El Médano rock art style: Izcuña paintings and the marine hunter-gatherers of the Atacama Desert

International audienceEl Médano-style rock art from the Atacama Desert coast in Chile provides one of the most spectacular and expressive representations of ancient marine hunting and maritime traditions. These red pictographs comprise hundreds of hunting scenes and portray a complex marine hunter-gatherer society. This study presents the discovery of El Médano pictographs from new sites—in particular the Izcuña ravine—and seeks to understandfurther the processes of marine hunting and the interspecies relationships between hunter and prey. When combined with archaeological evidence, this analysis provides important new information concerning the value and significance of this rock art to those ancient hunter-gatherers