Interpretation of Central Sahara Rock Art: an approach to The Round Head style

Abstract

In the last decades the study of Sahara rock art begun to have its own agenda within prehistoric research and to take off as an archaeological sub-discipline. Africa has gone from being seen as an empty continent to an autonomous source of culture, and the Sahara as a container of an immense cultural and artistic legacy whose scope researchers are only now starting to comprehend. This cultural and artistic legacy is the object of many studies aimed at understanding the specific contexts of art production. The characteristic style of Tètes Rondes is the one whose interpretation poses the most difficulties to researchers. For this reason it occupies an important part of this article. The lack of contextual information (material remains) that would help validate or refute hypotheses made by researchers and the importance of not settling for a ‘superficial’ reading of the images for the study of the art, are some of the aspects that will be examined. This article holds that to overcome some of these problems it is essential to use open-ended approaches that will allow initial premises not to be constrained from the offset by broader theoretical currents. Adapting the interpretative theories to the archaeological remains, and not the other way around, is fundamental to the improvement of our knowledge of the past.