Images and Places in the Upper Palaeolithic of the Douro Basin, Iberian Peninsula: An Ontological Approach

In this paper, I attempt to test whether Palaeolithic rock art can be used to deduce the mode of identification (sensu Descola 2005) that dominates the ontology or ontologies from which it originated. According to Philippe Descola, there are only four modes of identification in human societies, and each ontology is dominated by one of them, even though the others may also contribute to its shaping. I review previous work on the subject, the criticisms levelled against these approaches, and what I consider their main limitation: they analyze only images. In fact, rock art allows us to investigate not only its imagery but also the ways in which space was socially appropriated. I argue that this social appropriation of space is conditioned by the dominant mode of identification within the ontology from which a specific rock art corpus emerges. Because animals play such an important role in Palaeolithic art, this visual tradition provides an excellent source of evidence for exploring these issues. As a case study, I contrast the Gravettian to Middle Solutrean rock art from the Douro Basin’s highest concentration of sites in the Côa Valley with the coeval imagery of the region’s smaller and more isolated sites. I argue that the patterns revealed by this comparison can be convincingly explained by a totemic mode of identification-dominated ontology. I conclude by confronting my inferences with other evidence from Western Europe. This comparison enables me to speculate about the applicability of my findings to the remaining Palaeolithic art of Western Europe. In fact, I believe that similar patterns will emerge in the remaining regions with Palaeolithic rock art of Western Europe if entire landscapes – rather than isolated sites separated from their ‘taskscape’ (sensu Ingold 1993) – are brought into comparison.