Paleolithic Cave Arts in Cantabria
César. González Sainz &
Roberto Cacho Toca
Department of Historical Science, University of Cantabria
The Central Cantabrian Valleys. Introduction to Paleolithic Cave Art in Cantabria.
1. The territory we now call Cantabria had a large human population during the Upper Paleolithic, due to its relatively good climate and the abundance of game, fish, seafood and plants available to those groups of hunter-gatherers.
If we add the intense karstification of the area, it is easy to understand the reasons for large number of well-preserved archaeological deposits, and consequently of examples of mobiliary and rock art in the caves. The situation of the Autonomous Community of Cantabria, in the center of the long Cantabrian corridor, means that it provides a summary of many of the cultural characteristics of the region during the Upper Paleolithic, and even concentrates some of the changes in landscape which are found along the length of the Cantabrian region. In fact, in Cantabria we see the transition from the more orderly relief, with older lithology, in the West, to the predominance of Cretaceous limestone and more abrupt scenery in the East.
Cantabria holds some of the greatest names of European Paleolithic sites, such as Altamira, El Castillo, La Pasiega, El Pendo and La Garma, among many other less spectacular caves. After more than a century of research, nearly fifty caves with parietal art are known, while decorated objects have been recovered from nearly all the Upper Paleolithic deposits that have been dug. These human occupation sites include the caves of Castillo, Altamira, Hornos de la Peña, El Valle, El Pendo, Morín, Otero, Rascaño, Cualventi, La Pila and El Juyo. This sample must represent, however, an insignificant proportion of the works of art produced during such a long period, as many must have been destroyed or, perhaps, not yet discovered.
2. Cantabria played an important role in the beginnings of Paleolithic cave art research, thanks to prehistorians like M. Sanz de Sautuola, H. Breuil, H. Alcalde del Río, and others.
The controversy over the age of the paintings in Altamira, which took place in the years between 1880, when Sautuola's publication proposed their Paleolithic chronology, and 1902, when this was generally accepted by prehistorians, was of extraordinary importance in the field of human sciences. In essence, the discussion was over the full artistic, intellectual and spiritual capacity of Paleolithic people (and also, indirectly, of materially primitive contemporary societies). It was difficult to accept and understand then that human groups, who lived on such a "primitive" material and technical level, could produce such excellent (and so well-preserved) paintings and engravings. At the end of the 19th Century, changes were analyzed from a too strict and simple evolutionary point of view, marking the apogee in the liberal belief in the human tendency to material and spiritual progress, considered as two sides of the same coin. This idea was imposed everywhere by Western European civilization, and was so well suited to its economic and political domination. On the other hand, after the long controversy about the evolution of the species, the arguments over Altamira helped to popularize Prehistory, and make it fully accepted socially as a period worthy to be studied, and as a scientific discipline capable of discovering greater knowledge about our past.
Years of feverish activity succeeded the recognition of the Paleolithic chronology of Altamira. Tireless explorers like Alcalde del Río and L. Sierra discovered many important parietal sites and deposits of Paleolithic occupation. Besides, they succeeded in establishing a fertile process of collaboration with prehistorians such as H. Breuil and H. Obermaier, who were based at the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine in Paris. This resulted in the excavation at Cueva del Castillo, and other less important caves, and the study of numerous cave art sites. In just twelve years, from 1902 to 1914, stratigraphic sequences were found which covered nearly all the Paleolithic, in Cueva del Castillo, and a first synthesis of Cantabrian parietal and mobiliary art was produced, in a volume of exceptional quality: Les cavernes de la region Cantabrique.
Cave art research languished after that date. This is shown by the fact that not a single new cave with art was discovered from 1911, when La Paisega was found, until the early 1950s, when renewed prospecting located the caves of Chimeneas, Monedas and Cullalvera. Investigation has speeded up since the end of the 1970s, and many new sites have been found, sometimes with quite important parietal assemblages. This has been thanks to the work of prospecting carried out by groups such as CAEAP, among others. The most important finds have been the caves of Chufín and Micolón, El Cuco and Cobrantes, Emboscados, La Fuente del Salín, El Linar and Sovilla, the caves of Arco and Pondra, Calero II, La Garma, the new paintings in El Pendo, and Cueva de Urdiales. The art in these caves has been studied by different scientists and groups; especially those linked to the University of Cantabria, which has had its own Department of Prehistory since 1978.
3. The distribution of caves with art is almost the same as that of habitation sites.
These caves are situated on the coastal strip and, less frequently, in inland valleys, always at low altitude, usually below 200m above sea level and only exceptionally as high as 600m. Some of them were major centers, occupied repeatedly during the Upper Paleolithic, with many figures in different styles and techniques. Examples of this kind of cave are El Castillo, La Pasiega, Altamira and La Garma. At the other end of the spectrum, some caves have only one or two figures, such as La Meaza, Sotarriza, Grande or El Otero. They are all important however in order to obtain a full view of the role played by art, and the rituals that went with it, in the life of those hunters.
The distribution of caves is relatively different when viewed from the North-South axis of the area. In the middle and inland valleys, the caves tend to be located close to the river-courses, which marked the main ways of communication, whereas they are more disperse on the coastal strip, and include locations between the valleys. Hence, the dispersion of sites is an important characteristic of the caves with art on the coastal strip, ranging from La Fuente del Salín in the lower Nansa valley to Cueva de Grande in Otañes, in the far east of the province. The recent important discovery of the Lower Passage in La Garma hill has filled the large gap which had existed in that part of the area, and which was due to the scarcity of limestone, and therefore of caves.
On the other hand, the concentration of sites is much greater in the middle valleys, just as happens in Asturias. Typical are the concentrations in the Nansa valley, which has the caves of Chufín, and Micolón, with another two nearby. Also in Puente Viesgo, by the River Pas, which has the four caves in Monte Castillo: El Castillo, Chimeneas, La Pasiega and Las Monedas; and in Ramales de la Victoria where as many as ten caves with Paleolithic art are concentrated by the rivers Calera and Carranza, tributaries of the River Asón. These caves include Covalanas, La Haza, Pondra and Arco.
The main areas and caves are the following: * Near the mouth of the River Nansa there is a very interesting cave, La Fuente del Salín. It was sealed by the collapse of its entrance and now it can only be reached from a lower active level, through the quite large resurgence which gives the cave its name, in times of drought. A small parietal assemblage has been preserved inside the cave, and this is composed of negative and positive hand images, a few dots and finger-marks. The hearth corresponding to the Paleolithic occupation was dug, and a date of 22,340 +/- 510/480 years BP was obtained. This is probably the last human occupation of the cave, just before the entrance collapsed, as hardly any sediment has been deposited over this level. This late Gravettian date, or even an earlier one, would fit in well with the stylistic chronology given to the paintings.
Further inland along the Nansa valley, we come to a nucleus formed by the caves of Chufín, Micolón, Porquerizo and Los Marranos, all quite near together. The first has some of the oldest paintings and engravings in the province, probably of Gravettian and Solutrean age. Micolón has an exceptionally interesting group of engravings and paintings inside the cave, which is small and narrow, and quite difficult to visit. A number of engraved vulvar signs are unique in the region, and the style of the animal figures suggests a date for them within an early moment of Leroi-Gourhan's Style III. The other caves mentioned only contain a few dots and other smaller paintings in red.
* A large group of caves is situated in the coastal area in the west of Cantabria, in or near the drainage basins of the Saja and Besaya rivers. It is an area dominated in its center by the overwhelming presence of Cueva de Altamira, whose cave art tends to overshadow all the rest. Nevertheless, besides the polychromes and other paintings in Altamira, within a radius of a few kilometers other cave art is known of great interest. Thus, we find an assemblage of Magdalenian paintings, of bison and signs like a claviform and a grille, and also engravings, in Cueva de Las Aguas. Cueva de La Meaza has a sign made up of red dots, and in Cueva del Linar a low, narrow passage has two impressive, oval-shaped constrictions, surrounded by engraved marks, as well as more conventional animal engravings on a flat roof. Another very interesting cave is Cueva de La Clotilde, which has engravings in clay, and figures with unusual representational conventions. Cueva de Cudón has some very old depictions, including a negative hand, dots and macaroni. The middle valley of the River Besaya has an important collection of engravings in Hornos de la Peña, located in the outer vestibule of the cave and in its interior rooms. In the same area is Cueva de Sovilla, with figures of hinds, reindeer, bison and horse, probably of late Magdalenian age. All the sites mentioned, except perhaps Cueva de La Clotilde, also contain important Paleolithic habitation deposits. This is also true of Cueva de Cualventi, in Oreña, with important objects of mobiliary art.
* The valley of the River Pas has an interesting group of enigmatic signs in Cueva de Santin, near the coast; and in the middle valley it has the exceptional group of caves in the hill Monte Castillo. This hill, and in particular the vestibule of its largest cave, was the main gathering point in the Cantabrian region during the Upper Paleolithic. Its strategic position in the regional landscape, and even the characteristic, unforgettable, conical shape of the hill are evidence of it. Its caves contain groups of depictions of all ages, starting in very old phases, probably Aurignacian and Gravettian in El Castillo, and possibly in an interior part of La Pasiega D. Art of Style III, dated in the Solutrean, was produced in Castillo, Chimeneas, and the Galleries A, C and D in La Pasiega. Finally, a large number of engravings and paintings correspond to the Magdalenian in Castillo, and Pasiega B, C, D (and also a few black paintings in Gallery A), as well as a smaller group in Cueva de Las Monedas, of a much later date. Throughout the different phases of decoration in the caves and passages inside the hill, not only were there changes in the stylistic conventions, and to a lesser extent, the techniques and thematic structure, but also the abstract signs associated with the figures and their relative frequency.
* The drainage basin of the River Miera widens considerably towards the coast. On its left bank it includes all of what is now the Bay of Santander, which has numerous Paleolithic sites in the surrounding area, such as the caves of El Juyo, El Pendo and La Llosa which have art, and the habitation site of Cueva de Morín. On its right bank it has the site of the Lower Passage in La Garma, with cave art still being studied. This is a complex cave, with many depictions on its walls corresponding to very different moments of the Upper Paleolithic, incredibly preserved intact until the present time. This is because the entrance was blocked by a natural collapse, and to reach the Lower Passage it is now necessary to descend several vertical shafts from higher levels of the same cave system. This gallery has an impressive habitation deposit intact on the floor of the cave, and cave art corresponding to at least three successive phases of decoration. The oldest one is probably Gravettian, and is represented by negative hand images, dots, paired marks and other finger-marks. A second group of paintings has animal figures painted in red with dotted lines, representing hinds, ibex, bison, giant deer and quadrilateral signs. Some of the animal engravings probably belong in the same phase. Finally, a large group of engravings and black paintings of Magdalenian age include bison, horses and ibex, and heads of hinds with striated engraved lines.
The inland part of the Miera valley is much narrower, with steep rocky slopes. Here we find sites where ibex was hunted and salmon were fished in the summer and fall, such as the caves of El Rascaño and El Piélago. There is only one cave with Paleolithic art, Cueva de Salitre, one of the highest caves in the region, and which has hinds in red in the Solutrean style, and other figures less well preserved.
* The River Asón and its tributaries form quite a large drainage basin. Right on the coastline, we find a couple of rockshelters in the hill at Santoña, which have Paleolithic deposits and some non-figurative engravings. A little further to the south, other sites do not have many more figures: Cueva del Otero has a single schematic representation of an ibex. This small figure, depicted from the front, is interesting as it reproduces a design which is often found on portable artifacts, such as perforated staffs, assegaies, or simple decorated bones, and so it is possible to date it in the late Magdalenian, which is the period when those mobiliary objects were made. Cueva de Cobrantes also has an assemblage of engravings in a Magdalenian style. Other caves in this area have important habitation deposits, where mobiliary art has been found, particularly in Magdalenian levels; e.g. the caves of Valle and La Chora.
Three groups of caves can be distinguished in the middle valleys. First of all, the caves of Emboscados, with important Magdalenian striated engravings of stags and a hind, and El Patatal, in the enclosed depression of Matienzo. Much better known is the group at Ramales de la Victoria, with the caves of Covalanas and La Haza, with red dotted paintings in Style III. They are near a large cave, El Mirón, which also has some non-figurative engravings, and thick archaeological sediments that are being dug at the present. Cueva de Cullalvera has the deepest known art in the region, as the last paintings are more than a kilometer from the entrance. Its most interesting art is found in two chambers. The first has signs such as vertical claviforms, lines and dots, while three horses painted in black in a quite late style are found in a further second chamber.
Finally, we come to a large series of generally quite small cave art assemblages, concentrated in less than a kilometer of the rocky slopes of the River Carranza, a tributary to the Asón. The western-most cave is Morro del Horidillo, and the furthest east is Venta de la Perra, which is located in the province of Vizcaya. Between these two, we find Pondra, the Arco B and C complex, and Cueva de Arco A. Cueva de Sotarriza is situated on the opposite side of the valley. Except for the engravings in the vestibule of Venta de la Perra, which are very old, or the black painting of a horse in Sotarriza, which is probably Magdalenian, most of the figures in the other caves can be attributed to Style III and the Solutrean period. This is shown by the appearance of the technique of dotted lines in red paint, and by the style of the figures, which represent bison and aurochs, horses, hinds and ibex, as well as quadrilateral signs. In some of the caves there are also very simple animal engravings, drawn with a single line, with very different conventions from those of the Magdalenian. The most interesting is the depiction of a mammoth, with an arched belly-line and other archaic conventions, in Cueva del Arco B.
* A few other smaller caves, with groups of engravings, are situated in the eastern coastal strip; either in Castro Urdiales, like Cueva del Cuco, or nearby, like the caves of La Lastrilla or Cueva Grande in Otañes, with a single panel of a stag facing an ibex. In this area, the most important cave is Cueva de Urdiales, which has only recently been discovered, and which has a splendid group of black paintings and engravings, doubtlessly of Magdalenian age.
4. The main characteristics of parietal art in Cantabria will be described, following the chronological scheme which we currently believe to be the most accurate, and which distinguishes at least three long successive periods:
a) The beginnings are still not well known. Although the region was occupied, and several sites dated in the early Upper Paleolithic have been dug, such as Castillo, Morín and Pendo, we do not know any parietal art, or figurative mobiliary art, of a clear Aurignacian age. This is in contrast with the neighboring province of Asturias. In any case, the older age of the Aurignacian implies problems of conservation and discovery of parietal art and archaeological deposits which are much greater than happens with, for example, the Magdalenian. As a result, it is necessary to be careful when defining the art of this early period of the Upper Paleolithic. However, in the first half of the 20th Century, prehistorians such as H. Breuil proposed a chronology for the art of Cantabria which attributed a large number of figures to the very start of the Upper Paleolithic.
During the Gravettian, approximately between 27,000 and 21,000 BP, it was common to enter into caves in order to produce very simple parietal art. Red dots, finger-marks, paired lines and negative hand images were painted either using a technique for spraying paint, or by dabbing the paint on with a finger-tip. Whereas this type of figure is very scarce in Asturias, which has only one negative hand in Tito Bustillo, in Cantabria they are abundant in the Lower Passage in La Garma, Castillo, Fuente del Salín, Cudón, and Altamira where they are associated with animals in perhaps a slightly later style. In the same way, Chufín has animals and finger-marks painted in a very archaic style, which must correspond to the same period. Other examples are the engravings of animals in a similar style as well as painted finger-marks in Castillo and Pasiega D.
Regarding the assemblages of "exterior" engravings of animals, the situation is quite the opposite of that of the hand images: there are noticeably fewer sites in Cantabria than in Asturias. Just as in the western province, these must have been produced in the Gravettian, and possibly in the Solutrean. The daylight group of engravings in Cueva Chufín is practically interchangeable, in its identical ways of representing hinds and other characteristics, with those found in the Nalón valley, in Asturias. Hornos de la Peña has a much smaller group, while Venta de la Perra, by the River Carranza, is perhaps the most evolved of all the sites. An engraved figure in a nearby cave, the mammoth in El Arco B, could equally be of Gravettian age.
b) During the Solutrean, as in other parts of the region, the use of red pigment became even more common. It was applied with various procedures: as a more or less wide, single line; as dots dabbed on the wall; as a partial or full color-wash; or as lines varying in width as a first attempt at expressing volume. This type of art is found in Covalanas and Haza, and is also represented in many of the figures in Pasiega, Arco, Pondra, Garma and Pendo. Black paintings are less common, but do exist in Micolón, Chimeneas and Altamira. In these cases the pigment was applied in a different way, with simple, narrower lines and usually dry, as charcoal. They are normally outline figures, without color-wash or variations in width of line, which were techniques developed in black pigment during the Magdalenian. The engravings found are essentially of simple lines in Micolón, Castillo and El Cuco, or associated with red dotted lines in Pondra, Arco A and Arco B-C. These are outline animal figures, with few interior details, and with more archaic conventions than we find in those figures with interior masses of striated lines, and often with repeated lines around their outline, which are of Magdalenian age. Engraving is occasionally associated with paint, especially in red figures of later phases, e.g. in Pasiega A.
Regarding the themes represented, a typical one consists of abstract signs in a quadrangular shape, often subdivided internally into three parts, and incorporating borders of short lines around their edges. They are found associated with lines of dots. Subdivided oval signs, and ladder-shaped signs or scaliforms, are also frequent. Some of the compositions made up of parallel rows of red dots must correspond to this period, as in Meaza, Arco A, Castillo and Pasiega C. At least the first of these signs, the quadrilaterals, are exclusively found in the Cantabrian region, and so far are only known in its central valleys, between Arco A, in the Carranza-Asón valley, and El Buxu, by the Piloña and Sella rivers. Within this area, the relative frequency of the signs tends to increase towards the center, that is to say, in the valleys of the Pas, Besaya and Saja. In fact, Castillo, Chimeneas, Pasiega A, C and D, and Altamira contain most of the quadrilateral signs known to date.
The form of these signs tends to change slightly with time. At first, we find plain rectangular and oval signs, as in Covalanas, Arco B and La Garma, or signs subdivided transversely into three fields, as in Castillo or Chimeneas, where they are sometimes associated with series of red dots. Later, it is more common to find oval and quadrilateral signs with a pointed protuberance on their longest side, and sometimes subdivided longitudinally, as in Altamira, Pasiega C, A and D, Castillo and Arco B. Apparently by a process of morphological abbreviation, these signs led to the classic claviforms, now associated with animal figures in Style IV.
Among the animal figures, we still find a similar distribution to that of the exterior engravings of the previous stage, with large numbers of hinds and horses, of aurochs and bison, and other animals to a lesser degree. The more unusual species that can be found are bear, in Micolón, reindeer, in Pasiega A and La Haza, mammoth in Castillo and Arco B, giant deer, in La Garma, and birds, in Pasiega B. The compositions that are known include of course the pairing of bison or auroch with horses, with hinds and goats in more marginal positions, that was so important in Leroi-Gourhan's interpretations. This composition, which was already found in the previous stage in the daylight figures of Hornos de la Peña, as well as in the "Great Niche" in La Lluera, now appears in caves like La Pasiega, both at the end of Gallery A and in Zone D. However, other associations are much more frequent, mainly those based on hinds and horses, as in Cueva de Covalanas, Pasiega A, Pendo and Pondra. There are many forms of the composition, but some of the most significant seem to be pairs of animals occupying individualized spaces, such as small hollows in the wall, facing each other, or back-to-back, and also occupying superimposed planes. Examples are found in Covalanas, Arco A, Arco B, Pondra, Pasiega A, C and D, Pendo, Garma, and of course, Arenaza in the province of Vizcaya.
c) During the Magdalenian, or Leroi-Gourhan's Style IV, approximately between 16,000 and 11,500 BP, we can find in Cantabria the same general tendencies that are appreciated in other areas of SW Europe: the preference for depicting usually static animals naturalistically, showing great progress in the representation of the third dimension. This was accompanied by a great variety of technical and expressive resources, used now with the aim precisely of reflecting reality more faithfully. Furthermore, this technical variability seems to spread to the purely artistic: in comparison with the relative homogeneity of earlier compositions, in fairly concise and tidy panels, in the Magdalenian the caves were filled with works of art of a very unequal technical and artistic quality, and of different sizes and degree of visibility. Together with this "democratization" of parietal art, perhaps produced by more kinds of people and with more variable purposes than in earlier stages, we can also appreciate a veritable explosion of decoration on artifacts, as tools or simple stone plaques are decorated much more often than before. Finally, another characteristic of the Magdalenian seems to be a greater degree of long-distance integration in the stylistic conventions and even in the abstract signs and iconographic structure. As we will see, this has a great effect on the Cantabrian region, which now interacts strongly with the area of the Pyrenees.
Despite this, the region is able to maintain its own personality, especially in the early Magdalenian. The classic claviforms are painted at this time, probably derived from an abbreviation of the previous quadrilaterals with pointed protuberance, and which are found in Pasiega B and C, Castillo, Altamira, Las Aguas and La Garma, as well as grille-shaped signs, in Altamira and Las Aguas. The typical animal figures are engravings of hind's heads with striated lines in their chin and chest. This theme has played an important role in cave art research, as in Altamira and Castillo they appeared both on the cave walls and roofs and on deer scapulae recovered from early Magdalenian strata. This has made it possible to set a date of about 15,000 BP for the first figures of this type. Very similar engravings are known on the walls of Pasiega B and C, Emboscados, Cobrantes, Grande in Otañes, and La Garma.
The early part of the Magdalenian was also probably the time when large compositions were produced in Pasiega B and perhaps the front part of Pasiega C, the polychromes in Altamira (which have been dated to between 14,900 and 14,000 BP, except for a few smaller and later figures), the compositions in Las Aguas, and other slightly later ones in Castillo (where bison have been dated to about 13,000 BP), and La Garma. In several places in the latter cave, we can find many of the more typically Magdalenian motifs and techniques. Bison are painted in black and engraved around their outline, hind's heads are striated, and "masks" were produced by adding an eye, nostril and mouth to the natural relief of the wall (these figures are also found in Altamira and Castillo). Other animals were painted in a partial color-wash of variable intensity, with abundant lines of interior organization.
Iconographic composition tends to change in the middle and late Magdalenian, as reindeer, ibex, and bears appear more often, while bison (as in the Pyrenees) and horses dominate the assemblages. The caves that can be included in this period are Cullalvera, Sovilla, El Otero and Las Monedas, where radiocarbon dates of about 12,000 BP have been obtained. Certain figures in other more complex sites, like El Castillo may also belong to the late Magdalenian. These caves have fewer conventionalized abstract signs, and the only characteristic ones are the late claviforms in La Cullalvera and El Pindal in Asturias, which are identical to those found in caves in Arige, demonstrating the strong cultural integration which existed between both regions at that time. Shortly afterwards, the region suffered a complete cultural and economic reorganization, above all during the temperate climatic phase of the Allerd (11,800 to 10,800 BP), which among other things brought an end to Paleolithic parietal art.
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