Instruments of petroglyphs documentation from the traceological point (historiographic review)

Purpose: Nowadays the rock art technology is one of challenging scientific problems. Recently there has been a lot of papers on the methodological aspect of the experimental and traceological investigations in rock art and more precisely petroglyphs. Quite a lot of detailed reviews and resumptive studies on various aspects and methods of ancient representations research are currently published. However, in the Russian-language literature we have a very few papers revealing the specifics of copying methods for traceological analysis of engravings, incised on rock surface. As shown in the papers concerned to methodological aspect in petroglyphs technological studies the analysis of traces on a rock face, requires consideration of the different characteristics, such as the topography of the treated areas and the features of their profile. Thus, to obtain reliable information about the petroglyphs technologies we need to attract the methods so-called «three-dimensional» or 3D-reconstruction. An important condition for the further traceological studies is the possibility to obtain the cross-sections of petroglyphs copies. That let us to identify different features of profiles of the traces forming rock art images. So then the aime of the paper is to caste light on the problems of petroglyphs traces documentation for the further technological researches. Results: Owing to summarizing of the information contained in recent papers the most fundamental fixing methods for petroglyphs technology analysis were mentioned in the paper. The algorithm of rock art documentation with several different techniques are represented here. Finally some of them, this techniques, are compared. Their favorable and unfavorable characteristics are considered in the paper. Conclusion: Contact and noncontact three-dimensional fixing techniques both of them can be used for effective rock art technologies studies. In spite of the fact that nowadays we have got some difficulties with noncontact 3D-reconstructive techniques, they need to be developed, the prospection let us see the possibility to obtain more information as a result of using more powerful equipment and software. The contact fixing methods have a few evident disadvantages but the contemporary conditions of this kind of rock art documentation give us a possibility to get very precise copies without tangible damage. Anyway informational technologies are in fast progress, but for the moment the fullest information about rock art techniques and technologies can be realized owing to the application of combined fixing methods.