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Archaeologists have discovered one of the largest assemblages of Ice Age rock art ever recorded in the Iberian Mediterranean, shedding new light on population sizes and regional artistic expression during the Paleolithic. The 2019 find, made at the tourist attraction Cova de la Font Major in Catalonia, was described in the journal Antiquity this month.
Although more than half of the Paleolithic rock art recorded in Europe is in the Iberian Peninsula, it was long believed to be rare in the north-eastern part of the region. Comprising 280 figurative and nonfigurative rock engravings, the discovery at Cova de la Font Major has upended this assumption, suggesting not only a larger population than previously thought, but one with its own artistic traditions.
As attested to by the numerous engravings and graffiti on its walls, have been visiting the Cova de la Font Major for at least 900 years. Although its main entrance collapsed at some point during the Roman period (2nd–5th centuries CE), an inscription dated 1199 indicates an entry in the second millennium CE, perhaps through a fissure or other access point.
In 1853, the Cova de la Font Major was entered through a private well, but only sporadic visits to it are recorded until 1956, when it was explored and surveyed by members of the Centre Excursionista Pirinenc. In 1957 the town council of Espluga de Francolí cleared the entrance to provide access to visitors, and in 1993 the cave was converted to a museum.
In 2011, researchers confirmed that part of the entrance, destroyed in 1957, had survived, leading to the inclusion of the site in a 2018 research project. The Ice Age engravings were discovered during the project’s excavation campaign the following year, when one of the authors noticed that among the various graffiti on the cave walls some looked Paleolithic.
“For more than six decades, thousands of visitors passed directly in front of the engraved surfaces, and in some cases inscribed names and dates over them, without the Paleolithic origin of the figures being recognized,” writes research co-author Josep Maria Vergès from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA).
Located in series of small galleries within the cave, the engravings consist of depictions of various animals as well as groupings of abstract marks, including a particularly distinctive composition, comprising hundreds of loop-shaped incisions. Moreover, while uneven conglomerate rock like that at Cova de la Font Major is theoretically unsuitable for cave art, here the artists incorporated its irregularities into their compositions, using junctures of two different kinds of rock as ground lines for figures, for example, or turning a fissure into a water surface, as in one rendering of drinking deer.
“The Mediterranean art of western Europe is now enriched by a new body of rock art,” states Vergès, “which allows us to characterize in greater depth a Mediterranean graphic tradition with an identity of its own.”