00:00.00 archpodnet Go go. 00:00.80 alan Welcome back to episode 99 we've almost hit the hundred Mark this is your host Dr Alan Garfinkel for the rockard podcast on the archaeology podcast network and we are absolutely cool that Minera Andre has given us the time and his busy schedule as a biogeochemist to talk about his adventures in rock art dating Andi. So let's continue to talk about your experiences in Saudi Arabia when you began this research project. 00:35.80 Andi Yeah, um, but I mentioned that this site in in central saudi arabia of the region of near a city called hail and the fascinatllion they had with the the. C incredibledible range of things depicted and the incredible time periods that were covered as I mentioned these dancers that we saw that were very ancient. They but must have been carved into rock in the early. Early part of the holocene in the pre-neolithic period so that would be something like nine thousand years ago and it's actually quite amazing. The artistic skill of these pre-neolithic artists. It shouldn't surprise us too much that people even that long ago had great artistic skills. We just have to think of the cave paintings in France but these people actually managed to use a somewhat more difficult material. The rock surface. Ah, to create this fascinating art and um, yeah I've then gone to a number of other places in Saudi Arabia where maybe the rock art is not quite as old. But. 02:00.56 Andi Incredibly skillful skillfully done as well. We went to a place called najran ah in in the southernmost Saudi Arabia to see both from my geochemist point of view if there was anything different. In the way the composition of the varnish ah was at that site and in the rate at which the varnish form ah found an wonderful assembly of ah. Human figures female dancers that were created probably about five thousand years ago to 5000 to three thousand years ago and then conversely I ended up going to the very northermost part of Saudi Arabia just um a few kilometers south of the border with Jordan and again for a whole different set of imagery again going back to the earliest part of the holocene again ages of 9000 years or so. And spanning through the entire history of pre-islamic and going into Islamic Arabia um images that were created in maybe something like thousand years to five hundred years ago 03:23.84 Andi And interestingly enough there was a ah pre-islamic monastery in that region that existed probably about a d 400 roughly in that that period and the monks in this monastery carved crosses and other religious symbols. Into the sides of of one of the the little mountains little hills there and they could be dated again to that period of about but 400 a d so that's. 1 of the really fascinating things I think about studying rock art and dating rock art is that if you go to a given site. You actually find that rock art at the same place has been created over up to 10000 years or so more or less continuously. Ah. By different people who have come and gone and who most of all had some sense that there was something special about this place and expressed that sense in by creating rock art. 04:32.75 alan Um, what was the most exciting discovery that you've made in your research so far. 04:39.43 Andi Ah, most exciting of course is always really difficult but something that that just stunned me on my last trip to to Saudi last year was again the skill of of rock artists. Ah these. Ah, this measurement this field site is serving this in the south west of Saudi Arabia on top of a hill and what you find there is extremely integratly integratly carved depictions of um. Several birds ah in 3 hree-dimensional detail and as well as as rams heads again in in extremely sophisticated styling and. Dating that material comes up with something like 6 to eight thousand years ago so there were these these carbers that were eminently skillful and created this rock art at a time when we thought that so well you know there must have been some very primitive people. 05:34.45 alan Amazing. Her. 05:51.79 Andi In in the region. But no, they were not. They were extremely skilled artists and I think that's really what strikes me the most about studying rock art is just how skilled people were at the time when all they had was stone tools and um. Agriculture had been invented yet but yet these people were very scoful. 06:15.55 alan So you've been most impressed with some of the sophistication and the beauty and the aesthetics of these of this imagery that is very early these are preliter preliterate people living um a very ah. 06:24.42 Andi Um, yeah, right. 06:32.54 alan You know, challenging environment and one that um they had the wherewithal and sophistication to produce these images that were absolutely extraordinarily beautiful. 06:43.36 Andi Exactly yeah I mean again also in North America you find extremely impressive images a member from one area in in myoming. Yes, sometimes. And make so many I've been working so many areas that sometimes have to really think about where is actually something that I've seen in Wyoming where there's just a fascinating kind of of depictions there um, that would put any. 07:02.68 alan Um, yes. 07:18.43 Andi Modern art that can rival any any any modern art that that you may see in a museum today. Oh there is ah a number of depictions of strange um human like beings. 07:23.88 alan Um, what did you find in Wyoming. 07:36.37 Andi That have very bizarre shapes strange heads with strange protuberances coming out out of the heads just very magical figures that especially if you look at them in. Dim light so like at and at night after after dark and just ah in ah imagine you're sitting there with a um with a fire and just see all these things in the flickering light of that fire. Ah, must be just extremely ah striking if not inducing all and fear. Um, yeah, so um, it's ah very ah theyabouts of the order of 3 to 4000 years 08:14.75 alan Um, fear. Yeah. 08:20.12 alan How how old were those figures. 08:28.48 alan Um, amazing. Yeah. 08:29.63 Andi Yeah, and we don't even know who created them because actually the people that that were there didn't leave any clear archaeological marks or so um, so it's just prehistoric people and they're. Ah, the the North American natives that live in the same area nowadays um don't actually know or don't relate to to these images they say well they're they're sacred things. But. They don't so they don't have any direct connection anymore in terms of oral traditions or so um to that particular to that particular art. 09:13.15 alan So Let's jump to the coso work and then we'll talk at on the at the end of our interaction about some of the future work that you're going to be doing so you and I spent about a day. Working in the cosos didn't we and um I think we were impressed with the ah cross correlation between the archeological evidence and the ah estimations of what what we had known. 09:32.32 Andi Um, yes. 09:49.46 alan Thought we knew about the age of those images and the resulting dates that you were able to engineer. Yeah and I think that some of the things that were so that were striking to me or the discoveries was that we actually did demonstrate. 09:54.78 Andi And you. 10:09.38 alan Some of the even the most recent milling slicks that were sometimes even superimposed over rock art were were rather recent and we even found images that went back 10000 years was was that correct. 10:27.21 Andi Yeah I mean that's exactly what I was was trying to refer to before also is that these sites just have an incredible time depth. Um, you have and on the same spot you have something that's 10000 years old and then. Ten meters away something that's been created just ah, very recently I mean the slicks actually what was interesting about them was um that they were. They had a defined age. So sometimes what we find is that recent vandalism. Actually creates a surface with no detectable magnet but no detectable varnish. Ah but these surfaces actually had an age that was somewhere probably about 400 years around that time and and so they were definitely made by prehistoric people. But by very recent prehistoric people. So again, um, those measurements that we made at at little lake the site that you're referring to they show that just a long occupation going back times that are really almost. Possible to sort of wrap your head around. You know what's 10000 years I mean we sort of think in terms of years and decades or centuries or something like that but something like 10000 years and people coming and going in the same place over. Um. 11:56.99 Andi Thousands and thousands of years and using that site for purposes religious purposes hunting living becomes even hard to imagine and so how many people how many different people how many different um. 12:16.12 Andi Ah, Tribes populations have been in that place and leaving behind rock art that allows us actually to see that they were there and in a certain sense to see what they were thinking about because they carve things such as um. Corn cheap which we can still relate to and which make us puzzled Why did they actually depict bigcorn Cheap was it because they thought making those images would help their hunting was it because um, they were. Markings of tribal identity. Ah people are guessing but it's very difficult to actually distinguish between those those possibilities. 13:06.73 alan Absolutely and there's probably ah, many many reasons over the course of thousands of years that those that those images were produced for for various times and settings. But but overall when we worked on the koso issue. 13:10.21 Andi Yeah, right. 13:23.82 alan But was impressive to me was that we could see the evolution and the changes in land use the cultural replacements the the ah shifts in settlement site function etc could all be seen. 13:41.38 alan Looking at the way those sites were dated. The images were dated and the actual subject matter and I always like that the um rock art is unusual because it really is a window into the mines and the. 13:48.15 Andi Are. 13:58.88 alan The sensitivities and the passions of the people that were're living there in 1 way in one way I I think rock guard is some of the most informative data sets that we can have in terms of archeology because it gives us a sense. 14:02.38 Andi Correct. 14:16.82 Andi Um, right. 14:17.37 alan Of the people who they were and what and what they cared about did did you get that sense when you've been working on these projects. 14:27.82 Andi Yeah, definitely and it sets as you say that's a unique thing really about rock art which you don't get from Lithic remains or something like that an arrow point or something like that. Yes, so you know that it was a. Ah, hunting or or fighting weapon but rock art really in the same way that art is used now is just something about some way that people express their mind their soul their ideals and. That's really the unique thing and that's what keeps me fascinated about it. 15:04.75 alan Absolutely we only have about a minute or 2 Andy um, perhaps said talk about where you get headed headed next and where your research is going. 15:06.67 Andi Okay. 15:15.76 Andi Yeah, my next site that I'm going to be working on is again in Saudi Arabia it's an area called alullah and the fantastic thing about it is. It's an incredibly rich amount of inscriptions there. Which again are going to help me in calibrating my my age of my h metering. Um my rate of of varnish formation in addition to the and and again a very rich mount of rock art. So um, i'm. Just going there now for a few days to make like ah a survey for the graphics survey to map out the places that I want to go back and study in detail probably this fall. Um and the interesting thing also about this area is a very different time window. It flourished sort of around the time of about. Um. 1000 bc up into the period of of Islam and so that's a ah time period that I haven't been looking at so much in detail before and that's really well representped there. There's also fascinating tombs that are similar to. Ah, famous petroyte in in Jordan which were created in the time of the nabateans about more or less about zero a d so I'm really looking forward to to that project because it's going to show me something. 16:47.52 Andi Ah, that's unique and new and that I haven't been working on before. 16:51.98 alan Andy that's that's about all the time we have I really want to thank you for your time and and your effort and I think you've ah produced some remarkable contributions that help us to date rock art and thank you for your time and it was a blessing and an honor to have you. On the rock guard pop podcast today. 17:10.39 Andi Well thank you very much I enjoyed our conversation and look forward to future interactions and maybe future collaboration with you again. 17:22.68 alan Pleasure well god bless ah you all out there in and ah archeology podcast land and see on the flipflop in a couple of weeks