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Cation-ratio varnish dating and petroglyph chronology in southeastern Colorado

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Lawrence L. Loendorf*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of North Dakota, Box 8254, University Station, Grand Forks ND 58202, USA

Extract

Pecked figures – seeming to depict humans, animals, objects and ‘abstract’ shapes - are an important and recalcitrant aspect to the archaeology of the desert USA, in the Great Basin and the Southwest. Where they are covered by desert varnish, they provide an opportunity for an absolute dating by cation-ratio method. Here - as they did not for a similar study in South Australia reported in an earlier Antiquity - the cation-ratio dates do seem to run alongside the chronological pattern inferred by conventional means.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1991

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