21st century technology applied to paleolithic caves in Portugal and Spain
The two locations, one in the Alentejo municipality of Montemor-o-Novo, in the Évora district, and the other in Cáceres, in Spanish Extremadura, are the target of the Motiviriço Primeira Arte project, in an investment of around half a million euros, with financing community.
The initiative of conservation, documents and management of the caves, as “the first manifestations of rock art in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula”, has been in progress since 2018 and was presented today in the town of Escoural.
In the case of the Alentejo cave, classified as a National Monument and the only one in Portugal with Paleolithic rock art, researchers have been “studying it in various dimensions”, with the latest technologies, the regional director of Culture of the Alentejo , Ana Paula Amendoeira.
“One of the most outstanding is the three-dimensional (3D) modeling”, which allows greater accessibility to the monuments, “since it allows” to build a virtual tour with high quality and with high resolution and approximation, what is reality “, highlighted.
Ana Paula Amendoeira recalled that visits to the Escoural Cave are limited, due to the need to conserve the paintings and engravings of identified rock art, as having a virtual visit “makes access to the general public a lot”.
“In these caves, the fact that we have good 3D modeling, which allows a very rigorous approximation of what the heritage value is, [será] one of the results to highlight “, he said.
First-Art, promoted within the EUROACE euroregion, which joins Alentejo and Centro, in Portugal, and Spanish Extremadura, allows “the application of 21st century technology in caves that are more than 20,000 years old”, said Hipólito Colado, responsible by the archeology department of the Junta de Extremadura.
“This is very important. The caves have already been very well studied, but now we have means that we didn’t have before and this allows us to advance in knowledge”, he said, maintaining that “new figures and new ideas about how the pigment is made can be discovered. ”
At Escoural, researchers are also using various technologies to “try to find out when” the art was made or “when it was used in the cave”, among other issues, he explained.
In terms of tourism, Hipólito Colado highlighted that the project will make the caves required for everyone, thanks to virtual, immersive and three-dimensional visits.
“Not everyone can enter a cave”, as is the case for “people with reduced mobility”, and “in Maltravieso, now, no one can even enter”, while in Escoural “very few visitors enter”. pointed.
But the virtual visit “allows universal access” to these two sites, either in the interpretive centers of both caves, which are being renovated and will have interactive activities, or on the Internet: “In any part of the world, people will know how is the Escoural cave, how it is and where it is, “and I also have a curiosity to explore the region”, he said.
The project is led by the Junta da Extremadura and involves the Regional Directorate of Culture of Alentejo, which oversees the Escoural Cave, the Municipal Councils of Montemor-o-Novo and Mação (this one representing the Center region), and the Junta de Parish of Santiago do Escoural.