called 'lixiviation'), leading to a large overestimation of the resulting age. This is probably why U/Th appears as the best candidate to fnd the "oldest art" and fulfll the objective of the National Geographic project.

As this example illustrates, the emphasis on the origins of 'art' is not without problems.1 Moreover, as I examine in the next section, the race to discover the oldest art in the world is now a global one.

<sup>1</sup>Along this paper, I put 'art' between quotes following the recommendations of Conkey (1987)

#### **9.2 The Race to Discover the Oldest Art in the World: A Global Competition**

In the current frame of globalization, the competition to discover the oldest rock art is now worldwide. For instance, the above-mentioned dates from the Spanish caves have found a strong competitor in a fragment of hematite bearing a crosshatched pattern from Blombos cave (South Africa) and another fragment of silcrete bearing a few red lines (please see Fig. 9.3c). This piece has been claimed to be "the oldest drawing in the world" because it was found in a layer dated to about 73 ka ago by OSL and thermoluminescence (Henshilwood et al. 2018). But the frst place in this particular race is probably for a shell bearing some linear marks

**Fig. 9.3** Symbolic artefacts attributed to archaic hominins (**a**–**b**), Neanderthal (**d**–**g**), and early AMH (**c**) prior to 40 ka. **a**: Trinil (Java, 430 ka, OSL) (photograph by J. Joordens and W. Lustenhouwer with permission, Naturalis Biodiversity Center (Joordens et al. 2015); **b**: Lingjing (China, 105–125 ka, OSL) (photograph by F. d'Errico and L. Doyon with permission in Li et al. 2019); **c**: Blombos, fragment of silcrete (Southern Africa, ~ 73 ka, OSL) (tracing by F. d'Errico with

permission in Henshilwood et al. 2018); **d**: La Ferrassie (Dordogne, 40–54 ka, OSL) (redrawn from D. Peyrony 1934); **e**: Temnata (Bulgaria, ~ 50 ka, TL) (redrawn from M. Crémadès in Crémadès et al. 1995); **f**: Gorham's cave (Gibraltar, >39 ka cal BP (14C) (tracing by F. d'Errico with permission in Rodríguez-Vidal et al. 2014); **g**: La Roche-Cotard (Indre-et-Loire, 75 ka, OSL) (photograph by J.-C. Marquet with permission (Marquet et al. 2014)

found at Trinil (Java) attributed to *Homo erectus*, dated by OSL to 430 ka ago (please see Fig. 9.3a), and triumphantly claimed to be "older than the oldest geometric engravings described so far" (Joordens et al. 2015). Two candidates fght for second place: A colored shell from Los Aviones cave (Spain), found in a Neanderthal context, dated by U/Th to 114 ka ago (Hoffmann et al. 2018c), and a bone bearing parallel lines found at Lingjing (China) in an archaeological layer dated by OSL to 125–105 ka ago and attributed to the Denisovans (please see Fig. 9.3b) (Li et al. 2019). According to these scholars, these elementary graphisms, mainly comprised of straight lines are enough to proclaim that "the cultural adaptations of archaic hominins involved symbolically mediated behavior" (Li et al. 2019: 896) and that "Neanderthal shared symbolic thinking with early modern man" (Hoffmann et al. 2018c).

Other dates coming from Indonesia, also obtained by U/ Th techniques, are younger and oblige to use more subtle arguments. They are claimed to be the "earliest hand stencils" (Sulawesi Island, ~ 40 ka) (Aubert et al. 2014), the "earliest fgurative art" (Borneo, ~ 40 ka) (Aubert et al. 2018b), the "earliest hunting scene" (Sulawesi Island, ~ 44 ka) (Aubert et al. 2019), and lastly "the earliest known representational work of art in the world" (Brumm et al. 2021).

The race to discover the oldest prehistoric art is often framed in terms of a competition between Europe and the rest of the world. The journalistic terms found in a number of websites can illustrate this point: "The art was painted at least 40,000 years ago, debunking the view that cave art solely existed in Europe," (https://www.dw.com/en/oldestknown-figurative-art-found-in-borneo-cave/a-46202523), "the discovery of 40,000 years-old paintings depicting animals and the outline of hands on Indonesia's Sulawesi Island suggests Europe was not the birthplace of art as long believed" (https://www.businessinsider.com/afp-asian-cavepaintings-challenge-europe-as-cradle-of-art-2014- 10?IR=T), and "the mural dates back at least 44,000 years, which makes it about twice as old as most similar cave-art scenes in Europe" (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/ science/article/ancient-cave-art-in-indonesia-may-beworlds-oldest-hunting-scene). These sensational headlines promoted the false idea among the general public that archaeologists are obsessed with fnding the oldest rock art. Needless to say, none of these non-scientifc sources mentions that most of the dates are obtained by the U/Th method, which is subject to large errors, particularly in the case of thin layers of calcite which can lead to age overestimation (please see the discussion below).

One of the corollaries of this oversimplifcation is that discussion is often reduced to the chronology of the rock images. An example can illustrate this point. In 2014, archaeologists found a schematic engraving (possibly a reindeer) in the cave of Cathole (South Wales) in an archaeological context spanning from the Gravettian to the Bronze Age (Nash et al. 2012). The representation was attributed to the Upper Paleolithic and claimed to be "the oldest rock art in the British Isles" on the basis of a U/Th date of 14,505 ± 560 years ago even though, stylistically, the image signifcantly differs from Upper Paleolithic engravings.

#### **9.3 Numerical Dating Techniques and Rock Art: A Brief Survey**

Archaeology was born in the nineteenth century, related to the impact of two major scientifc books: *On the origin of species* by Charles Darwin (1859) and the three volumes of *Antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes* by Boucher de Perthes (1847–1864). Since then, archaeologists' main concern has been to restitute human history in its temporal dimension. At the beginning, geology and stratigraphy served as a model to build an initial chrono-cultural framework.

With the emergence of numerical dating methods in the 1960s, archaeology - frst considered as part of anthropology - gradually turned into archaeometry. In the feld of rock art research, scientists have developed many dating techniques which are more or less adequate to date rock images, including radiocarbon, Uranium-series, Thermoluminescence (TL), and Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL), so that the main question is now: "How old is this representation?". In this section, I briefy review the scope of each of these techniques, their feld of application, and more importantly, some problems associated with them.

#### **9.3.1 Radiocarbon Dating**

In the 1950s, a new technique appeared which allowed researchers to determine the age of ancient objects in wood by calculating the content of residual radiocarbon (Libby 1955). The method was soon applied to determine the age of strata or layers in stratigraphy. Radiocarbon dating was a revolution. Much later, in the 1980s, the development of AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) allowed researchers to count the ratio of isotopes 12C and 14C directly and it required smaller samples of bones or charcoal. The reduction of the minimum sample size made possible to apply this technique to the dating of rock art starting in the 1980s. This revolution led some investigators to state that we had entered a "post-stylistic era" (Lorblanchet and Bahn 1993) and to proclaim the end of the stylistic dating of Paleolithic rock art (Bednarik 1995).

The major source of error in radiocarbon dating is related to the contamination of the samples. The presence of very old carbon (e.g., residue of carbonates) tends to make the dates appear older, whereas traces of recent organic materials (such as microorganisms and humic acids) make the dates

• Hydroxyproline

appear younger. The latter effect is much more sensitive and serious than the former one. Laboratories have worked to solve this problem in recent years and, as a result of these efforts, the precision of this technique has signifcantly improved. Moreover, the pre-processing of samples can much better eliminate organic impurities. The most sophisticated method consists of extracting the collagen from bones by ultrafltration (Bronk Ramsay et al. 2004) and then obtain an alpha-amino acid such as hydroxyproline (Marom et al. 2012). This led to ages which may be 4000 to 5000 years older than those obtained by the conventional method using a Geiger counter (please see Fig. 9.4). Thanks to these improvements, the chronological limit of this technique has been pushed back up to 50,000 years. The precision is now good, but the accuracy of the resulting age remains to check, because other sources of error need to be taken into consideration (Bednarik 1996). For instance, the radiocarbon age refers to the death of the organic material, not the age of the painting (that may be much younger). This effect, put forward by the detractors of the age of Chauvet cave, is called "old wood effect" (Kim et al. 2019).

The discovery that the concentration of radiocarbon in the atmosphere was not constant throughout time (contrary to Libby's initial assumption) has led scientists to propose calibration curves. Broadly speaking, beyond 30,000 years, the calibrated dates (cal BP) are typically 4000 to 5000 years older than the radiocarbon age (BP). As a consequence, all the dates obtained prior to these improvements are now obsolete, and our chronological benchmark should be revised (Valladas et al. 2013). The fact that new dates are systematically older than the previous ones unfortunately fuels the race to look for the earliest dates.

#### **9.3.2 Indirect Radiocarbon Dating of Overlying Crusts**

When direct radiocarbon dating of charcoal paintings is attempted, specialist need to make sure that they eliminate all organic compounds originating from other sources such as calcium oxalate or other pollutants. For instance, a special acid-base-acid pre-treatment has been recommended to eliminate calcium oxalate (Bonneau et al. 2011). But inversely, calcium oxalate can be specially selected for dating red paintings or even engravings. Calcium oxalate or whewellite is a bioflm resulting from the presence of lichens, fungi, and bacteria in open-air sites. The dating of calcium oxalates has been particularly useful for the dating of Spanish Levantine art (Viñas et al. 2016). A careful sampling of the crust of calcium oxalate over and below the paintings allows researchers to obtain *terminus ante quem* and *post quem,* respectively. It was thus possible to obtain a date of 7190 ± 120 BP (8024 ± 150 cal BP) at Les Ermites rockshelter (Tarragona) for the layer overlying the paintings (Viñas et al. 2016). This date is at least 400 years prior to the arrival of Neolithic breeders and farmers commonly dated at ~7600 cal BP (García Puchol et al. 2015) and it constitutes the oldest chronometric date for Levantine art.

30,000 ± 550

34,123 ± 507

It is also possible to determine the time of crystallization of a calcite deposit by dating the calcium carbonate itself. An error inherent to this method occurs due to the inclusion of calcium carbonate from the enclosing rock in the newly formed calcite. The age should then be corrected to account for the 'dead carbon fraction' (dcf). This method has been used to determine the age of engravings in India (Taçon et al. 2013). Radiocarbon dating of calcite may also be used to check the reliability of U/Th measurements (see below).

Another technique consists of the radiocarbon AMS dating of the organic matter (diatoms, bacteria, fungi, etc.) trapped in the patina of amorphous silica formed on schist rock by the movement of water. This technique was tentatively used in the case of the Foz Côa site (Portugal) immediately after its discovery. Although specialists agree that a large part of the engravings date back to the Paleolithic period, the results of the chronometric dating fell between 6870 BP and 2170 BP, which caused considerable controversy (Watchman 1995).

#### **9.3.3 Uranium Series Disequilibrium**

Uranium-series disequilibrium (U/Th) is becoming an important dating method, because it allows scientists to date red paintings and/or engravings. The method is based on the natural radioactive disintegration of 234U into 230Th. When calcite forms (by precipitation of calcium carbonate), it contains a small quantity of U (which is soluble in water), but no Th (which is insoluble). With time, the 230Th/234U ratio increases and allows the date of the crystallization of calcite to be determined. Two conditions are required for proper application of this technique: First, it is required that there is no thorium in the beginning (i.e., the absence of particles of detrital thorium). Second, calcite needs to behave as a 'closed system' (i.e., no exchange of materials with the external environment). These conditions are often fulflled when the samples are collected in the axis of growth of stalagmites of large diameter where the dripping water does not penetrate. This is why U/Th is often used for the calibration of radiocarbon dates. That said, it is important to note that the abovementioned conditions are much more diffcult to prove in the case of thin crusts of calcite accumulated over paintings. Within the literature, numerous examples are seen wherein calcite behaves as an open system, leading to serious errors in the age estimation of the calcite, because the 230Th/234U ratio is artifcially overestimated by uranium leaching (Sanchidrián et al. 2018; Pons-Branchu et al. 2020). It should be pointed out that pollution by older or younger materials is also a case of open system in radiocarbon dating but the word is not often used.

If the system remains closed, the 230Th/234U ratio tends toward the value '1' asymptotically after an exceedingly long time (secular equilibrium). However, simply obtaining a value lower than 1 does not prove that the system was closed, because even a small loss of uranium is enough to overestimate the 230Th/234U ratio and can lead to important mistakes. For instance, 33,000-year-old calcite that has lost 20% of its uranium will have an apparent age of 43,000 years old, and such a loss is undetectable.

In some cases, the loss of Uranium can be so relevant that the 230Th/234U ratio becomes larger than 1, leading to virtually infnite ages (please see Fig. 9.5). We do not know the geomorphological conditions favoring such a situation, but cases of infnite ages were found in one third of the 89 stalagmites analyzed in various Italian caves (Borsato et al. 2003). In a case cited by Scholz and Hoffmann (2008), a fowstone in an Austrian cave displayed a brief temporary behavior during which the calcite growth slowed down drastically. As a consequence, the concentration of uranium became 10 times lower, which led temporarily to an infnite age (called 'out of range'). The authors admit that uranium loss is the best explanation. In line with this observation, Pons-Branchu et al. (2020) have recently noted that the oldest ages found in the Spanish caves studied by Hoffmann et al. (2018a) correspond to particularly low uranium concentration, which may indicate uranium loss.

Another problem is that, in an open system, thorium may be incorporated from the beginning in the form of detrital particles. This supply of thorium contains both isotopes 232Th and 230Th, so the age should be corrected for the exogenous 230Th. In most cases, the correction is only approximative because the proportion of both isotopes is unknown (initial 230Th/232Th in bulk earth at secular equilibrium varying, according to various authors, between 0.8 and 1.7). When the sample is very 'dirty,' the needed corrections are signifcant, and it is wise not to take such samples into consideration. As Pettit and Pike mentioned in 2007, "at high levels, it is legitimate to reject a U-series sample as unsuitable" (Pettitt and Pike 2007, 40). Unfortunately, these authors did not follow

**Fig. 9.5** In a closed system, the 230 Th / 234U ratio tends toward a limit of 1 after a very long time (secular equilibrium). If the values of the 230 Th / 234U ratio are greater than 1, this demonstrates that the system was open. However, the system may be open while the 230Th / 234U ratio remains lower than 1. In that case, the calculated ages are overestimated

**Fig. 9.6** Ages of calcite samples dated by U/Th in La Pasiega cave (Pike et al. 2012; Hoffmann et al. 2018a). The age of sample PAS-34 (79.66 ± 14.9 ka, minimum age 64.76 ka), is probably an outlier, overestimated due to an open system (see location of the sample on Fig. 9.8)

their own advice at La Pasiega cave, where the oldest date the only one falling within a Neanderthal time-range (please see Fig. 9.6) –shows an abnormal level of detrital particles (see Hoffmann et al. 2018a).

Several examples of overestimated ages have been reported in the case of calcite covering prehistoric paintings (Plagnes et al. 2003; Valladas et al. 2017; Pons-Branchu et al. 2020). The best way to check the validity of U/Th dates is by crossdating, a practice consisting of dating carbonates from the same concretion by both U/Th and 14C. The precision of radiocarbon dating is low because the dead carbon fraction (dcf) is generally unknown. Nevertheless, the error arising due to the dcf is much smaller than the one that is due to the leaching of uranium. Crossdating was systematically achieved in Nerja cave, Málaga (Valladas et al. 2017). In some cases, the agreement between both methods is considered as acceptable. For instance, radiocarbon dates varying between 25,374 and 22,716 cal BP, according to the value taken for the dead carbon fraction (dcf) varying between 0% and 20%, can be compared to 26,462 ± 371 cal BP for U/Th. However, for other samples, a large discrepancy has been observed. For instance, in one case radiocarbon values are between 33,769 and 31,030 cal BP for dcf in the range of 0–20%, whereas the U/Th age is 60,276 ± 1300 cal BP. In this case, the overestimation of the U/Th age is much larger than the radiocarbon age, even considering the imprecision due to the unknown dcf. Thus, crossdating seems to be an adequate way to check if the U/Th method is overestimated because of an open system.

As the phenomenon of lixiviation is diffcult to demonstrate, the ages determined by U/Th dating of thin layers of calcite overlying prehistoric paintings should always be suspected to be older than their true ages, until confrmed by other means. This is probably the case of the three Paleolithic Spanish caves discussed in the introduction of this chapter (Hoffmann et al. 2018a). These are claimed to be "minimum ages," but the wording is misleading because the true age can be much younger if the system is open. The incredible age reaching 300,000 years that was found by U/Th in Nerja cave2 certainly falls within this predicament (Sanchidrián et al. 2018).

<sup>2</sup>The dating by U/Th gives a range of dates between 100,000 and 300,000 years for calcite crusts on top of images that could not be older than 35,000 years ("*Les datations par U/Th donnent des fourchettes de dates comprises entre 100,000 et 300,000 ans pour des concrétions de calcite recouvrant des images qui ne peuvent pas avoir plus de 35,000 ans"*) (Sanchidrián et al. 2018, 35). Recently, a large discrepancy was found in Nerja for a concretion overlying black marks dated by U/Th to 118,880 ± 193 years ago, whereas 14C dated the black pigment to 19,160 ± 530 cal BP (Pons-Branchu et al. 2020).

#### **9.3.4 Thermoluminescence**

Thermoluminescence (TL) has been used to date archaeological artefacts for almost as long as radiocarbon. TL is a property of crystals that accumulate energy in traps when they are exposed to ionizing radiations; they can restitute this energy as light when they are heated. The quantity of emitted light is proportional to the time of exposition to radiations, and hence this is a way to estimate the time elapsed since the last heating of the materials (fint), its last solar exposition (grains of quartz), or its time of crystallization (calcite). The diffculty is to evaluate the amount of radiation received over time. This method can be used in the case of aeolian sediments and, more rarely, fuvial sediments, because it is diffcult to be certain that the TL chronometer was completely reset before deposition. This factor makes controversial the very ancient dates of between 58,000 and 75,300 years obtained by TL in a decorated rock-shelter in Australia (Fullagar et al. 1996).