Perhaps take a look at my attempt to engage in these issues with respect to my work on the decorated animal humans of the Coso Range and the mostly abstract (but in the minority somewhat naturalistic/realistic imagery) of Newberry Cave in the eastern Mojave Desert. I can post copies of both of these publications for your consideration.

Several tribal groups in central India do carry forward the rock tradition, but it may not go beyond 2-3 Kya. Body decoration art is also found among the Negrito pygmy of the Andaman Islands. But,finding prehistoric analogy may be a difficult task.

It looks to me like you are on the right track, Alan. Ethnographic analogy is certainly useful and valid for generating working hypotheses regarding meaning in prehistoric or other visual manifestations of culture, but these hypotheses should be rigorously tested with all available evidence, including that provided by the disciplines you mentioned. In some academic traditions, the desire to provide single, rhetorically convincing "readings" of ancient images results in studies that look slick on the surface, but tend to ignore sound scientific practice, disgarding viable alternative hypotheses that haven't been conclusively refuted. These should remain on the discussion table until there are good reasons to remove them.

Alan, I agree with David Charles. The trance dance school of 'cognitive' archaeology should serve as a warning of the risk of unstated paradigms, circular arguments, and the difficulty of testing such models.

Interpreting art in terms of other media, such as myth, ritual, religion, economy, or ecology, tends to single out one cultural motif, and tends to relegate media to illustrations of of one another. I have demonstrated by structuralist analysis that art has its own lexicon and 'grammar'.

Regarding your examples of apparently abstract 'signs' among semi-figurative characters, here is a link to my paper on semiotics in rock art, with several examples worldwide:

Research Abstract signs reveal archetypal structure in culture

I have posted some of the other 600 examples of the identical structure in complex artworks, half of which are rock art panels, at;

https://mindprintart.wordpress.com/

I invite you to post five images of any coherent rock art panels containing from 11 to about 30 character, wherein I would demonstrate the same five-layered structure, subconscious to the artist and the culture. The inevitable conclusion is that art, and probably other media, in all cultures and ages, re-expresses the core content of perception. Thus art analysis, and human sciences, should take cognisance of the constraints of archetype on culture and nature, and the over-determining role of nature in culture, and thus in meaning itself.

I gave a paper in Sacramento (2011 SAA) regarding this very subject and criticized archaeologists' attempt at interpreting prehistoric "rock art" without knowledge of the history of the people that made it, without knowing the language per se, without knowing what the symbols meant, and without any idea about how those symbols relate to any kind of cosmology, myth and ritual.

I looked at Navajo "rock art" (identified here in NW New Mexico) and how the symbols used were readily identified as Navajo, and how these same symbols were still being used in Navajo Ceremonial masks; however, even with that knowledge base, there were still some things that Navajo hatathli (chanters) could not tell me simply because they don't practice putting symbols on rock anymore--at least routinely.

It is a trap to think we can work out systematically what the symbols might mean other than what is in the researcher's head. We might remember that without the Rosetta Stone found by Napoleon's army, Egyptian heiroglyphics would to this day remain undecipherable.

Peter, thank you for your challenges to prehistoric rock art interpretation. However the same challenges equally apply to historic art and modern art, even where the culture is well studied and remains alive, even to interviews of known artists. Or ritualists, or mythographers, or architects.

Extensive knowledge of the history of the artist’s “people, language, symbols, cosmology, myth and ritual”, reveals only some conscious and rationalised interpretations, known in art history as “conceptualisation”.

Regarding Navajo ceremonial masks, in your example, “there were still some things that Navajo hatathli (chanters) could not tell me”, but that is not “simply because they don't practice putting symbols on rock anymore.” They could never completely explain the content of their media, and only ever by rationalisations. I agree that “It is a trap to think we can work out systematically what the symbols might mean.” But that trap applies to all symbols. The problem is one of meaning itself, or semiotics. I have explored semiotics and rock art in a short paper (Furter, E. 2017. Recurrent characters in art reveal objective meaning. Expression 16, Atelier Etno), at this link;

https://www.academia.edu/34021150/EXPRESSION_quarterly_e-journal_of_atelier_in_cooperation_with_uispp-cisenp._international_scientific_commission_on_the_intellectual_and_spiritual_expressions_of_non-literate_peoples_THE_MESSAGE_BEHIND_THE_IMAGE

The only ‘Rosetta Stone’ to meaning itself, is using analogous expressions of culture to find patterns in perception, and thus in nature, and to infer the structure of archetype. And to recognise the limitations of language and of conscious logic, since it is also a cultural medium. Escaping relativism is particularly difficult in cultural media involving crafts, where the core content and the styling serve various functions. I propose to isolate core content. from styling

I have posted a slightly updated version of the above semiotics paper on Researchgate;

Article Recurrent features in art reveal archetypal meanings

Thanks, Edmond for your thoughtful response. I did not mean to say that Navajo Medicine men or Hatathli did not understand the prehistoric rock art only “because they don't practice putting symbols on rock anymore.” They do, for the most part. What I found out is that some of that knowlege is lost. They recognized the symbols of course, but could not tell me why there were. for example, 7 symbols for "Born for Water" and 6 for "Monster Slayer."

I believe that context matters, and in the context of their lives 300 years ago, the symbols still maintained their meaning but lost the context of putting those symbols on the rock in the first place. Was it to sanctify the area of the ceremony? Was it the number of times they have done the ceremonies at that place?; was it the number of times they said the lengthy prayers associated with the Night Way Chant as another example, etc.? I tried answering those questions but failed to find out.

Without knowing the context I think our job as scientists is made that much more difficult. Thankfully, I have living examples and participants who know Navajo beliefs and practices.

Peter's examples are quite telling, and I agree with his position that modern populations can retain variable knowledge of iconography, but the contexts certainly will be different from those of their original creation. I'm not very confident that untethered analogies between the Pecos area rock art & possible formal similarities to Huichol or Nahua imagery is likely to provide the emic context of such rock art. Aboriginal Australian rock art may be the best example of locational and functional use of rock art where modern knowledge can help inform us about the use of such "art". The geomorphic stability of much of desert Australia makes the Dreamtime "stories" stand out as scientific landscape knowledge that is valid in many regards to codify environmental knowledge into the modern era. The association of significant amounts of rock art with waterholes (also associated with oral traditions & "rituals" that codify and provide mnemonics for recalling and transmitting that knowledge generationally about the dynamics of such critical resource locations) emphasizes this functional & landscape-based understanding that uses rock images to mark culturally important & resource-related locations. I think I may have mentioned Jennifer Galindo's hard to find MA thesis out of the Univ of Nebraska where she did ethnoarchaeology for ~ 1 year in N Australian among a group of Aboriginal people who no longer refreshed or made new rock art, but used the same/similar images in bark art for the commercial market. So they still knew what the images represented in a number of cultural senses they could discuss with outsiders. They also still knew the physical boundaries of clan territories. Jennifer mapped those territories and the locations of all rock art she could encounter. She found no association between animal motifs or style (red, white, x-ray, stripes, dots, etc) and the physical or cultural landscape (except that fish motifs more proximate to watercourse locations). What did pattern, were anthropomorphic figures with clan territories. While games is everywhere, clan images identified the stewards of each areas if you were unaware of who you needed to contact in order to request permission to exploit any resources in those locations. I'm sure I've also previously mentioned in some of Alan's other RG questions about rock art, the example I had from Hopi elders looking at Ancestral Pueblo petroglyphs on a CRM project in southern Utah. The elders and village representatives were looking for clan symbols, that would help them track the migrations of particular clans across the US Southwest until they coalesced at the Hopi Mesas. This is archaeologically a very accurate view of past Puebloan mobility of agricultural (and not fully sedentary) populations, and shows not "myth", but an accurate historical approach to the Hopi views of their past ancestral migrations and the archaeological record. Additionally, some images were inferred to likely represent maps or landscape features, although the Hopi informants were careful to point out that the context of those images could not be readily interpreted now, at a point so distant from when those locations were possibly identified within a cultural geography (shades of La Van Martineau).

Peter, craft practitioners are unreliable witnesses. Artists do not, and need not, know what they are doing. Ditto for mythographers, ritualists, emblemists, iconographers, healers, etc. Craft is not 'knowledge' and is never lost.

Contexts change, meanings do not. But nothing conscious could last 300 years. Only subconscious re-expression from archetypal inspiration could.

Navajo, or any San, or any 'culture' is never a special case.

Frazer was right to interpret fragments of myth in terms of foreign unknown myths. But he did not go far enough to see the origin and sustenance in archetype. Consider studying culture itself, instead of one of the supposed 'cultures'.

I probably already responded to the question of ethnography, or rather 'interpreting' media works in terms of works in another medium. This is relevant only in the 'real' or conscious terms of the artist and likely clients, but meaningless to science. The 'unreal' or consciously unrecognised expressions of archetypal structure appear in all media, thus there will be many parallels. And very few features 'cited' or borrowed via other media. Thus ethnography and art correspondences should be studied in concert with other media, and 'other' cultures, to reveal the core content and structure of behaviour, and thus answer the core question of Who and what is human.

Avoid correspondence 'theories' which are not theories at all. Avoid practicing a craft in science. Study what crafts and media are.