Yes, I have worked with Marvin Rowe and even published some papers with him. I have also collected rock art samples for dating by him. He is a fun person in the field. I just saw him back in April at the Society of American Archeologists Conference in Atlanta. Marvin actually got into dating by working on methods for dating meteorites to determine the age of the solar system.
Here is the short version of how rock art is dated. In dating rock art, the basic approach is to date the organic binder used in the rock art pigment. In the case of rock art done with charcoal, the charcoal be used for dating. With either type of sample, the pigment is washed with acid to remove inorganic carbon from either the pigment or the rock surface that contaminates the sample. Then the cleaned up sample is "burned" in an argon plasma flame and the organic carbon from the organic material is deposited and collected. It is this organic carbon that is then sent off for AMS dating.
Allan
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