¿Hair brushes, feathers or plants?. An experimental research on the paint application tools used in the production of Levantine rock art.

SANTOS DA ROSA, N.; FIORE, D.; VIÑA, R.

Cuenca

Congreso; Congreso Internacional de Arte de las Sociedades Prehistóricas VII; 2022

Since the beginning of the 20th century, numerous proposals have been made on thepossible paint application tools used by the authors of Levantine rock art, including the use of different types of brushes made of hair, feathers and plants. In this sense, mainly over the last thirty years, certain proposals such as that of the "Levantine feather brush" - according to which all this rock art has been produced with the exclusive use of feathers - gained notorious popularity, appearing in various publications as a true technical axiom. However, both this and the other proposals mentioned are essentially based on theoretical criteria and inductive reasoning whose validity has not been rigorously tested, as well as on a few non-systematic replicative experiments without adequate control of variables. Thus, in the framework of a broad experimental investigation focused on the study of the operational chains related to the production of Levantine paintings, we systematically tested the efficiency of 61 paint application tools made from hairs of seven mammal species (N=22), feathers of three bird species (N=19), and fragments of eight plant species (N=20) identified in the post-Palaeolithic archaeological context of the Mediterranean arc of the Iberian Peninsula. Applying the diagnostic criteria generated by this experimental study to a sample composed of nine Levantine sites, we find that of the 61 experimental tools, only 10 (5 hair brushes, 4 plant brushes and 1 feather brush) are capable of producing strokes with technical characteristics similar to those observed in archaeological paintings. Based on these data, we conclude that prehistoric painters probably had an extensive toolkit, composed of different types of brushes and a series of complementary instruments.