Replicating Cultural Landscapes: Interpreting Rock-art in the Valcamonica, Lombardy, Italy

Abstract

The Valcamonica in the alpine region of Lombardy, northern Italy, can boast one of Europe's largest concentrations of rock-art. The art dates back as far as the Upper Palaeolithic, but the bulk of it is set firmly within the Bronze and Iron Ages and includes engraved depictions of warrior combat, hunting and herding. There are also village scenes, which include rectilinear field systems and free-standing, timber-framed buildings, mainly dating to the Iron Age and usually superimposed over earlier hunting and combat scenes.Fieldwork in this area by the author has revealed a recurring theme whereby depictions of buildings (and other figures associated with settlement) are located close to natural, glacially-eroded rock pools and linear gullies or glacial meltwater channels; is this relationship purely coincidental? Limited archaeological evidence suggests that farmsteads and settlement would once have stood close to a watercourse but away from the floodplain, safely located on valley plateaus and glacially-constructed moraines. Is the 'artist' attempting to replicate the village and the surrounding landscape using the natural topography of the rock panel?This paper discusses a series of engraved images here presumed to represent dwellings, and considers a possible link between panel topography and the distribution of Iron Age dwellings in relation to actual topography and watercourses within an alpine landscape. A number of panels have been selected that characterise this artistic grammar and suggest that there is a unique and recurring relationship between engraved village scenes and certain natural elements of the panel.