C A N T A B R I A   U N I V E R S I T Y
 
 
   
 
  PALEOLITHIC ART      
La Pasiega (Puente Viesgo)  
    Horse   La Pasiega Cave was discovered by H.Obermaier and P. Wernet while they were realizing one of the excavation campaigns in the nearby Castillo Cave, in 1911. It is a cavity more then 400 meters long distributed in four galleries named A,B,C, and D. These galleries could have function as 2 or maybe 3 independents groups during the palaeolithic, with their corresponding entries. This is one of the reasons why the documented evidences present different features in each of the galleries described 300 figures of animals, besides other 300 signs and nonfigurative evidences have been documented in total.

In the gallery A we find horses, bisons, aurochs deers, hinds , reindeers and goats. Deep inside, in a narrow gallery several quadrilateral signs have been represented. The more employed technique in this group is the red paint, but engraving and black paint has been used also. This gallery group was almost all of it made in the Solutrean and more sporadically in the initial Magdalenien. Some of its figures have their parallels in Covalanas and Arenaza caves.

On its part, gallery B presents a wider space that has been being decorated with different thematic and technique groups, and in the ancient IV style. Situated close to the original entrance and painted in red or engraved we can find figures of aurochs, bisons, horses, megaloceros, goats, chamoises, and claviforms. The representations in this gallery were made during the first times of the Magdalenien.

Close to one of the primitive entry, in the gallery C, figures that represent horses, bisons goats and anthropomorphists have been represented in red, yellow, violet, black and even engraved traces. From the signs, we can detach the claviforms painted in red ones. Given this characteristics the period of decoration can be limited to the Solutrean and some of the Magdalenien.

Finally, gallery D groups intermediate sectors between galleries Aand B with gallery C. It is presented as a zone with less representations, formed by horses,bisons,deers and quadrangular signs. All the groups is made with the same painting technique. This fact situates the parietal evidence in La Pasiega D in a peruod from the Solutrean to the Magdalenien.

As a general rule, taking La Pasiega cavern as a group it can be said that it was decorated from the Solutrean to the Magdalenien, this is from 20000 to 14000 BP, where the oldest documents are the red painted figures, and some engravings and the modernest are the bichromy and the black paintings.

This cave is at present being restudied by members of the Alcalá de Henares University and from trhe Area of Prehistory of the Historic Sciences Department of the University of Cantabria leaded by R. Balbín Berhmann and C.González Sainz.

 
   
 
Horse
 
   
 
Horse
   
 
Horse
   
 
Horse
   
 
Auroch and horse
   
 
Quadrilateral signs
   
 
Auroch
   
 
Signs
   
 
Hind
   
 
Hind
   
 
Bison
   
 
Hind
 
                               
  P R E H I S T O R I C   A R T