ANR HOLOGRAM

HOLOGRAM aims to reach a better comprehension of the societies involved in the Neolithisation of Mediterranean Iberia through an innovative holistic approach to their rock art paintings, whose cultural complexity and chronology remain uncertain. Although this graphic record is exceptional in Prehistoric Europe– in terms of the number of decorated sites documented, their wide territorial distribution and their graphic diversity–, the lack of reliable methods to date kept Iberian Holocene rock art out of mainstream archaeology, while the absence of any theoretical-methodological framework has led to a biased and distorted picture of its technical, social and territorial intricacy. After a century of research, two major questions remain open: on one hand, the emergence, development and cultural attribution of the three graphic horizons identified in this area still fuel debate, and this debate is tightly linked to the differing views of the Mediterranean Iberian Neolithization process. On the other hand, the stylistic characterization of the Macroschematic, Schematic and Levantine horizons has been based solely on formal and thematic features, while technological factors have been completely disregarded, especially as far as the early stages of the chaîne opératoire are concerned. Thus, little is known about these technical traditions, their boundaries and mechanisms governing the transmission of the know-how. Both questions, the definition of the chronological framework and an in-depth characterization of these graphic horizons are key to decipher the complex singularity of the graphic eclosion that distinguished the Iberian Neolithization in the framework of the western Mediterranean, and to better understand the underlying social processes that give rise to such eclosion.

To address these questions, this project seeks to reconstruct the graphic technical traditions, and to place them in the time line, by means of an innovative multidisciplinary and multiscale analytical and dating protocol focused on the chaînes opératoires of the coloring matter. Unexplored issues concerning the technical gestures, the transmission of the know-how and the supply networks will provide new insights into the social-symbolic aspects of graphic technological systems and environment interactions of the Iberian Holocene societies.

This novel approach will break the barriers preventing the examination of this rock art in the context of the social and historical processes that shaped the settlement and expansion of the Neolithic in this territory. The definition of a robust chrono-cultural framework for these graphic horizons as well as the characterization of the territorial dynamics of technical traditions will improve the comprehension of the cultural mosaic and the social networks by coupling the data from graphic traditions to those already known from material remains.