Back to a Time Perspective: New Insights for the Study of Piedra Museo’s Ancient Rock Art, Patagonia, Argentina

Abstract

Piedra Museo´s rock art was long debated since the beginning of the twentiethcentury. Since the field studies conducted in 1988, petroglyphs and pictographs were systematically recorded and analyzed from a landscape archaeology viewpoint. This chapter reviews these previous results through a time perspective. The main objectives are building a rock art sequencethrough relative dating methods and relating it with the history of the human occupations in the locality. The sequence was defined through the analysis of superimpositions and preservation criteria. The position of buried painting vestiges and rock art panels respect to dated strata was also considered. Four episodes were defined; the first one is composed of red paintings, mainly handstencils, which can be traced back to the mid Holocene and, possibly, to the Pleistocene/Holocene transition. The second one includes a scarce number of white hand stencils and paint remains. The third one corresponds to engraving events whose maximum age is the end of the mid Holocene. The fourth painting episode includes diverse expressions of hand reproductions in different colors.