Rock paintings in the Spanish Levant

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Rock art of the Mediterranean on the Iberian Peninsula
UNESCO world heritage UNESCO World Heritage Emblem

Indalo symbol.svg
Indalo symbol
National territory: SpainSpain Spain
Type: Culture
Criteria : iii
Reference No .: 874
UNESCO region : Europe and North America
History of enrollment
Enrollment: 1998  (session 22)

A large area in the hinterland of the Spanish east coast is known for prehistoric rock paintings in the Spanish Levant (also: Levante art ), which contains several thousand exposed rock paintings from the Neolithic Age . A total of 727 sites were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1998 .

location

Levantine rock art area.

The World Heritage Site contains several rock paintings, spread over the area from the Pyrenees to the province of Granada . The area includes Andalusia , Aragon , Castile-La Mancha , Catalonia , Murcia and the Valencian Community . The densest find region covers an area of ​​around 200 × 80 kilometers near Valencia .

The paintings are mostly found on exposed rock surfaces, less often under demolitions . They can be placed at eye level or very high. Various organizations support the preservation of the paintings. The municipality of Villar del Humo has established a cultural park.

discovery

The first rock carvings were discovered in Teruel in 1903 . The historian Juan Cabre was the first to research the paintings and assign them to the Neolithic . He based this knowledge on the fact that no fauna from the Ice Age is depicted. Antonio Beltrán placed the beginnings in the Epipalaeolithic or the Mesolithic Age , but also located most of the images in the Neolithic. Due to stylistic parallels with ornate clay pots, they began at the latest with the cardial or imprint culture in the first half of the 6th millennium BC. It has been proven that the end is (with a few exceptions) in the end Neolithic , in the time horizon of the Spanish bell-cup culture .

The dating of the images is based on stylistic similarities in many of the sites, because the methods of determination, such as radiocarbon dating (C-14 method), can easily lead to incorrect results due to contamination of the material, as the rock surfaces are contaminated with debris from different times.

Motifs

The paintings mainly depict people, which would be unusual for the Paleolithic. When animals appear in combination with humans, humans run towards them. Also, people in various activities (eg. As hunting with bows and bow , fighting or agricultural tasks) are a typical motif. Hunting scenes with recurve bows are the first evidence of the existence of this type of bow as early as the early Neolithic .

Colours

The paintings are usually one- or two-tone, including some that show black, red, yellow, and brown tones. Vegetable dyes as well as charcoal, liquids and body excretions, mineral compounds such as hematite, clay and oxide of manganese, were mixed with an organic binder such as resin or fat as colors. Often the silhouettes are marked, scratched or scraped in order to produce cuts and thus represent an outline more realistically.

List of protected sites

The UNESCO list includes 727 sites with Neolithic rock paintings in eastern Spain. Protected sites are located in the provinces of the following six regions:

literature

  • L. Dams: Les peintures rupestres du Levant Espagnol. Editions Picard, Paris 1984, ISBN 2-7084-0109-2 .
  • M.-S. Hernández Pérez, P. Ferrer Marset, E. Catalá Ferrer: Arte rupestre en Alicante. Center d'Estudis Contestans, Alicante 1988, ISBN 84-404-2468-X .

Individual evidence

  1. L. Dams: Les peintures rupestres du Levant Espagnol. Editions Picard, Paris 1984.
  2. ^ Levantine Art of Teruel. World Heritage. In: caiaragon.com , (English).
  3. Rock art of the Spanish Levant (1982 English edition)
  4. Leif Steguweit: Evidence for recurve bows in the European Neolithic. In: Volker Alles (Ed.): Reflexbogen. History and manufacture . Angelika Hörnig, Ludwigshafen 2009, ISBN 978-3-938921-12-8 , pp. 10-25.
  5. List of UNESCO