Paleolithic Rock Art: A Worldwide Literature Survey Extracted from the Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database for the Years 1864–2017

The Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database is an open access; online resource that fulfills the need for a searchable portal into the world’s rock art literature. Geared to the broadest interests of rock art researchers; students; cultural resource managers; and the general public; the RAS database makes rock art literature accessible through a simple search interface that facilitates inquiries into multiple data fields; including authors’ names; title and publication; place-name keyword; subject keyword; ISBN/ISSN number and abstract. The results of a data search can further be sorted by any of the data fields; including: authors’ names; date; title; and so forth. An ever increasing number of citations within the database include web links to online versions of the reference cited; and many citations include full author’s abstracts. The data compilation has been undertaken by Leigh Marymor with the year 2018 marking the 25th year of continuous revision and expansion of the data. Over 37,000 citations are currently contained in the database. The RAS database first launched online as a joint project of the Bay Area Rock Art Research Association and University of California’s Bancroft Library. After thirteen years of collaboration; the project found a new home and collaborator at the Anthropology Department at the Museum of Northern Arizona. The Paleolithic Rock Art bibliography results from an export of data from the RAS database and captures a freeze-frame in the state of the rock art literature for the world’s Paleolithic rock art as compiled here in the year 2018. The online version of the RAS Bibliographic Database at the Museum of Northern Arizona is updated annually; and we refer the reader to that resource for up-to-date bibliographic data revisions and additions. Researchers who consult the online database in concert with their reference to the Paleolithic Rock Art bibliography will discover a powerful ally in further refining geographic and thematic inquiries.