#MaiellaRockArtProject: New research on Rock Art within the Apennine of Abruzzo
#MaiellaRockArtProject: Nuove ricerche sull’arte rupestre dell’Appennino abruzzese
Résumé
Some of the most significant examples of post-palaeolithic rock art in the Italian Apennine come from the Maiella National Park. Recent comparative
studies have already provided a first chrono-typological framework of the Abruzzo archive (over 20 detected sites), demonstrating
strong affinities with schematic and painted Mediterranean rock art. Despite these advanced studies, other important rock art research themes
still remain unexplored. Especially regarding the interactions among the iconography and chronology of rock art, the environment and the
production process that occurred through the development of a chaîne opératoire (operational chain). The Maiella Rock Art Project, sponsored
by the Maiella National Park and coordinated by the Université Côte d’Azur (Nice, France), therefore aims to fill these gaps, combining
the most modern and non-invasive methods of material analysis within fieldwork research. While the international committee UNESCO is
ratifying the Maiella massif as #Geopark UNESCO, the XXVIII Valcamonica Symposium will therefore be an opportunity to anticipate some
preliminary results of the Project and to update local rock art research data. In reference to the new surveying season for rock art sites, this
paper presents the combined results obtained using GIS predictive modeling and field surveys. A GIS predictive model, which is based on
the statistical analysis of the most common environmental parameters considered in rock art studies (i.e., altitude, orientation, slope, geology,
proximity of rock art sites to contemporary settlements and waterways), allowed us to identify several new potential archaeological areas for
the past production of rock art, some of which were later surveyed.