The artistic efforts of our Upper Paleolithic ancestors some 20,000-30,000 years ago are mostly dated by the recognition of style types as defined by modern-day western scholars. These stylistic definitions were laid down in the last century and have been modified by many researchers since then.
Chauvet Cave Lions, image from HTO
Despite what that sounds like, that's not terrible: archaeologists use the modern recognition of style change as a reliable relative dating technique since Petrie invented seriation in the late 19th century. And direct dating of cave paintings, before the advent of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating, was not possible, because standard radiocarbon dating techniques required the destruction of significant parts of the painting itself.
But the stylistic dating technique of rock art paintings in Upper Paleolithic Europe has always been a little dicey and it was seriously challenged when direct AMS dates of Cosquer and Chauvet in the 1990s came back too early to fit comfortably into the existing model. The artwork of these two caves is more complex than the style-based models would suggest.
This isn't really a surprise: I suspect most archaeologists recognized that if and when accurate dating became possible, the model might require retooling. But it hasn't been easy...
- Guide to Cave Art, which includes a discussion of this issue
- Guide to the Upper Paleolithic
- Cave Painting Sites
- Chauvet Cave
- What is seriation?
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