Anyone working with rock art in a professional capacity may apply to be a member of this Committee.

There are five categories of membership:

• Expert Members (must be ICOMOS members and must either have a PhD in archaeology or heritage studies and be able to demonstrate a clear professional focus upon rock art; or demonstrate more than ten years of professional level work with a specialisation in rock art)
• Associate Members (ICOMOS members, may have a focus on rock art, but have not yet attained the level of professional expertise required to be an expert member or may work in a cognate field that regularly services the needs of rock art specialists, such as conservation, photography, photogrammetry, dating, GIS, pigment analysis, etc.)
• Non-ICOMOS members (non-ICOMOS members) – we only accept non-ICOMOS members who otherwise meet the requirements to be an Expert Member
• Institutional members (industry, Universities, Museums, government agencies, NGOs etc.)
• Honorary members (proposed by Expert Members – typically longstanding members of CAR who have given exceptional service to the Committee and over a period of many years)

Members are admitted upon the approval of the Expert Members.

To apply, please send a CV and letter of motivation to: president@isc-car.com

No one knows exactly how many rock art sites there are in the world. Indeed, the very notion of “site” is ambiguous. All in all, we estimate that there are three hundred and fifty thousand to four hundred thousand rock art sites scattered, rather unequally, throughout the world. As to the total number of images, they must range in the tens of millions.

— Professor Jean Clottes (2002) Second President of CAR

Rock art reveals the human capacities of abstraction, synthesis and idealization. It describes economic and social activities, ideas, beliefs and practices and provides unique insight into the intellectual life and cultural patterns of humanity. Long before the invention of phonetic writing, rock art recorded the most ancient testimony of human imaginative and artistic creativity. It constitutes once of the most significant aspects of the common heritage of humanity.

— Professor Emmanuel Anati (2015) First President of CAR