Un viaje al pasado
Un viaje al pasado

Engarbo I cave

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The Engarbo caves receive their name from the village that develops next to it, a small village inhabited until a few years ago and today practically in ruins. Shelter I is a long, shallow hollow, more than 50 m long, which opens under a rocky outcrop that runs along the left bank of the river Frío Its walls were also used to build some constructions of which very evident remains are preserved. The painted content of the shelter is important and very numerous, emphasizing compositions of human figures and representations of fauna that form scenes and are distributed in several panels, dominating the figures in flat ink and red color, although there are also some figures made in black color. A scene composed of several bovids in a marching position, accompanied by inclined human figures, stands out. We also find some of those deer of the Levantine Art world, with their antlers, sometimes only outlined. Several mountain goats with horns and massive bodies. On the other hand, it is necessary to emphasize the presence of archers of diverse sizes, sometimes grouped in number of three, as well as feminine figures with rounded heads. Undoubtedly, a relevant Levantine set that we can associate with the important nucleus of Nérpio. Some schematic figures, several anthropomorphs, parallel traces and zigzag lines complete the set.
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Levantine Art in Santiago-Pontones

From the west of the province of Jaén and the north of the province of Almería to the interior of the provinces of Huesca and Lleida, numerous shelters of Levantine art have been documented, organised in four large river basins: the Segura in the south, the Júcar and Turia in the centre and the Ebro in the north. The basins of the Segura, Júcar and Turia rivers were occupied in their entirety, from their source to the mountainous areas near the coast, while the Ebro basin was never crowned. Therefore, the shelters of Santiago-Pontones, together with those existing in the neighbouring region of Los Vélez (Almería), have become the southern frontier of Levantine Art.

Dyes

Levantine Art is essentially pictorial, although in recent years some engravings have been found. The dyes used have generated three types of chromaticism, red, black and white, with red dominating the painted repertoire. Black, present in several cores, is relatively rare, while white is exclusive to the Albarracín core.

Red: iron oxides -oligite and limonite-.Black: charcoal and manganese oxide. White: barium sulphate.

Feathers and Levantine Art

Recent experiments and analyses suggest the use of bird feathers as brushes to create Levantine figures. The feather is an instrument that makes it possible to obtain the formal qualities and varieties that can be observed in Levantine shelters, because it is flexible and allows a ductile line.

Relevance of cave paintings

The selection of the shelters as a symbolic support is not a casual choice, but depends on the symbolic and cultural strategies of the prehistoric societies established in the territory, functioning as elements of territorial control.

The Levantine painted shelters are places that overlook small geographies and accumulate in ecological niches, with similar physical and environmental characteristics. Surrounded by enclosed landscapes, broken only by the meandering course of rivers and ravines, they offer a clear picture of the relationship that Levantine Art had with nature. Access to these places is never smooth or direct, and it is necessary to play with the labyrinth of the river network. Rivers, streams, ravines and water become the variables that appear without solution of continuity, associated with the great ensembles of Levantine Art.