Rock Drawings of Valcamonica

Rock Art

Prehistoric art holds inimitable place in the common heritage of all the people of the world, regardless of their social, cultural, religious or economic status. Prehistoric art is the only record left of the intellectual capacities of our forefathers. Rock art also represents our earliest evidence of the development of systems of symbols. Metamorphosis of complex social systems is derived from the Rock art of Prehistoric times.

The tradition of depicting figures and signs on rocky outcrops is the most striking and celebrated expression of prehistoric times that predominantly is comprised of stone tools, bronzes, and pottery fragments from graves, hoards and settlements etc. The archaeological research on rock art is hardly recognized as important even in countries like France, Spain and Italy where Rock Art sites exist. In the field of rock art, artefacts are best regarded as a means to identify and date the objects represented.

The possibilities of research go beyond the fact of understanding the cultural and religious relations. This article aims at making the reader show interest in the cultures of Bronze and Copper age, which are often rejected, not serious.

Topography of the Reserve

The Reserve extends over an area of 3,000,000 square metres covered with chestnut and birch woods and is situated within a circuit connecting the three villages of Niardo, Cimbergo and Paspardo, which still retain the ancient settlements.

The Rocky Engraves of 80 km long Valcamonica valley, which is to the North of Lombardy Plain in the Alps, exhibits more than 14000 figures and signs carved in rock over a period of 8,000 years depicting themes of agriculture, navigation, war and magic.

Excavations

The remains of rock paintings, rock engravings and other findings of prehistoric art have been discovered in over 160 countries.Valcamonica is considered Iron Age Rock Art. The two boulders (Cemmo 1 and Cemmo 2) are the first engraved rocks found in 1909 in Valcamonica. Valcamonica rock art has been officially discovered in 1914.

The rock found here is the Permian sandstone. It is siliceous fine granulated sandstone, heavily polished by the glacier during the last glacial era. It could be considered a real natural blackboard.

It has been estimated that hundreds of thousands of figures have been engraved over the rocks of Valcamonica. Only one of the last discovered rocks, the great rock of Paspardo, named also "the Rock of the Roses", discovered in the 1997 by Footsteps of Man, bears more than 650 figures.

Something more

Visitors wishing to imagine the base-camps and hunting raids of the nomadic groups who first settled in the Valley, in a rather treeless end-of-glaciation landscape between 15,000-6000 BC, can walk round the Castle hilltop at Breno, or have a look at the limestone cliffs behind the Roman town at Cividate. They might also like to visit a rock-shelter at Foppe di Nadro, or climb the Mount Crestoso area, high up on the Val Trompia watershed. The residential colonists and mountaineers of the subsequent millennia, c.5000-2000 BC, can be "met" on the hill of Breno Castle. Anvòia at Ossimo offers an open-air sanctuary of the III millennium BC. A site called Dos dell'Arca, at Capo di Ponte, revealed a village of the Bronze and Iron Ages with houses and stone walls, when it was excavated in 1962.