We developed a plasma-chemical technique to remove carbon from rock paintings. This extraction is followed by accelerator mass spectrometric analysis of the 14C to yield direct estimates of the ages of rock paintings. We have demonstrated use of the technique on charcoal as well as iron manganese pigmented paintings. Unfortunately, there are no rock paintings made with inorganic pigments that have accurately known ages. That means there are no primary standards for checking the accuracy and validity of our technique on this type of samples. To compensate for this, known age samples (charcoal and Third International Radiocarbon Intercomparison wood) were dated: these support the general validity of the technique. Also supporting the technique, the dates we obtained on numerous rock paintings agree in general with the age ranges expected based on archaeological inference. Real verification awaits confirmation by an independent technique. Future work will concentrate on the removal of background organic contamination in the basal rock and the mineral accretions associated with rock paintings. Overcoming that problem will remove an impediment to our extraction technique routinely giving accurate and reliable ages.