🧭 Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula
Cova de la Catxupa – Abric I, a UNESCO-protected rock shelter with Mesolithic to Neolithic painted imagery
📌 Fast Facts
- UNESCO World Heritage Site component (inscribed 1998 as part of a serial property of over 700 sites)
- Location: Eastern Spain, Mediterranean climatic zone, limestone rock shelter
- Chronology: Approximately 8000–3000 BCE (Mesolithic through Chalcolithic)
- Artistic tradition: Levantine and schematic painted rock art, using iron oxide pigments in red and reddish-brown tones
Cova de la Catxupa – Abric I is a rock-shelter site in eastern Spain that preserves prehistoric painted imagery on natural limestone. As a component of the serial UNESCO World Heritage property Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula, it represents the post-Palaeolithic artistic traditions characteristic of Iberian prehistory. The site contains evidence of human symbolic expression spanning the Mesolithic through Neolithic and into the Chalcolithic periods ...