Ontologies of Rock Art

Back in the days when I was an undergraduate, I was introduced to the mystical world of social theory. My tutors – Christopher Tilley and, later, Michael Shanks – introduced me to an obscure branch of archaeology that I had never been exposed to. At that time, archaeology to me and my contemporaries was merely to dig a hole, record it, and, if anything interesting was revealed, research it. To my surprise, the notions of hermeneutics, phenomenology, and semiotics being somehow connected to archaeology appeared to make sense (just about). To add to this smorgasbord of philosophical thought, the late Mark Pluciennik introduced me to the term ‘ontology’: the concept of human existence,