MODERN TECHNOLOGY RECONSTRUCTS PROPERTIES OF OCHRE

Extract: Ochre, one of Earth's oldest naturally occurring materials, was often used as a vivid red paint in ancient rock art known as pictographs across the world. Despite its broad use throughout human history and a modern focus on how the artistic symbolism is interpreted, little research exists on the paint itself and how it was produced.

Now, scientists led by Brandi MacDonald at the University of Missouri are using archaeological science to understand how ochre paint was created by hunter-gatherers in North America to produce rock art located at Babine Lake in British Columbia. The study was published in Scientific Reports, a journal of Nature.

"Ochre is one of the only types of material that people have continually used for over 200,000 years, if not longer," said MacDonald, who specializes in ancient pigments. "Therefore, we have a deep history in the archeological record of humans selecting and engaging with this material, but few people study how it's actually made."

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An interesting study on ochre, unlike the majority of ochre on my finds which is believed to be directly sourced from iron rich natural finds, however I could be wrong about it not being manufactured, as i was wrong about what I believed to be birch tar, which turned out to be another human manufactured pigment.

I have a number of rocks that have ocher "paintings" on them. These were found where they would have been under water for a number of months a year and were exposed to our harsh Canadian winters but the ocher has remained bonded for 10,000 plus years. This is quite extraordinary and shouldn't be taken lightly. In the above article Brett mentioned, here is a significant quote "Today, engineers are spending a lot of money trying to determine how to produce highly thermo-stable paints for ceramic manufacturing or aerospace engineering without much known success, yet we've found that hunter-gatherers had already discovered a successful way to do this long ago." I guess it goes without saying that hominins, 200,000 years ago, were a lot smarter then we gave them credit for.

Ocher comes in many colors [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
The below pieces were enhanced with DStretch software [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I just found this article on ocher which states it has been used for over 300,000 years [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] . Ocher ranges in color from yellow to deep purple however red was by far the most used, "In addition to being highly visible over long distances by our species, red is also the color of blood, charging it with even more symbolic significance." "Some languages have only two words for color: red and not-red. A language may not have a word for green or blue, but there is always a word for red."

Yes that quote did intrigue me. "Today, engineers are spending a lot of money trying to determine how to produce highly thermo-stable paints for ceramic manufacturing or aerospace engineering without much known success, yet we've found that hunter-gatherers had already discovered a successful way to do this long ago."

The black pigment on my finds also has remarkable longevity, seriously I should manufacture it and sell it to the people who paint the Forth bridge.

I do have some vivid reds on my finds, but sparsely, one I can think of i should do a post on, shows really neat sauropod likeness as well as what I guess to be quinkana fortirostrum.

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Understanding how ocher was applied to rock is critical to dating pictographs. I can't believe there is so little research done on this. I found another article where they talk about the use of natural acorn oil or just water. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] "Patination darkens over time, so the darker the petroglyph, the older it is. But geologists have conflicting theories about what causes this varnish and what that process indicates about its age. So there’s no universally accepted date range on any of this stuff.”

Pictographs with yellow ocher must have used natural bonding agents as yellow ocher turns red when heated. "To complicate matters even more, when heated to at least 480 degrees Fahrenheit, yellow ochre’s crystal structure changes and the goethite can transform into hematite, or red ochre." [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Here are a few more portable rock art pieces I found, within a kilometer radius, that have had ocher applied. Too bad I don't have the fainest idea how it was really applied..
Side note: When water is applied to rocks with ocher "paintings" the ocher becomes much brighter. The ones shown below are dry as found.
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Thanks for that, interesting, BTW ive not seen that top one of yours before, one of the coolest ones ive seen from your site TBH, its got what looks like a wigwam on it with the chimney as well..... the other incised lines look like one of those multiplication charts.

8 mile long canvas of 12,600 year old rock art discovered in Amazon rainforest
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Over 100,000 paintings  and could also be much older than 12,600 years

This is not the best picture .
A close up of a yellow face.