Art rupestre des Alpes Cottiennes : peintures et gravures préhistoriques

Abstract

The CeSMAP of Pinerolo, Italy, Center for Studies and Museum of Prehistoric Art, was founded in 1964 to continue archaeological studies in the territory of the Western Alps, studies and research that had been undertaken in the 19th century by scholars from the Royal Academy of Sciences in Turin. From the start of its activity, CeSMAP identified the need to extend its studies and research beyond the initial field of action in order to better contextualize and understand an archaic phenomenon emblematic of the Alpine arc: rock art, specific object and area of specialization and archaeological research of CeSMAP. Piedmont is bordered to the west by the Alpine chain, which arose due to orogenetic thrusts rising in the Tertiary from the Mediterranean basin. In the Piedmont region, the vigorous post-Oligocene uplift exposed the pre-tertiary basement and swept away most of the sedimentary covers, so that the mountain range today is essentially composed of crystalline, eruptive and metamorphic rocks. After the end of the last Würm glacial expansion some 10,000 years ago, these morphological characteristics facilitated colonization by man who, present sporadically during the glacial period, gradually extended his control over the territory to fully occupy, from the Neolithic, the Alpine system up to the high Alpine belt. Nevertheless, the signs engraved and painted on the rocks also represent a new psychological dimension reached by prehistoric man, a sort of possession, “marking” and domination of the territory. The presence of human settlements, from the Neolithic, IV millennium BC, in the territory of the Cottian Alps has been documented by a series of archaeological excavations, carried out by CeSMAP. All the prehistoric rock paintings and engravings of the Western Alps are affected by a progressive degradation attributable to the increase in atmospheric pollution, and in particular by acid rain, which has increased in recent decades. Hence, the need for their conservation and the urgency of their protection and studies. The procedures and methods to be used to build historical models must take into account the perceptual difficulties, the exegetical modesty, the precariousness of the theoretical system, the epistemological fragmentation, the cognitive relativity towards a phenomenon, rock art, whose vast dimension and total beauty are general categories that we can surely perceive, if we are aware of the fact that the original emotional messages are not recoverable and that it is demanding to lift the temporal barrier between our world and the world of our so distant ancestors.