Rock art in the stone age of Gobustan: an archaeologist’s view

Gobustan is home to a large group of archaeological sites and many thousands of rock images dating from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Middle Ages. Due to its extraordinary scientific and artistic significance, the Gobustan complex is included in the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List. This paper focuses on rock images dating back to the Stone Age. An attempt is made to systematize petroglyphs, taking into account their types, artistic styles, techniques of their creation, and themes of the images. The author considers relative dating and correlation of the distinguished styles with Gobustan sites of various stages of the Stone Age. Based on the analysis, style 1 of the region’s petroglyphs is dated from the first half of the Upper Palaeolithic (no later than 25–24 kya). Style 2 is synchronized with Mesolithic sites, and styles 3a and 3b are dated, with a certain degree of conditionality, from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic.