Juan F. Ruiz

• Ph.D.
• Professor at University of Castilla-La Mancha

Resumen de la publicación Aproximación al Dolmen de Soto desde una perspectiva divulgativa que pretende acercar a la ciudadanía el conocimiento científico de las investigaciones sobre el conjunto megalítico. El dolmen de Soto es uno de los mayores monumentos megalíticos de Europa. Su arquitectura es el resultado de las transformaciones de un centro...

By developing new recording methodologies, current rock art studies generate a large amount of graphic information about sites (tracings, photographs, three-dimensional reproductions) providing visibility of this fragile and little-known heritage, whose accessibility is often difficult or impossible for the general public. In addition, many rock ar...

Highlights: This study proposes the practical utility of an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) experience for the dissemination and study of Palaeolithic Rock Art. Thanks to a series of multidisciplinary studies, a virtual reconstruction of the archaeological context of an area with rock art has been achieved. The Palaeolithic lighting systems document...

The rock art assemblage in the Parisian basin is well-known for its extensive number of engraved sites that reflects a long-duration tradition spanning from Upper Paleolithic to modern times. By contrast, only a handful of rock art sites with rock paintings are currently known in the area. In this paper we present the results of the first comprehen...

Atxurra cave has a decorated assemblage composed of more than a hundred engraved animal depictions. All of them are located in deep parts of the cave and most of them are hidden in raised areas, away from the main path. The main sector is the “Ledge of the Horses”, located at 330 m from the entrance of the cave. It is a space of 12 m long and 1.5 m...

In this work, some micro-samples belonging to the open-air rock art site of Cueva de la Vieja (Alpera, Albacete, Spain) were analysed. These samples were collected after and before a desalination treatment was carried out, with the aim of removing a whitish layer of concretion that affected the painted panel. The diagnostic study was performed to s...

In this work, some micro-samples belonging to the open-air rock art site of Cueva de la Vieja (Alpera, Albacete, Spain) were analysed. These samples were collected after and before a desalination treatment carried out with the aim of removing a whitish layer of concretion that affected the painted panel. The diagnostic study was performed to study...

An important axis of our research in southern Burgundy lies in the question of the existence of Paleolithic cave art in the region. In recent years, we have explored the Agneux I & II caves in Rully and examined several painted and engraved panels there. Using several contemporary methods, which include radiocarbon dating, chemical analysis by Rama...

Rock art paintings are notoriously difficult to date numerically. Recently, luminescence dating has been shown to provide reliable rock surface burial ages in various archaeological settings. Here, we use the cross‐cutting relationship between a fallen rock and two paintings of the Iberian Levantine (older) and Schematic (younger) styles to constra...

Abstract for an oral presentation held at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Hugo Obermaier Society for Quaternary Research and Archaeology of the Stone Age in Berlin (april 19th-23rd 2022) - State of the Art.

In this paper we study several panels with incised engravings, which have been discovered in recent years, from two shelters in the area of the River Martín (Teruel), Cañada de Marco and Los Borriquitos. They are of great scientific interest for several reasons. Firstly, because they represent an expansion of the Late Upper Palaeolithic engraving f...

RESUMEN La creación de un glosario de términos en el que se utiliza la imagen como apoyo y recurso docente no es nueva. Sin embargo, lo que hace realmente innovador a este proyecto es el alto grado de transversalidad que permiten los estudios de Humanidades a la hora de emplear una metodología fundamentada en la interdisciplinariedad. Los criterios...

En enero de 2021 se constituyó el Comité Científico Nacional de Arte Rupestre de ICOMOS-España (CCNAR ICOMOS-España) como un grupo de miembros expertos en estas manifestaciones culturales con el objeto de dinamizar una reflexión rigurosa sobre la gestión de estos bienes culturales desde los principios emanados de las cartas y convenios internaciona...

In this work, an innovative non-destructive monitoring methodology based on the analysis over time of open-air rock art sites is presented. This approach is based on the combination of in situ spectroscopic and chemometric studies to diagnose and monitor the state of conservation of rock art sites. Data acquired over a period of time by non-invasiv...

An international group of archaeologists specializing in cave art explain the difficulties they faced to publish their response to another paper, previously published in Science (Hoffmann et al. 2018), reporting a Neanderthal origin of some Spanish cave paintings according to Uranium-thorium method. In their reply, they underlined the different sou...

Visibility has been the subject of study in Palaeolithic rock art research ever since the discovery of Altamira Cave in 1879. Nevertheless, until now, the different approaches have been based on subjective assessments, due to computational limitations for a more objective methodology. Nowadays, cutting-edge technologies such as GIS allow us to addr...

Resumen. La omnipresencia de lo tecnológico en las sociedades contemporáneas encuentra su correlato también en el estudio del arte rupestre. Durante las dos últimas décadas hemos vivido la irrupción de multitud de tecnologías que han transformado irremisiblemente la aproximación de los investigadores a este objeto de estudio. En esta comunicación s...

An international group of archaeologists specializing in cave art explain the diffi- culties they faced to publish their response to another paper, previously published in Science (Hoffmann et al. 2018), reporting a Neanderthal origin of some Spanish cave pain- tings according to Uranium-thorium method. In their reply, they underlined the diffe- re...

The discovery of Palaeolithic parietal art in the cave of Atxurra took place within an archaeological surveying project that has been carried out over the last decade in the eastern Cantabrian region. As a consequence of this project, the number of caves with parietal art known in this region has tripled. The case of Atxurra Cave is a remarkable co...

Rock-art recording has been significantly improved in recent years by new technologies. Nonetheless, accurate documentation of certain engravings is a challenge for these cutting-edge technologies, specially the extremely thin incised lines used in many Palaeolithic engraved motifs. In this paper, we propose a new methodology for recording these en...

The identification of technical traits derived from the analyses of photogrammetric 3D models can be used for archaeological objectives. In this paper, we are proposing a methodology for discrimination of parietal engravings based on 3D models build with photogrammetry software. Our case study are the caves of Agneux, two small caverns with an asto...

El dolmen de Soto es uno de los mayores monumentos megalíticos de Europa. Fue publicado por H. Obermaier en 1924 y casi cien años después, este volumen presenta la primera documentación gráfica sobre sus soportes, incluyendo análisis de pigmentos y dataciones del contexto arqueológico interno y externo del sepulcro. Su arquitectura es el resultado...

Vestiges of prehistoric paintings in the Dolmen of Soto (Trigueros, Huelva, Spain) have been studied by Raman microscopy and SEM/EDX techniques. The pigment used have been identified. The presence of amorphous carbon have been used to date these decorations using plasma oxidation technique to achieve radiocarbon data.

Este libro recoge las contribuciones del curso "Concebir las humanidades entre docentes, Secundaria y Universidad: una educación en diálogo", celebrado en la Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación y Humanidades de Cuenca a fines de 2017 con la colaboración del Seminario Permanente de Estudios Contemporáneos, el Centro de Estudios de Castilla-La Manch...

Since 2013 the projects “4D · arte rupestre” have been carried out in more than 20 sites along the eastern half of the Iberian Peninsula, in locations included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List since 1998. The purpose of these projects was the development of protocols for diagnosis and monitoring of rock art sites, using several cutting-edge technolo...

In this article we present the solution developed for an Archeological SDI including very high resolution geomatic respurces. The main study case is the Archaeological Park of Tolmo de Minateda (Hellín, Albacete). High resolution published geographical information includes orthoimages, digital surface models, point clouds and the topographic refe...

Upper Palaeolithic art is found across much of Europe as portable (mobiliary) art, pictographs or engravings in deep caves, or as engravings in open-air sites. European Upper Palaeolithic art was among the first prehistoric art to be discovered by researchers, and it remains among the oldest dated art in the world. Since the late 1800s, a range of...

Within the conservation and intervention programs that the Martín River Cultural Park has been carrying out in the different rock art coats of its territory, the work done in the shelter of the Cañada de Marco stands out. The exhaustive photogrammetric documentation has allowed to present a new guide for the visitor in which have been documented up...

This paper presents a synthesis of the chronological results obtained in the "Investigación cronoestratigráfica de los soportes y recubrimientos de las pinturas rupestres de la Sierra de la Pietat o Godall (Montsià, Tarragona)", performed during the project "Estudio cronoestratigráfico de los soportes del Arte Rupestre del Levante Español” (2008-20...

La documentación realizada en el Abric V d’Ermites (Ulldecona), en el curso del proyecto 4D VULL, ha permitido el descubrimiento de un número significativo de nuevas figuras que vienen a completar las descubier- tas en 1975, en lo que constituye un caso singular dentro del arte levantino por su temática centrada en la caza de caballos. Varios arque...

Download it in: http://www.cuadernosdearterupestre.es/arterupestre/libro4D.pdf

In situ micro-Raman spectroscopy (μ-RS) of rock art paintings in open-air rock shelters entails several difficulties: sunlight, wind, dust and crusts that mask Raman signals from the pigments and any other component of the paint recipe. These problems have been considered in the present work. Special attention has been devoted to the presence of cr...

An in situ study of post-Palaeolithic blackish pictographs found in an open air rock-shelter, Los Chaparros site (Albalate del Arzobispo, Teruel province, Spain), was carried out to identify the black pigments used. The composition of the pigments was analyzed by means of non-invasive instrumentation, such as portable Raman spectroscopy (RS) and a...

The composition of the materials present in prehistoric paintings discovered on the walls of the Abrigo Remacha rock shelter (Villaseca, Segovia, Spain) has been characterised by micro‐Raman spectroscopy. In addition, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X‐ray microanalysis have been used as auxiliary techniques. The results show that...

Significant paintings from the Tito Bustillo (Ribadesella, Asturias) and El Buxu (Cardes, Asturias) caves, renowned archaeological sites of the Cantabrian Palaeolithic cave art, were studied by micro-Raman spectroscopy. Auxiliary techniques like infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and scanning electronic micro...

This paper focuses on two unknown Levantine art anthropomorphs with antennae headdresses from Cova dels Rossegadors, and in the other figures with antennae headdresses of this rock art site. We raise the hypothesis that the antennae headdresses of these two pictographs were intentionally hidden. The concealment of peculiar features such as headdres...

A Prehistoric Mural in Spain Depicting Neurotropic Psilocybe Mushrooms? The Selva Pascuala mural, a work of post-Paleolithic rock art in Spain, contains fungoid figures herein hypothesized to depict neurotropic fungi, especially Psilocybe hispanica, a species that occurs in a neighboring region. This hypothesis is based on features of these figures...

Raman microscopy with other complementary microscopic techniques (SEM/EDX, in-situ optical microscopy, polarised light microscopy and infrared spectroscopy) have been used to examine the morphology and elemental composition of the surface of prehistoric painting panels at microscopic scale, to carry out petrographic analyses and to establish the mi...

The third painted panel of the Hoz de Vicente rock shelter (Minglanilla, Cuenca, Spain) contains a series of prehistoric pictographs which were studied by Raman microscopy. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (EDX) and petrographic polarised light microscopy were used as auxiliary techniques. The results obtain...

The so called rock-art �naturalistic fallacy� has leaded to many Iberian Peninsula Levantine Art researchers to consider that the hunting scenes depicted in this style were an accurate reflection of the hunter-gatherers way of living. On the contrary, the archaeological evidence is showing the significance of hunting until late Mid Holocene, even i...

An extensive micro-Raman spectroscopic study of prehistoric paintings found in open air rock shelters at the Sierra de las Cuerdas (Cuenca, Spain) was carried out. In situ optical microscopy, petrological polarized light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (EDX) were used as auxiliary techniques....

Oxalate accretions of whewellite (CaC2O4.H 2O) and weddellite (CaC2O4.(2+x)H2O, x ≤ 0.5) have been found by Raman microscopy on Post-Palaeolithic rock paintings from open-air rock shelters of Triassic sandstone in the Sierra de las Cuerdas (Cuenca, Spain). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of these accretions suggests that they could have been pro...

Selected pictographs from the prehistoric painting panel 2 of Cueva del Tío Modesto shelter in the Sierra de las Cuerdas (Henarejos, Cuenca, Spain) were studied by Raman microscopy in order to determine the chemical composition of the pigments used. Hematite (α-Fe2O3) was found as the main component. The hematite particle size of one motif is much...

Los primeros ejemplos de arte rupestre levantino en el municipio conquense de Villar del Humo se descubrieron en 1917. Peña del Escrito, Selva Pascuala o Marmalo han sido citados repetidamente desde entonces, pese a la ausencia durante décadas de proyectos de investigación. Pero el arte levantino de la zona no se acaba en estas cavidades, sino que...