Looking at the Camp: Paleolithic Depiction ofa Hunter-Gatherer Campsite

Landscapes and features of the everyday world were scarcely represented in Paleolithic art, especially those features associated with the human landscape (huts and campsites). On the contrary, other figurative motifs (especially animals) and signs, traditionally linked to the magic or religious conceptions of these hunter-gatherer societies, are the predominant themes of Upper Paleolithic art. This paper seeks to present an engraved schist slab recently found in the Moli del Salt site (North-eastern Iberia) and dated at the end of the Upper Paleolithic, ca. 13,800 years ago. This slab displays seven semicircular motifs that may be interpreted as the representation of dome-shaped huts. The analysis of individual motifs and the composition, as well as the ethnographic and archeological contextualization, suggests that this engraving is a naturalistic depiction of a hunter-gatherer campsite. Campsites can be considered the first human landscape, the first area of land whose visible features were entirely constructed by humans. Given the social meaning of campsites in hunter-gatherer life-styles, this engraving may be considered one of the first representations of the domestic and social space of a human group.Fieldwork in the Moli del Salt is possible thanks to the financial support of Generalitat de Catalunya, Consell Comarcal de la Conca de Barbera, Ajuntament de Vimbodi i Poblet, and SOREO. The research is carried out within the framework of the project Paleoenvironmental evolution and prehistoric settlements in the Francoli, Gaia and Siurana river basins and Camp de Tarragona streams, funded by Generalitat de Catalunya. This research has also been supported by Generalitat de Catalunya grants 2014SGR-900, 2008ACOM-00073, 2009ACOM-00103, and 2010ACOM-00001. The research of Marcos Garcia-Diez was carried out with the financial support of the Basque Government (Research Group on Prehistory UPV/EHU IT622-13)