The Significance of the Huiqianyan Petroglyphs in China: An Assessment Based on Multiple Rock Art Dating Methods

The Huiqianyan petroglyphs, located in the Simianshan Scenic Area of Jiangjin District, Chongqing, are a large body of animal-themed rock art on a Cretaceous Danxia red sandstone cliff. After systematically presenting the geological setting, image content and production technique of the site, this paper addresses two central questions: how the age of the Huiqianyan petroglyphs should be scientifically determined and how their position in Chinese and global pre-Historic art studies should be assessed. We argue that no single dating method can yield a defensible absolute age for this site; what is required is an integrated framework combining a chain of relative-dating evidence with the available direct observational data. Within this framework, the paper reviews the eight main scientific dating methods currently in use in international rock art studies and assesses each for applicability at Huiqianyan. We then describe in detail the cement-retreat observations and age analysis carried out by the research team in 2024–2025. We use the cement retreat rate established from five dated historical inscriptions on the same cliff (the earliest being from the eleventh year of the Chongzhen reign, 1638 CE; v̄ ≈ 1.59 μm/yr) and provide a robust calibration curve to extrapolate linearly at that constant rate. This rate falls within the typical international range (1.0–2.5 μm/yr) reported by Bednarik for sedimentary-rock sites in Western Australia (Zuytdorp Shipwreck Site), confirming the methodological reliability of the measurements. We acknowledge openly that long-range extrapolation of a calibration established over only several hundred years carries inherent uncertainty—a caveat Bednarik himself has stressed. However, in the absence of any independent means to determine the true cement-retreat rate over the multi-millennial timescale, the dated-inscription rate at the same cliff, in the same climate and on the same lithology remains the best available reference. Finally, we integrate two independent strands of relative-dating evidence (vanished animal forms, stylistic affinity) and obtain a comprehensive age range of approximately 5000–15,000 years BP. This points to the early-to-middle Holocene (8000–10,000 BP) as the most plausible core age.