Palettes are rare in the rock art of Northwest Portugal. They are found both in Classical Atlantic Art and openair Schematic Art contexts, but also in other contexts of difficult classifications. Although known, there is no inventory of sites with this motif or a typological table of them, despite some subdivision made by Bettencourt (2017a). The cultural and physical contexts, in which they are found, are also not known. The aim of this work is to rectify these absences through a first inventory, the creation of a typology of motifs and an attempt at their spatial and cultural integration.
Rock art as a practice of past communities can be divided into Palaeolithic and post-Palaeolithic arts. Considering the later, which in turn can be divided into Atlantic and Schematic Arts, among other styles difficult to define (Bettencourt, 2017a, 2017b), this work will focus Atlantic rock art. Our selected object of study is the recorded segmented circles that, according to that author, will belong to a stylistic universe emerging in the Bronze Age. The geographic area is the Lima River basin. Although these motifs are rare, they appear both on the coast and inland, in association with different figurative grammars. By the macroscopic observation of its orientation they indicate a relation with celestial cults or celebrations during certain moments of the year.
This paper focuses on the representation of horses graved on rocks in the Mouro River basin (NW Portugal), an afluent in the south margin of the Minho River. The objectives are the study of its distribution in space, in relation to physical characteristics; the specificity of types of graved horses; the characteristics of the rocks graved by group of horses; the orientation of horses by type and their disposition in the rock compared to other graved motifs.
The Coastal Geopark of Viana do Castelo occupies 320 km2 of the Portuguese NW. It includes coastal and mountainous areas and distinct sociocultural and territorial contexts, and a unique and diverse set of archaeological sites. The present work intends to show how some of these sites have leisure and educational potential on their own, or when articulated with other geological resources. Some actions are highlighted and proposed for the valorisation of the archaeological heritage located inside the limits of the Geopark, evidencing what has already been done to know and protect this important (but fragile) set of past traces.
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