Palaeolithic creation and later visits of symbolic spaces: radiocarbon AMS dating and cave art in the Sala de las Pintur
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(2020) 12:240
ORIGINAL PAPER
Palaeolithic creation and later visits of symbolic spaces: radiocarbon AMS dating and cave art in the Sala de las Pinturas in Ojo Guareña (Burgos, Spain) Ana Isabel Ortega-Martínez 1
&
Miguel Ángel Martín-Merino 2 & Marcos García-Diez 3
Received: 4 June 2020 / Accepted: 11 September 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract 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 necessary. 14C-AMS dates for the art and other evidence in the Sala de las Pinturas in Ojo Guareña Cave have documented discontinuous human visits to the site from ~ 13,000 to ~ 1000 cal BP, in the course of at least five phases. This new information implies the observation and probably the use of the Palaeolithic art by farming communities after its creation by hunter-gatherers. The fact that decorated caves were used repeatedly adds a new dimension to the study of Palaeolithic art, which may have been reused in a time after it was produced, and underscores the need to date archaeological events to understand the degree of synchronicity and/or diachronicity of the human actions. Keywords Rock art . Symbolic behaviour . Upper Palaeolithic . Neolithic . Chalcolithic . Bronze Age . Middle Ages
Introduction The study of ensembles with motifs in a Palaeolithic style is currently undergoing a transformation. The reappraisal of longaccepted conceptions and the opening of new avenues of research are being facilitated by such developments as applications for documentation and recording (Fritz and Tosello 2007; Domingo and Lerma 2013) that allow observations that until now had been limited; new dates (Pike et al. 2012; Aubert et al. 2018; Hoffmann et al. 2018) that challenge, confirm and/or * Marcos García-Diez [email protected] Ana Isabel Ortega-Martínez [email protected] Miguel Ángel Martín-Merino [email protected] 1
Atapuerca Foundation and National Research Center for Human Evolution (FA-CENIEH), Paseo Sierra de Atapuerca s/n, 09002 Burgos, Spain
2
Grupo Espeleológico Edelweiss, Diputación Provincial de Burgos, Burgos, Spain
3
Department of Prehistory, Ancient History and Archaeology, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
nuance the models of evolution of the art; discoveries (Huyge et al. 2011; Aubert et al. 2018; Ruiz et al. 2019) that alter the known distribution of sites; inter-disciplinary approaches linked to cognitive aspects (Mellet et al. 2019) and studies of graphic territories (Sauvet et al. 2008; García-Diez et al. 2016; Petrognani and Robert 2017; Ochoa et al. 2020) to understand population mobility and networks. One of the topics being researched is that of visits and uses of symbolic spaces with cave art, including the routes follow
