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The end of the Ice Age in southern Europe: Iberian images in the Palaeolithic to Post-Palaeolithic transition

Primitiva BUENO RAMIREZ & Rodrigo de BALBÍN BEHRMANN

en Comptes Rendus Palevol 20 (44) - Pages 897-929

Published on 08 December 2021

This article is a part of the thematic issue Palaeolithic of Northwest Iberia and beyond: multidisciplinary approaches to the analysis of Late Quaternary hunter-gatherer societies

The documentation of Palaeolithic art in the open air, together with direct dates for parietal art and the study of territories marked by the last hunter groups in southern Europe, supports new interpretations of Palaeolithic art and its continuity in the early Holocene. We provide updated information about the graphic representations in that time of transition, grouped under the term Style V. We also reflect on the chronological framework of some themes and techniques for which dates are available, from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Neolithic. These topics reveal the strength of the Palaeolithic background in more recent versions of prehistoric art, especially the schematic art associated with the first farmers. These new considerations are added to the presence of ­Palaeolithic and Post-Palaeolithic art throughout Europe and all over the world, which shows how symbols are social traits of communication associated with human groups. The study of con­nections through these archaeological items, with their undeniable materiality, is a future challenge that will ­undoubtedly produce interesting results.


Keywords:

Late Palaeolithic images, Azilian, caves and rock-shelters, mobile art, schematic art, Neolithic

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