Rock Drawings in Valle Camonica

Val Camonica is in the north of the Province of Brescia, between Lake Iseo and the passes at Gavia and Tonale. Rock engravings have been found all over Val Camonica, the largest valley in and around Brescia, run through by the river Oglio: over 180 sites with engravings have been recorded so far, totalling approximately 2,000 engraved rocks (sandstone and aggregates), over 300,000 millenniums-old graphemes in over 30 of the 42 local Municipalities. Currently, rock engravings may be seen in eight parks, but the number is bound to grow, not only because of the huge number of archaeological remains in other areas of Val Camonica, but also for the efforts made by the local authorities, aware that the promotion of the local cultural heritage is an important driver of socio-economic development. That’s why a Gruppo Istituzionale di Coordinamento (GIC) has been established in Val Camonica since 2006 as a liaison committee that is responsible for implementing a management plan in the UNESCO site and assisting in the protection, conservation, improvement, and tourist and cultural promotion of the local archaeological heritage.

The rocks were engraved in the course of over 13,000 years from the late Upper Palaeolithic to the late I millennium BC, when the great artistic cycle of the Camuni ended. Rock engraving, however, went on even after the valley was conquered by the Romans and until the Medieval and modern ages. The images, sometimes very accurately engraved, deal with spiritual subjects and the everyday life of the ancient valley-dwellers. Rock engravings are therefore extremely important, not just for the amount and chronological sequence of the engravings, but also for their close relationship with human evolution: discovering and learning about the rock engravings of the Camuni is tantamount to going through a unique, unforgettable journey through European prehistory and proto-history and reach the dawn of the XX century with the historical engravings (Roman, Medieval and modern).

The rocks tell about the life and customs of the Camuni and the changes they went through, since the engravings reflect their switch rom hunters to craftsmen and farmers. The earliest engravings date back to the Upper Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic and show plain, realistic drawings, mainly animals (roe deer, elks), with deer standing out among them all: here, the Camuni appear as predators (hunters and fishers) who engraved the rocks near which they set up their camps (even at high altitudes). In the Neolithic age (VI-IV millennium BC), as farming and breeding made their appearance and crafts progressed (weaving, pottery, stone polishing), the human figure becomes more important, often in connection with ritual gestures and religious meanings. One of the most typical figures of that time is the orans, a sketchily drawn praying or dancing man, with bent arms and legs. But figurative engravings are not the only ones: there are also discs, spirals and geometrical compositions that probably stood for tilled fields. In the Copper Age (mid-IV-III millennium BC), as the population started to make metal weapons and ornaments and use carts and ploughs, the Camunic rock engravings started to portray steles and rocks – carved monoliths in supposedly “ceremonial sites” or “shrines” that have been visited from time immemorial, where some form of worship must have taken place. Compositions with groups of men, animals (rock goats, deer, foxes, pigs or wild boars), men ploughing or pulling carts, and weapons (daggers, hatchets and halberds), ornaments are the new features that inspire a more complex society. The spiritual sphere is imbued with a sort of shamanic religiosity, with sacred dances, rites of initiation and the devotion of the dead. With the Bronze Age (II millennium BC), outdoor rocks start to be engraved again, and subjects include weapons, again, such as hatchets and daggers, as well as ritual scenes, with praying men, looms and shovels. Engravings dating back to the Iron Age (I millennium BC) are the largest group of figures in the entire cycle of the Camuni, influenced by contacts with other Italic populations (Raeti, Venetic, Celts, Etruscans, etc.). Many engravings are naturalistic and descriptive in style, sometimes intricately detailed: armed warriors while duelling or hunting for deer, horse-riding, sometimes helped by their pet dogs, assumedly showing the rites of initiation of young noblemen. Other interesting engravings from this age include buildings, birds, four-wheeled carts, single weapons (hatchets and knives) and lots of symbolic figures, such as footprints, the ‘Camunian rose’, stars and shovels. Writing starts to appear, even if how and when it started is still a bone of contention: some scholars believe that the earliest inscriptions must have appeared between the late VI century BC and the early V century BC, while others think it must have been in the IV century BC. The Camunian alphabet, borrowed from the Etruscan one with a few local adaptations, was found in some alphabet blocks, but most inscriptions, usually hammered or scratched on rocks or erratic blocks, are people’s or gods’ names. When the Romans arrived in 16 BC, rock engravings died down, and the big Camunian cycle assumedly ended with the collapse of the Roman system and the spreading of Christianisation in the valley. The historical age (Medieval and modern) is associated with engraved crosses, keys, dates, boundaries, heraldry and monstrance. There is also a 1908 inscription carved into a rock at Monticolo near Darfo Boario Terme (BS) that commemorates the building of the Brescia-Iseo-Edolo railway, which goes to show that rock engraving is in the genes of Val Camonica, its mysterious, indelible marks still deeply gripping everyone’s imagination.

The etymology of “Camunian” is still being discussed by scholars, even if it most likely comes from the Indo-European Celtic group. Strabo called them Kàmaunoi, Pliny called them Camunni (Nat. Hist. III, 133-134). The root of the name is the same as in “camoscio” (chamois), the meaning associated with small or curved antlers. The fact the name Camuni is classed as a Celtic word may be accounted for the Celtic-Rhaetian origin of the Camuni or may have been given by other peoples (exo-ethnic).

The Homo sapiens expressed his artistic flair in two ways: on the inner walls of the caves (wall engravings) or on rocky outcrops or outdoor rocky walls at the mercy of the weather (rock engravings). The world’s greatest examples of prehistoric wall engravings are in Altamira, Spain, and in Lascaux, France, while the group of rock engravings of Val Camonica is regarded as the world’s most important of its kind, because of the number and variety of engravings, and the long span of time it covers.

For the Camuni, rock engraving was a well-established tradition and, in the light of the number of engravings that have been found so far, it must have been an important part of their culture. They used two engraving techniques: “hammering”, where they carved the stone by repeatedly hitting the surface with a stone tip or, later on, with a metal tip, producing ‘dotted’ figures, made of little concave, rounded speckles. The other technique was “filiform” or “graffiti”, where the stone was scratched, sometimes heavily rubbed in, with a tip. Many engravings involved a combination of the two.

In 1909, Walter Laeng, a young climber and geographer from Brescia, found some engravings on some rocks at Cemmo and reported it to the Comitato Nazionale per la Protezione del Paesaggio e dei Monumenti; then, in 1914, he wrote a piece about them in the Guida d’Italia of Touring Club Italiano in which he mentioned the rocks “with sculptures and graffiti resembling the famous ones of the Lago delle Meraviglie on the Maritime Alps”. Until then, the rock engravings of Val Camonica had been strangely disregarded, though they had always been known to the valley-dwellers, who called them “pitóti” (puppets, in the local language) and thought they were vestiges of lost and forgotten archaic beliefs or magical creatures. It was Walter Laeng that made scholars and institutions aware of the incredible wealth of rock engravings of Val Camonica. In the early 1930s, the area was surveyed by Giovanni Marro, an anthropologist, and by Paolo Graziosi, Raffaello Battaglia and Giuseppe Bonafini, palaeo-ethnologists. In 1956, Emmanuel Anati marked a turning point in the study of the ‘Camuni cycle’ and founded (1964) the Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici at Capo Di Ponte, so he was granted a ministerial permit to conduct regular archaeological surveys and campaigns that still go on.

In the late I millennium BC, the Camuni imported and ‘imitated’ the Etruscan alphabet but adapted it to their own language. So, Camunic inscriptions are legible but have not been read yet. On the entirely-engraved Rock 50 at Naquane, there are a few inscriptions either on their own or associated with human prints and solar barges, next to figures of praying men, big armed warriors and houses.

After the Roman conquest (I century BC), Camunic rock engravings slowed down, but never actually isappeared. Rock engraving has been deeply rooted in the local culture from time immemorial, and the Christian evangelisation (starting in the IV century AD) had heir work cut out, fighting them. To fight the saxorum veneratio, condemned as pagan idolatry, the Church built parish churches and shrines on those proto-historical holy places.

In the National Park of Rock engravings of Naquane, Rock 35 is in the south of the Park and exhibits a very important and famous engraving, probably dating from the Iron Age. It is a moving man wearing a ritual headdress, maybe a feather headdress with the feathers bent backwards in a way that looks as if he were moving; the man is assumedly a shaman that is performing a ritual dance. Rock 35 is inlaid with lots of engravings from different times, which, taken together, show a big village scene. In addition to the “running priest”, the most outstanding figures are scenes of deer hunting and the so-called “scene of the smith”, where a man seems to be busy tapping an anvil (Iron Age).

Walter Laeng (Gualtiero) (Brescia, 10 May 1888 – 24 December 1968)

Since a very young age, he had been a keen climber and an organiser of speleological and trekking associations. His passion for nature and science brought him to Valcamonica for a holiday, so he could spend time climbing, skiing and studying geology and geography. A member of the Italian Alpine Club (CAI) since 1903, in that year he launched free-heel skiing in the province, which was a first for the area. In 1909, he was the first to disclose the existence and importance of prehistoric engraved rocks at Cammo, near Capodiponte, in Valcamonica, thus kick-starting a number of increasingly important findings that led to the establishment of the National Archaeological Park he had so staunchly supported. In 1914, he wrote descriptions of Brescia, Bergamo, Sondrio and their surroundings for the Guida d’Italia of Touring Club Italiano (Lombardy section). During the First World War, he was a map and climbing specialist for the Commander-in-Chief. He never stopped studying and writing books, articles, lectures, scientific, climbing and tourist issues, so that in 1923 he was appointed News Director of the Italian State Tourist Board (ENIT).

Emmanuel Anati

He was born in Florence in 1930 from a Jewish family. In 1945, he moved to Jerusalem, where he graduated in archaeology. In 1959, he got a postgraduate degree in anthropology and social science from Harvard University. In 1960, he got a PhD in Literature from La Sorbonne in Paris. He conducted excavations and archaeological campaigns in Israel, especially in the Negev Desert, in Spain, France and other countries across Europe. Based on his findings in the Sinai Peninsula, he assumed that Mount Sinai might not be Mount Catherine, but Har Karkom. In the Fifties, he started his expeditions in Val Camonica, where dozens of thousands of rock engravings were unearthed, making the Valley the most important rock-engraving centre in Europe. In 1964, he founded Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici at Capo di Ponte, an institute that studies prehistoric and tribal art and helps promote the local cultural heritage.

►   “In un campo che si incontra prima di giungere alla Pieve [si notano] due grossi trovanti con sculture e graffiti simili a quelli famosi del Lago delle Meraviglie nelle Alpi Marittime…”

Walther Laeng, 1914

Because of their geographical proximity, these two World Heritage Sites can be easily linked to each other, both providing evidence of human life in Europe in prehistoric an proto-historical times. From Val Camonica, you don’t need to go to a different region to see some of the UNESCO sites included in “Prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps”. It is a transnational serial site with 111 remains of lake dwellings dating back to sometime between 5,000 and 500 BC, located in Switzerland, Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia. In Lombardy, most lake dwellings are located in two areas: around Lake Varese and around Lake Garda.

E. Anati, Studi per la lettura dell’arte rupestre, Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici, Capo di Ponte, 2008.

E. Anati, La civiltà delle pietre. Valcamonica una storia per l’Europa, Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici, Capo di Ponte, 2004.

Anati, Alle origini della civiltà europea: l’arte rupestre in Valcamonica, Novara, De Agostini, Novara 1985.

I Camuni: alle radici della civiltà europea – catalogo della mostra, Palazzo dell’Arte, 16 giugno-30 novembre, mostra promossa dal Comune di Milano, Ripartizione cultura e spettacolo, ideata e organizzata dal Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici, Capo di Ponte e dal Centro culturale S. Carlo, Milano – Milano, Jaca Book, 1982.

E. Anati, Evoluzione e stile nell’arte rupestre camuna, Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici, Capo di Ponte, 1975.

V. Fusco, A. Galbiati, Naquane: Parco nazionale delle incisioni rupestri : guida itineraria, Libreria del Parco, Naquane, 1990.

V. Mariotti, a cura di, Il teatro e l’anfiteatro di Cividate Camuno. Scavo, restauro e allestimento di un parco archeologico, All’Insegna del Giglio, Firenze 2004.

A. Marretta, R. Poggiani Keller, a cura di, Bibliografia sull’arte rupestre e sui contesti e ritrovamenti preistorici e protostorici della Valle Camonica, Quaderni del Parco Nazionale delle Incisioni Rupestri, n. 1, 2005.

A. Marretta, S. Solano, a cura di, Pagine di Pietra: scrittura e immagini a Berzo Demo fra età del Ferro e romanizzazione, Quaderni del Parco Nazionale delle Incisioni Rupestri, n. 4, 2014.

G. Motta, Le incisioni rupestri camune. Percorsi didattici alla scoperta di un grande archivio di pietra
Grafo, 1994.

M. Pavese Rubins, La Valcamonica tra camuni e romani. L’impatto romano in una valle alpina, Edizioni Effedì,

R. Poggiani Keller, C. Liborio, M.G. Ruggiero, a cura di, Arte Rupestre della Valle Camonica. Sito UNESCO n. 94. 2005 Piano di Gestione, Quaderni del Parco Nazionale delle Incisioni Rupestri, n. 2, 2007.

R. Poggiani Keller, a cura di, Arte rupestre della Valle Camonica. Storia delle ricerche: protagonisti, tendenze, prospettive attraverso un secolo, Quaderni del Parco Nazionale delle Incisioni Rupestri, n. 3, 2009.

R. Poggiani Keller, a cura di, La Valle delle Incisioni. 1909-2009 cento anni di scoperte. 1979-2009 trenta anni con l’UNESCO in Valle Camonica, catalogo della mostra, Brescia, 2009.

F. Rossi, La dea sconosciuta e la barca solare. Una placchetta votiva dal santuario protostorico di Breno inValcamonica, Milano, 2005.

F. Rossi, a cura di, Il santuario di Minerva. Un luogo di culto a Breno tra protostoria ed età romana, Edizioni ET, 2010.

F. Rossi, S. Solano, a cura di, L’area del palazzo a Cividate Camuno. Spazi pubblici e privati nella città antica, La Cittadina, Gianico (BS) 2011.

M.G. Ruggiero, R. Poggiani Keller, a cura di, Il progetto “Monitoraggio e buone pratiche di tutela del patrimonio del sito UNESCO n. 94 Arte rupestre della Valle Camonica” Legge 20 febbraio 2006, n. 77, E.F. 2010, Quaderni del Parco Nazionale delle Incisioni Rupestri, n. 5, 2014.

Valcamonica preistorica: guida ai parchi archeologici, a cura di A. Fradkin, E. Anati, Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici, Capo di Ponte, 2001.

whc.unesco.org/en/list/94/

www.unesco.beniculturali.it

www.vallecamonicaunesco.it

www.archeocamuni.it/

www.parcoincisioni.capodiponte.beniculturali.it

www.ccsp.it/

Val Camonica is in the north of the Province of Brescia, between Lake Iseo and the passes at Gavia and Tonale. Rock engravings have been found all over Val Camonica, the largest valley in and around Brescia, run through by the river Oglio: over 180 sites with engravings have been recorded so far, totalling approximately 2,000 engraved rocks (sandstone and aggregates), over 300,000 millenniums-old graphemes in over 30 of the 42 local Municipalities. Currently, rock engravings may be seen in eight parks, but the number is bound to grow, not only because of the huge number of archaeological remains in other areas of Val Camonica, but also for the efforts made by the local authorities, aware that the promotion of the local cultural heritage is an important driver of socio-economic development. That’s why a Gruppo Istituzionale di Coordinamento (GIC) has been established in Val Camonica since 2006 as a liaison committee that is responsible for implementing a management plan in the UNESCO site and assisting in the protection, conservation, improvement, and tourist and cultural promotion of the local archaeological heritage.

The rocks were engraved in the course of over 13,000 years from the late Upper Palaeolithic to the late I millennium BC, when the great artistic cycle of the Camuni ended. Rock engraving, however, went on even after the valley was conquered by the Romans and until the Medieval and modern ages. The images, sometimes very accurately engraved, deal with spiritual subjects and the everyday life of the ancient valley-dwellers. Rock engravings are therefore extremely important, not just for the amount and chronological sequence of the engravings, but also for their close relationship with human evolution: discovering and learning about the rock engravings of the Camuni is tantamount to going through a unique, unforgettable journey through European prehistory and proto-history and reach the dawn of the XX century with the historical engravings (Roman, Medieval and modern).

The rocks tell about the life and customs of the Camuni and the changes they went through, since the engravings reflect their switch rom hunters to craftsmen and farmers. The earliest engravings date back to the Upper Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic and show plain, realistic drawings, mainly animals (roe deer, elks), with deer standing out among them all: here, the Camuni appear as predators (hunters and fishers) who engraved the rocks near which they set up their camps (even at high altitudes). In the Neolithic age (VI-IV millennium BC), as farming and breeding made their appearance and crafts progressed (weaving, pottery, stone polishing), the human figure becomes more important, often in connection with ritual gestures and religious meanings. One of the most typical figures of that time is the orans, a sketchily drawn praying or dancing man, with bent arms and legs. But figurative engravings are not the only ones: there are also discs, spirals and geometrical compositions that probably stood for tilled fields. In the Copper Age (mid-IV-III millennium BC), as the population started to make metal weapons and ornaments and use carts and ploughs, the Camunic rock engravings started to portray steles and rocks – carved monoliths in supposedly “ceremonial sites” or “shrines” that have been visited from time immemorial, where some form of worship must have taken place. Compositions with groups of men, animals (rock goats, deer, foxes, pigs or wild boars), men ploughing or pulling carts, and weapons (daggers, hatchets and halberds), ornaments are the new features that inspire a more complex society. The spiritual sphere is imbued with a sort of shamanic religiosity, with sacred dances, rites of initiation and the devotion of the dead. With the Bronze Age (II millennium BC), outdoor rocks start to be engraved again, and subjects include weapons, again, such as hatchets and daggers, as well as ritual scenes, with praying men, looms and shovels. Engravings dating back to the Iron Age (I millennium BC) are the largest group of figures in the entire cycle of the Camuni, influenced by contacts with other Italic populations (Raeti, Venetic, Celts, Etruscans, etc.). Many engravings are naturalistic and descriptive in style, sometimes intricately detailed: armed warriors while duelling or hunting for deer, horse-riding, sometimes helped by their pet dogs, assumedly showing the rites of initiation of young noblemen. Other interesting engravings from this age include buildings, birds, four-wheeled carts, single weapons (hatchets and knives) and lots of symbolic figures, such as footprints, the ‘Camunian rose’, stars and shovels. Writing starts to appear, even if how and when it started is still a bone of contention: some scholars believe that the earliest inscriptions must have appeared between the late VI century BC and the early V century BC, while others think it must have been in the IV century BC. The Camunian alphabet, borrowed from the Etruscan one with a few local adaptations, was found in some alphabet blocks, but most inscriptions, usually hammered or scratched on rocks or erratic blocks, are people’s or gods’ names. When the Romans arrived in 16 BC, rock engravings died down, and the big Camunian cycle assumedly ended with the collapse of the Roman system and the spreading of Christianisation in the valley. The historical age (Medieval and modern) is associated with engraved crosses, keys, dates, boundaries, heraldry and monstrance. There is also a 1908 inscription carved into a rock at Monticolo near Darfo Boario Terme (BS) that commemorates the building of the Brescia-Iseo-Edolo railway, which goes to show that rock engraving is in the genes of Val Camonica, its mysterious, indelible marks still deeply gripping everyone’s imagination.

The etymology of “Camunian” is still being discussed by scholars, even if it most likely comes from the Indo-European Celtic group. Strabo called them Kàmaunoi, Pliny called them Camunni (Nat. Hist. III, 133-134). The root of the name is the same as in “camoscio” (chamois), the meaning associated with small or curved antlers. The fact the name Camuni is classed as a Celtic word may be accounted for the Celtic-Rhaetian origin of the Camuni or may have been given by other peoples (exo-ethnic).

The Homo sapiens expressed his artistic flair in two ways: on the inner walls of the caves (wall engravings) or on rocky outcrops or outdoor rocky walls at the mercy of the weather (rock engravings). The world’s greatest examples of prehistoric wall engravings are in Altamira, Spain, and in Lascaux, France, while the group of rock engravings of Val Camonica is regarded as the world’s most important of its kind, because of the number and variety of engravings, and the long span of time it covers.

For the Camuni, rock engraving was a well-established tradition and, in the light of the number of engravings that have been found so far, it must have been an important part of their culture. They used two engraving techniques: “hammering”, where they carved the stone by repeatedly hitting the surface with a stone tip or, later on, with a metal tip, producing ‘dotted’ figures, made of little concave, rounded speckles. The other technique was “filiform” or “graffiti”, where the stone was scratched, sometimes heavily rubbed in, with a tip. Many engravings involved a combination of the two.

In 1909, Walter Laeng, a young climber and geographer from Brescia, found some engravings on some rocks at Cemmo and reported it to the Comitato Nazionale per la Protezione del Paesaggio e dei Monumenti; then, in 1914, he wrote a piece about them in the Guida d’Italia of Touring Club Italiano in which he mentioned the rocks “with sculptures and graffiti resembling the famous ones of the Lago delle Meraviglie on the Maritime Alps”. Until then, the rock engravings of Val Camonica had been strangely disregarded, though they had always been known to the valley-dwellers, who called them “pitóti” (puppets, in the local language) and thought they were vestiges of lost and forgotten archaic beliefs or magical creatures. It was Walter Laeng that made scholars and institutions aware of the incredible wealth of rock engravings of Val Camonica. In the early 1930s, the area was surveyed by Giovanni Marro, an anthropologist, and by Paolo Graziosi, Raffaello Battaglia and Giuseppe Bonafini, palaeo-ethnologists. In 1956, Emmanuel Anati marked a turning point in the study of the ‘Camuni cycle’ and founded (1964) the Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici at Capo Di Ponte, so he was granted a ministerial permit to conduct regular archaeological surveys and campaigns that still go on.

In the late I millennium BC, the Camuni imported and ‘imitated’ the Etruscan alphabet but adapted it to their own language. So, Camunic inscriptions are legible but have not been read yet. On the entirely-engraved Rock 50 at Naquane, there are a few inscriptions either on their own or associated with human prints and solar barges, next to figures of praying men, big armed warriors and houses.

After the Roman conquest (I century BC), Camunic rock engravings slowed down, but never actually isappeared. Rock engraving has been deeply rooted in the local culture from time immemorial, and the Christian evangelisation (starting in the IV century AD) had heir work cut out, fighting them. To fight the saxorum veneratio, condemned as pagan idolatry, the Church built parish churches and shrines on those proto-historical holy places.

In the National Park of Rock engravings of Naquane, Rock 35 is in the south of the Park and exhibits a very important and famous engraving, probably dating from the Iron Age. It is a moving man wearing a ritual headdress, maybe a feather headdress with the feathers bent backwards in a way that looks as if he were moving; the man is assumedly a shaman that is performing a ritual dance. Rock 35 is inlaid with lots of engravings from different times, which, taken together, show a big village scene. In addition to the “running priest”, the most outstanding figures are scenes of deer hunting and the so-called “scene of the smith”, where a man seems to be busy tapping an anvil (Iron Age).

Walter Laeng (Gualtiero) (Brescia, 10 May 1888 – 24 December 1968)

Since a very young age, he had been a keen climber and an organiser of speleological and trekking associations. His passion for nature and science brought him to Valcamonica for a holiday, so he could spend time climbing, skiing and studying geology and geography. A member of the Italian Alpine Club (CAI) since 1903, in that year he launched free-heel skiing in the province, which was a first for the area. In 1909, he was the first to disclose the existence and importance of prehistoric engraved rocks at Cammo, near Capodiponte, in Valcamonica, thus kick-starting a number of increasingly important findings that led to the establishment of the National Archaeological Park he had so staunchly supported. In 1914, he wrote descriptions of Brescia, Bergamo, Sondrio and their surroundings for the Guida d’Italia of Touring Club Italiano (Lombardy section). During the First World War, he was a map and climbing specialist for the Commander-in-Chief. He never stopped studying and writing books, articles, lectures, scientific, climbing and tourist issues, so that in 1923 he was appointed News Director of the Italian State Tourist Board (ENIT).

Emmanuel Anati

he was born in Florence in 1930 from a Jewish family. In 1945, he moved to Jerusalem, where he graduated in archaeology. In 1959, he got a postgraduate degree in anthropology and social science from Harvard University. In 1960, he got a PhD in Literature from La Sorbonne in Paris. He conducted excavations and archaeological campaigns in Israel, especially in the Negev Desert, in Spain, France and other countries across Europe. Based on his findings in the Sinai Peninsula, he assumed that Mount Sinai might not be Mount Catherine, but Har Karkom. In the Fifties, he started his expeditions in Val Camonica, where dozens of thousands of rock engravings were unearthed, making the Valley the most important rock-engraving centre in Europe. In 1964, he founded Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici at Capo di Ponte, an institute that studies prehistoric and tribal art and helps promote the local cultural heritage.

Because of their geographical proximity, these two World Heritage Sites can be easily linked to each other, both providing evidence of human life in Europe in prehistoric an proto-historical times. From Val Camonica, you don’t need to go to a different region to see some of the UNESCO sites included in “Prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps”. It is a transnational serial site with 111 remains of lake dwellings dating back to sometime between 5,000 and 500 BC, located in Switzerland, Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia. In Lombardy, most lake dwellings are located in two areas: around Lake Varese and around Lake Garda.

Rupestrian, adj., concerning rocks, caves. Prehistoric rupestrian art consists of human engravings on outdoor rocky walls.

Census-taking, recording information in an official list, where census is an official enumeration of information based on specific, numerical indicators that record the state of a given collective phenomenon (counting assets, counting a population…).

Grapheme, noun, from the Greek gràpho, write; sign, a graphic unit of writing.

Epos, an epic poem that tells the story of heroes and their feats; epic is a genre that includes mythological and imaginary features (e.g. Homeric epics, Carolingian epics). In a broad sense, this word stands for a historical event, to emphasise its importance or cultural significance.

Engraved, adj., a surface can be engraved with a decorative pattern to tell a story or with figures that describe a historical, mythological or religious event.

Orans, noun, from the Latin verb orāre, pray; someone who is praying; the orans is a stylistic pattern that recurs in prehistoric and archaic art and has a religious meaning.

Geoglyph, noun, it is made up of two Greek words: gē, earth, and glýpho, carve, engrave, cut; a large-scale drawing produced on the ground or on stone.

Menhir, noun, a prehistoric monument consisting of a medium or large standing stone, often grouped with other, similar stones, worshipped as a sacred rock or as part of a place of worship.

Shamanic, adj., that concerns a shaman, the religious leader of a community who officiates magical rites and rites of initiation. Shamanism is mainly practised by Arctic populations and by ancient American and Northern Asian communities (from the Tungusic ŝaman, “he who is in a state of ecstasy”).

Petroglyph, noun, a glyph or mark engraved on a rocky surface (from the Latin pètra, rock, cave); semantically, the meaning of the word can also include hammered rock engravings.

Ancestral, adj., concerning a distant past, the time of the earliest ancestors.

Idolatry, noun, the worship of an idol, the celebration of a god that is not that of the main official religion of a community.

Pagan, adj., concerning practices or beliefs that belong to or take inspiration from pre-Christian European culture.

Erratic, a boulder carried by a glacier to the bottom of a valley.