The art at the service of the community during the Upper Paleolithic: study of the social organization of human groups through the calculation of resources destined for the graphic production of the Polychrome Ceiling in the Altamira cave (Santillana del Mar, Cantabria)

PhD researcher: Patricia García Encabo

PhD supervisor: Diego Garate Maidagan and Pilar Fatás Monforte 

The study of cave art from the perspective of its production is an aspect that can make a decisive contribution to the debate on the organisational system of Upper Palaeolithic societies. The cave of Altamira, and specifically the Techo de los Polícromos, presents artistic characteristics (aesthetic, technological, stylistic, etc.) that make it an excellent case of study for a much deeper understanding of the functioning of Palaeolithic societies in terms as relevant as the division of labour, inequalities, the emergence of social elites, etc.

This approach will provide essential information for a better understanding of the Altamira cave and its graphics, to enhance the study of rock art through the operational chains and to create a script that will be a reference in the field of experimental archaeology applied to the production of rock art and to better understand the Palaeolithic societies that created it, their interests and the social structure in which they carried out this type of activity.

The study focuses on deepening our knowledge of Upper Palaeolithic societies and, specifically, on their organisation and structuring. To this end, we combine the study of operational chains and experimental archaeology to evaluate how graphic activity can condition and influence this social structuring, since rock art is a social product of human labour. The research is based on the set of polychrome bison from the ceiling of the Sala de los Polícromos in the cave of Altamira, from which the operational chain will be reproduced in order to obtain the closest result to the original representations and, in this way, quantify the necessary production costs.

This gives us the power to know the social adaptations or strategies closely related to the investment of resources destined to the graphic activity, the knowledge of it by society and its repercussion at a personal and collective level.