About fires and paintings: Three stratigraphic insights on the history of a cave with prehispanic rock art

Abstract

How to connect rock art with the social practices developed around it along time? Trying to answer this question, in this paper we propose a method to link three different approaches that share the same stratigraphic principle: the excavation of the cave's floor sediments, the confection of a Harris' matrix of the painting process of one of the panels with rock art; and the study and further chemical analysis (SEM-EDS and Raman) of micro samples taken from the figures painted and the rock underlying. The potential of every single approach is multiplied by the interconnection given by the discovery of small layers of carbonization in the cave's walls as a result of several combustion events (hearths) done inside the cave. It must be highlighted, that this crucial information was obtained by using a novel methodology previously developed by the group of authors (Tascon et al., 2016). It allowed us to identify and chemically characterize superficial as well as underlying soot layers. Besides, the combination of this piece of information with other archeological evidences was vital to obtain a holistic view of the historical process developed at the caves of Oyola's archeological site, in the Argentinean northwest. Despite this is a case of study, the potentialities of this methodology can be spread out into other shelters with similar characteristics.