António Pedro Batarda Fernandes (Bournemouth University, UK)

The Côa Valley open-air rock art complex includes more than 6000 individual motifs engraved upon 600 different schist outcrops. Most of the motifs have an Upper Palaeolithic chronology (in fact, some 80% of Europe’s known open-air Upper Palaeolithic rock art is located in the Côa) although images from the Neolithic, Iron Age, Historic, and Contemporary periods also exist. When the discovery of the Côa Valley rock art become public, a huge dam, that would flood most of the identified rock art sites, was being built in the Côa River. After the Portuguese government decision to abandon the dam’s construction, the prehistoric rock art sites in the Côa were included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1998.

Most of the local population supported the construction of the dam not minding the partially destructive outcome to the landscape and to the rock art sites. Therefore, the conflict over preservation continued to echo throughout the valley as the episode occurred in October 2001 demonstrates. In a rock art panel where two prehistoric engravings already existed (one from the Upper Palaeolithic, the other from the Neolithic), a hunter from the region engraved a contemporary motif (a defecating horse), as a way of questioning and satirizing the value attributed by archaeologists to the prehistoric engravings. Ironically, it was resorting to the same ages old graphic technique and superimposing older motifs that he chose to proclaim his stance.

Our aim is to discuss and to some degree challenge the predominant point of view regarding graffiti in rock art sites, the need to erase all graffiti, the value of (ultra) contemporary motifs and ultimately how rock art researchers understand the competences and scope of their discipline of study. Although being aware that this might be a highly controversial issue, we intend to question a certain dogmatic stance in which rock art sites are seen as pristine and static manifestations of a certain idea of a ‘dead past’, incapable of shaping and establishing dynamic ‘live’ connections into the present and subsequently into the future. We believe this to be a though provoking case study when considering the feelings of different social groups on the landscape, and conflicts concerning its use, comprehension and construction.