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Tag Archives: UNESCO World Heritage
The Côa Late Palaeolithic rock art in Portugal. A brief comparison with petroglyphs of similar age in Egypt
On working with Late Palaeolithic rock art in Upper Egypt several years ago, sometimes we used to compare the naturalistic style of newly found petroglyphs with photos of those in the Côa Valley (NE Portugal). This was because the large Côa site has open air petroglyphs, whereas most other Late Palaeolithic rock art sites feature cave paintings. But I was never able to visit the Côa site to see for myself how the petroglyphs compare. Until now. On a road trip this summer we got a glimpse of the Côa images, at the Penascosa site. This brief article shows many similarities between the rock art in Côa and Upper Egypt, but also a harsh difference: Whereas Côa is a well-managed UNESCO World Heritage Site, the rock art in Egypt is under immense risk of destruction by modern mining. Continue reading
Rock art and red-coated bedrock in Alta, Arctic Norway
Over the past few years Karin Tansem of the Alta World Heritage Rock Art Centre and I have investigated the hypothesis that the famous rock engravings in Alta originally was made on strongly red-coloured bedrock along the seashore. The post-glacial land uplift has subsequently displaced the rock art and the colour has almost completely waned, leaving the rocks dull grey, as we know them today. Now we are happy that our work is finally published as an open-access paper, with Karin as driving force and lead author, in the international journal Geoarchaeology! Here’s the abstract explaining the phenomenon and its implications, and a link to the full paper. Continue reading
Posted in New publications, Norway, Rock art
Tagged aesthetics, Alta, Alta rock art, Norway, red colour, rock art, sandstone, UNESCO World Heritage, weathering
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Gamle steinbrudd som UNESCO-verdensarv? En analyse
Det er nesten ingen gamle steinbrudd på UNESCOs verdensarvliste. Det er ikke bra, for steinbruddene var helt sentrale produksjonssteder for verktøy, husgeråd, våpen, boliger, kunst, monumenter – arkitektur – kort sagt en vesentlig del av hva som var viktig i gamle samfunn – og i dag: Store deler av verdens kulturarv er jo basert på brytning av stein. Spørsmålet er: Hvor går veien videre for gamle steinbrudd som verdensarvsteder? Kanskje Norge burde fremme en egen steinbruddsnominasjon? Eller kanskje dette rike landet burde hjelpe mindre bemidlede nasjoner med å få eldgamle steinbrudd inn på verdensarvlisten? Man kunne jo starte i Egypt, landet med den største konsentrasjonen av gamle steinbrudd i verden. Continue reading
Posted in Archaeology, Old quarries
Tagged Hyllestad, old quarries, UNESCO World Heritage
4 Comments
The ancient stone quarries in Egypt as a new, serial World Heritage Site?
Stone quarries were extremely important in ancient cultures, yet they are hardly represented on the World Heritage List. This might be due to misconceptions of the nature of such sites, as producers of raw materials “only”. But in reality many … Continue reading
Per Storemyr Geoarchaeology & Conservation 