Many rock coatings have been misunderstood by geographers and geologists alike for over a century, this is the first book that explains the variety of rock coatings found at the earth surface. For the achaeologist, it explains the variety of patination types found at the earth surface and the book also provides the first marriage of the stone conservation, archaeological, and earth science literature. In the last two hundred years there have been over 2000 papers written on fourteen general types of rock coatings by scholars from over a dozen disciplines including analytical chemistry, archaeology, botany, conservation of stone monuments, climatology, engineering, hydrology, geochemistry, geomorphology, landscape architecture, microbiology, mineralogy, pedology, oceanography, remote sensing, tectonics, and weathering. Yet, Rock Coatings provides the first synthesis of this interdisciplinary field. Rock Coatings is subdivided into three sections: firstly the introductory, the second section details the different types of rock coatings and the final section synthesizes the material and presents a general model to interpret the distribution of rock coatings found at the earth's surface.