Making Rock Art: Correspondences, Rhythms, and Temporalities

Non-representational approaches (to rock art) have highlighted the relevance of making processes. Rhythm, temporality, and taskscapes emerge from every act of making, and are deeply engaged with the affective properties of these practices. In this paper, we outline a rhythm-analysis perspective to rock art discussing how it can shed light on the affective properties of this materiality, the emergence of landscapes, and the impact this practice had on the lived temporalities of the peoples that carried them out. We apply our approach to three case studies related to hunter-gatherer, agrarian, and Incaized communities in different areas of the Southern Andes. As a result, we discuss the relevance of approaching the relationship between making, rhythm, correspondences, and taskscapes to better understand rock art and avoid the pitfalls of an ahistorical relational perspective in archaeology.