hi rick,
i agree that all aspects of indian art should be thought about, but also feel that there must be a historical benchmark found. as the art of body painting can only be an oral or stylistic transgression, the design taken from current (relatively) trends, it would be hard to use this in dating old weapons, past the 19thC.
my rangoli route is much the same, except that the rangoli designs do appear in old architecture. if they were painted using the style of the time, and we can narrow this time down to decades, as apposed the the 'centuries' normally associated with indian dating, then we can try and transpose this dating into similar styles on other aspects of art ie. weapon decoration.
its all a little loose but these are desperate times :-)
unless we can find a 300 year old body, preserved with its henna tattooing of course
