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- Title
The Style of Blugzeimat and the "Masks" of the Prehistoric Rock Art of the Western Sahara: New Evidence for Long-Distance Contacts.
- Authors
Ventura, Helena; Soler, Joaquim; Soler, Narcís; Serra, Carles
- Abstract
Blugzeimat is a prehistoric rock-art site in the Tiris region (southern Western Sahara), with more than 100 engraved slabs. The major portion of these engravings represents zoomorphs, anthropomorphs and non-figurative signs. Based on the absence of protohistoric texts, chariots or horse riders, and the probable depiction of a halberd, the age of these engravings may correspond to the first half of the second millennium BCE. The stylistic attributes of the engraved bovines, which are the most commonly represented subject, allow us to relate Blugzeimat to several sites with pecked engravings located in the Tiris (Western Sahara) and Adrar (north-western Mauritania) regions. In addition to this first stylistic and geographic delimitation, we have also been able to identify signs, traditionally designated as "masks" in the literature, which relate Blugzeimat to several sites with incised engravings located in the northern Saguia el Hamra basin. As incised and pecked engraving techniques have been regularly considered examples of unrelated rupestrian traditions in the Western Sahara, the engraving of these highly specific signs using both techniques allows us to question that paradigm. Finally, the long-distance thematic coincidence represented by the presence of such signs, in regions far from one another, provides additional evidence to refute the common idea of an absence or scarcity of cultural contacts between the north and south of the Western Sahara before the adoption of the horse and camel.
- Subjects
WESTERN Sahara; SAHARA; ROCK art (Archaeology); PREHISTORIC art; ENGRAVING; ART techniques
- Publication
African Archaeological Review, 2018, Vol 35, Issue 4, p609
- ISSN
0263-0338
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10437-018-9315-1