Abstract

Rock art is the best known evidence of the Saharan fragile heritage. Thousands of engraved and painted artworks dot boulders and cliffs in open-air sites, as well as the rock walls of rockshelters and caves located in the main massifs. Since its pioneering discovery in the late 19th century, rock art captured the imagination of travellers and scholars, representing for a long time the main aim of research in the area. Chronology, meaning and connections between the different recognized artistic provinces are still to be fully understood. The central massifs, and in particular the "cultural province" encompassing Tadrart Acacus and Tassili n’Ajer, played and still play a key role in this scenario. Recent analytical and contextual analyses of rock art contexts seem to open new perspectives. Tadrart Acacus, for the richness and variability of artworks, for the huge archaeological data known, and for its proximity to other important areas with rock art (Tassili n’Ajjer, Algerian Tadrart and Messak massifs) is an ideal context to analyze the artworks in their environmental and social-cultural context, and to define connections between cultural local dynamics and wider regional perspectives.

Highlights

  • Saharan massifs are dotted by thousands of paintings and engravings; vanishing traces of humans that inhabited the region at least since the beginnings of the Holocene (Figure 1)

  • Arts 2013, 2 late 19th century, when the first exploration of the Great desert by western travellers started and rock art began to capture the imagination of the ‘Saharans’ and scholars, representing for a long time the main aim of research in the area

  • Tilizzaghen in Libya [12], or the South Oran in Algeria [13], they rapidly became the key area of the Saharan rock art

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Summary

Introduction

Saharan massifs are dotted by thousands of paintings and engravings; vanishing traces of humans that inhabited the region at least since the beginnings of the Holocene (Figure 1). The region is one of the warmest arid lands in the world, hard to cross and to live in, today almost completely uninhabited, but for a few resilient nomadic groups. To propose some suggestions stemming from a renewed territorial approach to the rock art sites of the Tadrart Acacus massif. This represents an essential framework for the further step of an integrated study of rock art (including a systematic classificatory, quantitative and semiotic reading), aiming at defining local dynamics to be compared in a wider regional perspective

Background
Aims and methods of the rock art study
Regional setting and palaeo-environment
Cultural and chronological frame
Rock art styles and chronology
Materials
Findings
General distribution of sites
Conclusion
Full Text
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