Paper short abstract:

In 2013-2014, we reinvestigated Zuojiang rock art sites by some advanced technologies. Based on these work, Zuojiang rock arts are featured by the repeated appearance of social assembly scenes, which are sacred landscape represented both religious and political meanings of ancient indigenous.

Paper long abstract:

The fundamental materials for ancient rock art research is the systematic and objective image data base. In 2013-2014, cooperated the preservation project of Zuojiang rock painting cultural heritages, we applied new technologies such as low altitude photogrammetry, High-definition digital records, 3D laser scanning measurement technology and some protection facilities to re-observe the painting images and landscapes of typical locations of Zuojiang rock art sites. The field works helped update the rock art image data base and revise some important details for specific image research, and the field work also provided more objective and detailed information for relative chronology and nature discussion of Zuojiang rock art. Based on the exploration of image and landscape materials, we suggest that the repeated appearance of social assembly scenes are the most important feature of Zuojiang rock art sites. The themes of Zuojiang rock painting are consisted with group of people images of specific scenes. Combined with their landscape, these rock art sites are sacred landscapes for ancient indigenous population who created the paintings. These rock art sites may have both religious and political meaning, and they also presented the cultural and social features of specific spatio-temporal context.