XV World Congress UISPP

Abstract

This paper is based on the available evidence concerning standing stones, as well as broadly contemporaneous rock paintings and carvings in Alentejo. Instead of the traditional perspective, which treats those manifestations as ontologically different—though, on some occasions, tries to compare them or find specific links between them—rock art and megaliths are here considered as parts of the same complex of the Neolithic “packet”, expressed by the development of symbolic devices, and interconnected by a system of beliefs around the validation of the role of man against nature, and, iconographically, mainly built upon schematic ways of representing the human figure. Actually, we can argue that the very concept of “megalithic art”, creating a common ground between both megaliths and rock art, implies a restrictive view, because it highlights the most obvious similarities but hides the fact that, even when they have no carvings or paintings, standing stones are still rock art. We argue that in some sense, those symbolic and ritual manifestations share the same similarities and differences as painting, engraving, and sculpture in modern western art.