EAA European Association of Archaeologists

Engraved art represents one of the most interesting aspects of the prehistoric artistic view, in that, through figurative and abstract representations, the artist's ability to transform the material available is shown. The engravings are made on supports that can be mobile or rupestrian with the addition or not of coloring. The execution of the lines can be done with multiple working tools and sometimes anticipated by the processing of the surface. The set of actions carried out to create the engraved artistic representation (the chaîne operatoire) can vary according to the geographical and chronological context, the support used or the work tool. The methods applied to study the art of engraving over the years have changed from a simple formal analysis to the recent multidisciplinary approaches, which through the combination of new technologies and new digital perspectives offer interesting ideas for understanding the chaîne operatoire. In this session we invite scholars to present communications that promote the studies about new digital imaging to analyse and record documentation engravings, tools to do them and methods to preparing engraved surfaces, all in different kind of supports (caves’ wall, pebbles, bones, etc). The comparison between the different methods of investigation on the engraved art, as well as the presence of multiple geographical and chronological contexts, can be useful to generate new ideas for reflection on this theme