CODE OF ETHICS

Rock art is vulnerable: PROTECT it ! But most importantly, rock art is the legacy of ancient civilisations and many or perhaps all rock art sites are religious sites and valuable for those civilisations and their ancestors: RESPECT the rock art, the rock and its environment ! Therefore I especially ask tourists to obey the following code of ethics when visiting an archaeological site, with or without rock art.

That such a code of ethics is truly necessary is demonstrated by (too !) many instances of damaged and vandalized rock art sites. Unfortunately the photos to the right show only a fraction of vandalized rock art panels in the Desert Andes. The first photo (Fig. 0-2-1) shows one (Panel Da-056) of the literally hundreds of vandalized and/or damaged stones at Toro Muerto in the south of Peru. The second photo (Fig. 0-2-2) shows panels 019 and 020 at Alto de la Guitarra in northern Peru that are indelibly vandalized by Spanish graffiti and texts. Bearing in mind that in order to reach these stones one has to walk through rugged desert landscape, crossing a watershed at about 850 m; a single way trip of at least three hours ! I cannot imagine what idiots have planned to bring paint to this enchanting landscape in order to destroy the legacy of ancient Andean civilizations (perhaps even their own). Figures 3a and 3b show boulder MIS-010 at Miculla, a large rock art site in the extreme south of Peru. Fig. 0-2-3a is the photo, taken by Rainer Hostnig in January 2007, while almost two years later I took a photo (Fig. 0-2-3b) of the same boulder. It clearly proves that a large part of the boulder is now missing. The missing part shows (se Fig. 0-2-3a) a row of petroglyphs of suris (a suri or ñandu is the Andean ostrich). It most likely has been broken off in order to steal and trade rock art. A shame !!

Only take photographs; only leave your footsteps. *** This means that every visitor to any site should take home all the litter that he or she produced during their visit to the site. It is a shame to see how many empty plastic water bottles are scattered throughout a large and relatively much visited rock art site like Toro Muerto. I myself only recorded rock art in the study area through naked eye observations and by making as many photographs as possible, and - at home - by using several computer programs to enhance the photos of the images. Most of the photographs in my web pages have slightly been enhanced (contrast and so on). However, if photographs in my web pages have been seriously enhanced, this will be clearly stated in the caption or text.

NEVER chalk or enhance petroglyphs by touching the rock surface in any possible way. Unfortunately, chalking and scratching of petroglyphs in order to enhance the images still occurs. Several images at Rosario in the extreme north of Chile have been scratched (possibly with a metal object), probably to make them ‘better visible’. The work about the petroglyphs of Pitis and Cantas in the Majes Valley of Peru by archaeologist Paúl Jofrey Álvarez Zeballos (published in 2009 on the internet: http://www.arqueologiadelperu.com.ar/majes/CANTAS.html) clearly shows that several images have been enhanced by chalking (especially Fig. 8 in the Cantas section). Paúl Álvarez even writes: TODAS ESTAS IMÁGENES SE ENCUENTRAN SEMI-BORRADAS Y PARA RESALTAR SU IMAGEN SE LAS REPASO CON TIZA ALCALINA O BÁSICA. Such damaging practices must be strongly disapproved of !