On the exact dating of tiger images in the Helan mountains and the "stag stone style" deer

Nowadays scientists can confidently divide petroglyphs by their style but only into big chronological periods. For example, in Siberia they are attributed to the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Scythian, Xiongnu or Ancient Turkic times. In China, Xu Cheng and Wei Zhong split Helan Mountains rock art into even longer time spans: “Phase 1 dating back to Pre-Spring and Autumn period and Warring States Period; Phase 2 dating from Qin and Han Dynasties to the Southern and Northern Dynasties; Phase 3 dating from Sui and Tang Dynasties to the Western Xia and Yuan Dynasties”. More exact dating of each individual petroglyph within these phases however meets great difficulties. For example, Xu Cheng and Wei Zhong compare images of tigers with their bodies decorated with spirals from Daxifenggou (Daxifogou) with the likely decorated picture of a deer from Helankou, both sites in Helan Mountains. The latter they compare with the images of deer from the so-called “stag-stones” (“deer-stones”) in Mongolia and Siberia. Stag-stones are attributed by Chinese archaeologists to the XIII-VIII centuries B.C. due to the comparison of weapons depicted on these steles, with real bronze daggers and battle axes, found in China. Thus the Chinese researchers conclude that the images of tigers “belong to Shang and Zhou Dynasties or pre-Shang and Zhou Dynasties”. Xu Cheng and Wei Zhong give tiger images an estimated time span of no less than six centuries (XIII - VIII B.C.), not to mention that the age of stag-stones is a disputable problem itself, hotly debated in Soviet and Russian literature for at least four or five decades. The author states that to obtain the date of an individual petroglyph with the traditional method of analogies one must compare it with another picture, but not with the real thing - a weapon, an animal, a cart or something else. Any other approach is methodically incorrect and may lead (it does not mean that it has already led) to serious chronological errors. Of course, one of the compared pictures should have a narrower, if not an exact date. As for the Helan Mountains tigers with their opened jaws, big claws, bulgy eyes and bodies decorated with stripes and spirals, they have close analogies on a bronze mirror, found in burial No 1612 of Guo state cemetery in Shangcunling. The majority of graves from this cemetery date back to the end of IX - beginning of VIII centuries B.C., and are by no means later, than the year of 655 B.C., when Guo was annexed by the Jin state. A similar scene, such as the one on the Shangcunling mirror, is engraved on the stag-stone No 15 from Ushkijn-Uver in Mongolia. Thus, the mirror gives an exact date for the Helan Mountains tigers and links them more tightly with Mongolian stag-stones.