Italian Calcolithic

This work examines animals’ representations of the post-Palaeolithic rock art that can be found on walls of caves and shelters located in the Italian peninsula, along the Apennine ridge, and in the main islands. The rare represented animals are Neolithic cervids in hunting scenes and very schematic figures of quadrupeds, few birds and fishes, datable between Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. Representations of anthropomorphic and abstract figures are dominant. Images of horses and
riders, dogs and cervids, depicted more realistically and in motion, can be surely related to the Iron Age. After an analysis of evidence identified from Liguria to Sicily and the islands, attention is directed to the opposition of this lack of images in rock art, which are often located in places with a high symbolic and sacral value in addition to their function of controlling routes and territories, to the abundant frequency of domestic and wild animals’ remains observable in several cave and outdoor
sites surely related to cults and ritual offers. The sacred significance of deers, bulls (represented with protomes), canids, horses, can be observed too: as their presence in many mythologies and in Christian symbologies demonstrate, their symbolic meaning has been perpetuated until historical periods