Itaguy Guasu: a rock shelter with footprint and abstract engravings in The Cerro Guasú (Amambay, Paraguay); its context in South America

Abstract

This paper is the result of the project of the National Inventory of the Rock Art of Paraguay, with which we begin to fill the knowledge and archaeological research vacuum on rock art and the Archaic Period (Lower and Middle Holocene) in the
basin of Paraguay river. The paper presents one of the rock shelters catalogued in Cerro Guasú, and links the parietal engravings (petroglyphs) to the archaeological deposit of the rock shelter. This hill is Jasuka Venda, the sacred mountain of the Paî Tavyterâ, a Guaraní people whose traditional territory extended over the North of Eastern Paraguay and bordering areas of Brazil. This shelter contains more than one thousand and three hundred engravings representing animal and human footprints, vulvae and abstract signs.

The archaeological excavation performed resulted in an only occupation level, with lithic industry on planoconvex flakes (known as limaces or slug-shaped tools) and bifacial points. A hearth was discovered whose base was dated by TL in 5,212±323 BP, which refers to Middle Archaic / Holocene Period, to which we ascribe the engravings and, in general, all the ‘footprint style’ rock art inventoried in twelve sites in Paraguay. This absolute dating is the oldest one for this style or tradition in the continent, and it allows to think in Amambay as a core area in the elaboration and dissemination of the narrative and graphic topics of the footprint style rock art in south America, the only type of rock art present in the majority of the continent.