Rock art, which includes petroglyphs (engravings) and pictographs (paintings), are enigmatic artifacts from the past: neither their reason for being nor their meaning is typically understood today. Rock paintings are difficult to place into archaeological contexts because they are not a part of the stratigraphic record of a site. Direct radiocarbon dating of the organic fraction of the paint itself, usually an inorganic pigment mixed with an organic binder, would ideally provide their age. We are currently using THM-GC-MS to determine the nature of the organic material present in samples from rock paintings from sites around the world. We seek to answer several questions about the paintings: Is there organic material present in the painting samples? If so, does the composition of that material differ significantly from that of organic material found on the unpainted rock background from the same site? Can the binder material be identified as something that might be culturally important (i.e., blood, plant extracts, or animal tissue)? Answers to these questions will also help us to better understand the plasma-chemical oxidation process that was developed specifically to prepare rock paintings for radiocarbon analysis by accelerator mass spectrometry. Ultimately, we are developing analytical methods that will provide archaeologists and rock art researchers with meaningful direct ages for these unique artifacts.