Unraveling rock art palimpsests through superimpositions: The definition of painting episodes in Los Toldos (southern Patagonia) as a baseline for chronology

Abstract

This paper aims to link the production of rock paintings in Los Toldos (Argentina) to the human use of the locality in the context of the long term process of the peopling of Patagonia. The study is centered in the construction of a rock art painting sequence from the analysis of superimpositions in Cueva 2 and Cueva 3 sites. Rock art panels were considered as cumulative palimpsests and analyzed through the use of a Harris matrix. Eight painting episodes could be distinguished in Cueva 2, which were related to five painting episodes detected in Cueva 3. The temporal relationships of the different painting episodes respect to a series of natural imprints in the rock supports provided elements for the hypothetical estimation of a coarse grained temporal framework. The first painting episode is underrepresented due to its state of preservation and position in the base of the sequence. Together with the second episode, it is associated to the earliest human occupations of the Pleistocene/Holocene transition. The third, fourth and fifth painting episodes are the most intense and relate to the most intensive human occupations of the middle Holocene. The late Holocene episodes are represented by fewer diverse motifs in Cueva 2. The results of our analysis constitute the baseline from which future compositional analyses need to be performed in order to evaluate the possibility of dating rock art by chronometric methods.