Dialogues Across Time? Conceptualising the Temporal Relationships of Palimpsests in the Upper Palaeolithic Cave Art of El Castillo (Cantabria, Spain)

Abstract

Cave sites were frequently reused throughout the Upper Palaeolithic, with many sites within south-western Europe having deep chronologies of activity. The repeated engagement with the same caves, or spaces within caves, is evident in superimpositions of cave art depictions within these sites. Whilst these palimpsests in Upper Palaeolithic cave art have been extensively studied with regard to understanding the relative chronology of art within a particular region or site, they have not been understood from an ontological perspective. Upper Palaeolithic artist's engagement with motifs produced by their predecessors, regardless of cultural continuity, may indicate dialogical interactions occurring across time between culturally and temporally distinct groups of hunter-gatherers. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework-inspired by relationality and contemporary rock art production-for understanding these temporal interactions. Focusing on the case study of El Castillo, we argue that these engagements across time may tentatively indicate aspects of long-term continuity in the ontology of Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, reflected in cave art palimpsests. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10816-025-09717-5.

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