On the Margin, Marginal Too? A Western Outpost of Paleolithic Cantabrian Cave Art (NW Iberia)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From the Plains to the Plateau: Papers in Honor of James D. Keyser" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Franco-Cantabrian group of cave art ranks among the best known examples of Paleolithic symbolic behavior. For more than a century no decorated cave was reported beyond the Nalón Valley in the center of Asturias, until the carvings and paintings from Cova Eirós were discovered. At more than 100 km from the Nalón, Eirós's art remains an isolated spot in the NW Iberian peninsula and, unlike other famous places like Altamira, the images from Eirós (horses, bovids, and signs) have been dated in a very late stage of the Paleolithic cave art. Still, Eirós shows interesting coincidences (in stylistic and chronological terms) with other decorated sites (both caves and open-air) in the Douro Valley, sometimes hundreds of kilometers away, hinting at the existence of shared systems of symbolic expression in a moment of environmental and cultural change.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• From the Plains to the Plateau: Papers in Honor of James D. Keyser

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32672