Marcos García-Diez

Complutense University of Madrid | UCM · Department of Prehistory

Cave art is a cultural phenomenon that encompasses more than 40,000 years of continuous activity in the Paleolithic caves of southwestern Europe. However, research has not fully addressed the mechanisms by which such continuity was achieved and sustained for thousands of years. In order to explore these issues, it is necessary to understand how new...

On the occasion of the review of the portable art of Grotta Romanelli, a decorated stone with a feline figure was object of an interdisciplinary study. The analysis considered different approaches so to: characterise the stratigraphic setting of the finding, the rock support, look into the techniques used to decorate the stone, elaborate a graphic...

The stratigraphy and materials from a survey carried out in 1994 and 1995 in a rock-shelter in Tamajón (southwestern Iberian Central Range) are studied here. The Pleistocene deposits were generated by high-energy channeled fluvial flows and dense currents of debris flow and mud flow type. The recovered lithic industry, created mainly in low-quality...

La caracterización del final del ciclo gráfico paleolítico en el norte peninsular presenta importantes deficiencias debido a la ausencia de evidencias debidamente contextualizadas. Así, el análisis de piezas mobiliares procedentes de contextos estratigráficos sólidos constituye una valiosa herramienta para llenar este vacío. En este sentido, este t...

AMS radiocarbon dating has been widely applied in Palaeolithic art research and its value has been proven over the past three decades. Yet it still suffers from issues that need to be discussed and analysed to improve future sampling strategies and strengthen the interpretation of the results. This study presents new AMS dates for the parietal art...

Animal emblématique des Pyrénées, le bouquetin peuple ses deux versants depuis les temps les plus anciens. En s’adaptant à cet environnement, une forme typiquement pyrénéenne Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica apparaît, il y a plusieurs millénaires. Consommé pendant la Préhistoire, le bouquetin est devenu, au cours du Paléolithique récent, une figure incont...

Palaeolithic representations can be approached from different perspectives. Studying the creative processes, we can glimpse the decisions that the Palaeolithic artists made and the actions they carried out to materialize an idea. Additionally, the combined study of both graphic and functional actions performed on an object provides a comprehensive...

We present an AMS radiocarbon date from a bird image in a cave on the island of Hispaniola in the northern Caribbean. Borbón Cave No. 1 contains a key rock art assemblage that likely reflects a significant part of past native Taíno societies’ symbolic thought and beliefs. The grouping has already served to define one rock art style in the Antilles:...

It has been assumed that graphic behaviour, traditionally known as art, is a specific behaviour of Homo sapiens. Current archaeological information shows that there is evidence of such behaviour prior to the presence of H. sapiens in Asia, Africa, and Europe. The first evidence documented in Europe dates back to the transition between the Lower Pal...

Numerical chronology is one of the main sources of information by which one may contextualize prehistoric human activity more precisely. It is able to discriminate between different times of visits to caves and determine the period with which each form of evidence should be associated and the relationships between them. The application of conventio...

The Franco-Cantabrian group of cave art ranks among the best known examples of Paleolithic symbolic behaviour. For more than a century no decorated cave was reported beyond the Nalón valley in the center of Asturias, until the carvings and paintings from Cova Eirós were discovered. At more than 100 km from the Nalón, Eirós' art remains an isolated...

Our knowledge about Paleolithic art has been changing substantially and new discoveries and dates are modifying some traditionally accepted considerations. In this context, the geographic spread and the end of this graphic-artistic cycle are two of the main topics of the current scientific debate. The discovery and study of rock art in Cova Eirós,...

Rock art dating has been one of the major challenges since its discovery and recognition. The methods have evolved through the last century, beginning with the study of superpositions and style until to the application of numeric methods since the 1990s. The aim of this paper is to evaluate and publish an up-to-date database of all of the numerical...

p>The presence of rock and portable art on Sicily has been recognized since World War II. This record has been unanimously attributed to the Upper Palaeolithic in the published literature, based almost uniquely on stylistic reasoning. Here we present the first absolute dates in direct association with the Sicilian art record. These data provide new...

Engraving sites are rare in mainland and Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) where painted art dominates the prehistoric artistic record. Here we report two new engraving sites from the Tutuala region of Timor-Leste comprising mostly humanoid forms carved into speleothem columns in rock-shelters. Engraved face motifs have previously been reported from Len...

The comprehensive study of spaces decorated during the Palaeolithic is able to obtain information about visits to the sites and their uses. However, it is essential to determine the temporal relationship between the different forms of archaeological evidence and not assume their synchronicity with the parietal art. Therefore, numerical dates are ne...

The distribution of known Pleistocene painted rock art in Island South-east Asia is currently limited to islands on the northern dispersal route to Australia. Here we report the discovery of at least 16 hand stencil motifs in Lene Hara Cave, Timor-Leste; a site on the alternate southern arc route. Superimposition, preservation state, differing ‘can...

Filling the void: a new Palaeolithic cave art site at Danbolinzulo in the Basque Country - Blanca Ochoa, Marcos García-Diez, Irene Vigiola-Toña

Ekain cave (Deba, Gipuzkoa) has been researched for the last five decades and has been kept closed to the general public. This fact has allowed an exceptional preservation of the depictions. The re-study of rock art sites discovered during the 20th century and the improvement of the survey and recording methodologies are allowing significant advanc...

We present in this work the integral study of the portable art of Fariseu (Côa Valley). Eighty-five engraved pieces and four painted ones form the studied collection. The chronological attribution to the Late Dryas/ beginning of the Pre-boreal is perfectly assured by the stratigraphic origin of the pieces. The technical and stylistic attributes of...

Slimak et al. challenge the reliability of our oldest (>65,000 years) U-Th dates on carbonates associated with cave paintings in Spain. They cite a supposed lack of parietal art for the 25,000 years following this date, along with potential methodological issues relating to open-system behavior and corrections to detrital or source water 230Th.We s...

During the last ten years, new Palaeolithic rock art sites have been discovered and important reviews of already known sites have been carried out. We are now called to rethink and reframe this heritage in the light of the latest investigations. Two new visions are marking the new research perspectives: a) the “beyond its territory” approach and b)...

The timing and nature of the emergence of art in human evolution has been one of the more debated subjects in palaeoanthropology in the last few years, and one of the areas where archaeology has made impressive advances. Here, we discuss the first evidence of figurative art on portable materials in the north of Spain. After analysis of the stratigr...

Neandertal cave art It has been suggested that Neandertals, as well as modern humans, may have painted caves. Hoffmann et al. used uranium-thorium dating of carbonate crusts to show that cave paintings from three different sites in Spain must be older than 64,000 years. These paintings are the oldest dated cave paintings in the world. Importantly,...

Unusually for a Palaeolithic cave, the Grotta di Cala dei Genovesi on the island of Levanzo, off the west coast of Sicily, Italy, has yielded evidence of both parietal and mobiliary art. Developments in dating techniques since the excavations of the 1950s now allow the age of the mobiliary art— an engraved aurochs—to be determined. At the same time...

The objective of the paper is to determine convergences or divergences in the placement of cave art through the combined study of parietal art and the specific space in which it was executed. The proposed methodology is based on the definition of the concepts of graphic space, visibility, access and capacity. Through these, a series of variables ha...

The determination of the sex of the individuals who placed their hands on cave walls in order to leave the stenciled paintings of their hands, has been the subject of considerable debate in recent years. Many research projects have been carried out with varied results. This study has attempted to obtain new data through an experimental approach tha...

The Alto de la Huesera dolmen was excavated in 1948. In 2010 a new archaeological fieldwork started with the objective of determining the condition of the monument, subsequently restoring it. In these works the team located a sandstone stela in the burial mound and beside the corridor, datable to the Chalcolithic age. The engravings are five deep p...

L’étude des convergences et des divergences graphiques dans l’art Paléolithique est utilisée pour comprendre la culture, les territoires et les systèmes d’interaction des groupes humains. L’ensemble rupestre de la grotte de La Covaciella contient quinze représentations d’animaux et d’autres motifs linéaires, géométriques et des points. La présence...

U-series dating is a precise and accurate geochronological tool which is widely applied to date secondary CaCO3 formation, for example in speleothem based palaeoclimate research. It can also be employed to provide chronological constraints for archaeological sites which have a stratigraphic relationship with speleothem formations. We present in det...

In the course of the last decades, new cave art discoveries such as La Garma, Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc, Le Reseau Clastres in the Niaux Cave, Cosquer and Cussac have allowed researchers to advance in context and spatial studies related to the art. This has been possible because the decorated chambers were intact at the moment of the discovery and, soon a...

This paper concerns the dating of the Paleolithic rock art of the Fuente del Trucho cave. We used the U–Th method to date calcite crusts superimposed to the paintings. Whenever sub-samples of a single crust could be dated we obtained stratigraphically consistent results and the correction for detrital contamination is negligible. Our results are st...

The chronology of European Upper Palaeolithic cave art is poorly known. Three chronometric techniques are commonly applicable: AMS 14C, TL and U-Th, and in recent years the efficacy of each has been the subject of considerable debate. We review here the use of the U-Th technique to date the formation of calcites that can be shown to have stratigrap...

La Covaciella cave is one of the Cantabrian caves declared as World Heritage Site since 2008. The cavity (184 m length) shows rock paintings and other Magdalenian remains. The aim of this work is the preliminary characterization of the cave geomorphology and its surroundings, and the proposal of a preliminary model of evolution. For this purpose, p...

Landscapes and features of the everyday world were scarcely represented in Paleolithic art, especially those features associated with the human landscape (huts and campsites). On the contrary, other figurative motifs (especially animals) and signs, traditionally linked to the magic or religious conceptions of these hunter-gatherer societies, are th...

The Molí del Salt site. Site description, chronology and archeological context. (PDF)

Ethnographic huts. Ethnographic examples of dome-shaped dwellings in hunter-gatherer campsites. A. Apache Wickiup, Edward Curtis, 1903 by Library of Congress. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. B. Bushmen San. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. C. Hut Eastern Arrernte by Herbert Basedow—National Museum of Australia...

Technical analysis. Individualized description of the graphic units. (PDF)

Editorial Quaternary of the Western Pyrenean Region: Multidisciplinary Research The Quaternary Conferences on the Western Pyrenean Region Almost 25 years after the first Quaternary meeting hold in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country, Spain) and entitled "International Conference on the Environment and the Human Society in the western Pyrenees and th...

The hand stencils of European Paleolithic art tend to be considered of pre-Magdalenian age and scholars have generally assigned them to the Gravettian period. At El Castillo Cave, application of U-series dating to calcite accretions has established a minimum age of 37,290 years for underlying red hand stencils, implying execution in the earlier par...

At La Peña de Estebanvela, 43 portable art objects have been found in late Upper Palaeolithic levels. Most of the ensemble displays linear patterns forming complex signs. Three equids have also been identified. The decorative motifs at this site are presented and assessed in the context of the art of the last hunter-gatherer groups, demonstrating t...

Ahondar en los orígenes de nuestro comportamiento sexual no es sencillo. Desde el primer homínido hasta nosotros, el Homo sapiens, las actitudes sexuales han variado. Simplificando el proceso, se pasó de un comportamiento animal a otro propiamente humano, donde además de lo reproductivo entrarían en juego el erotismo, el placer, la belleza, el amor...

Portable objects with figura􀁩ve decora􀁩on found at sites in the Iberian Peninsula (Hornosde la Peña, Salitre, El Cas􀁩llo, Covalejos, Morín, Lumentxa, Antoliñako Koba, Les Mallaetesand El Parpalló) are presented and discussed. The stra􀁩graphic posi􀁩on of each object isassessed, characterizing and, in some cases, discussing the nature of the decora􀁩on...

The study of graphic convergences and divergences in Palaeolithic art is used to understand the culture, territories and interaction systems of human groups. The concept of graphic territory should be understood from a wide perspective. It represents a part of the symbolic territory and, at the same time, of the social territory. Therefore, graphic...

The last two decades have witnessed considerable advances in chronometric approaches to cave art, specifically with the application of new dating techniques (AMS 14C, U-series, Thermoluminescence). In this paper we assess all the currently available chronological information (numerical dates, stylistic comparisons between portable and cave art, the...

The rock art in Altamira Cave was the first ensemble of Palaeolithic parietal art to be identified scientifically (Sautuola, 1880). Due to the great thematic, technical and stylistic variety of the art in the cave, which constitutes one of the most complete Palaeolithic art ensembles, Altamira was listed as World Heritage by UNESCO in 1985. Uranium...

This paper presents a study of a pecked pebble from the Middle Paleolithic recovered more than 30 years ago in Axlor rockshelter in the Spanish Basque Country. At the time of the discovery, the piece was described as being deliberately modifi ed, but since then it has been either ignored or described only as problematic evidence of Neanderthal symb...

The present work provides an overall interpretation of the La Peña de Estebanvela site, on the framework of the Magdalenian in central Spain. Studies of the geoarchaeological, chronostratigraphic, taxonomic, zooarchaeological, taphonomic, anthracological and phytological records allow the chronology of the site’s occupations to be determined. Somet...

Paleolithic cave art is an exceptional archive of early human symbolic behavior, but because obtaining reliable dates has been difficult, its chronology is still poorly understood after more than a century of study. We present uranium-series disequilibrium dates of calcite deposits overlying or underlying art found in three caves, including the UNE...

The rock art in Altamira Cave was the first ensemble of Palaeolithic parietal art to be identified scientifically (Sautuola, 1880). Due to the great thematic, technical and stylistic variety of the art in the cave, which constitutes one of the most complete Palaeolithic art ensembles, Altamira was listed as World Heritage by UNESCO in 1985. Uranium...