The First Interpretative Theories

At the end of sixty years of researches carried on in several ways and by different scholars the first serious attempt to sum up and understand the rock art of the Valcamonica was made by Emmanuel Anati around 1960.

In those years the only archaeological findings at his disposal were the carved rocks themselves, so his work focused on trying to establish a line of succession for the engravings through the Ages, studying them from a stylistic point of view and, tanks to a patient work of comparison, trying to place them within the classical archaeological ages of Prehistory.

The result was a chronological table divided into stages and periods encompassing ten thousand years of history, from the Epipalaeolithic to our days.

The main stages of this cycle are:

• Epipaleolithic (around VIII-VI mill. B.C.)
• Neolithic (V-IV mill. B.C.)
• Copper Age (or Calcolithic - III mill. B.C.)
• Bronze Age (II mill. B.C.)
• Iron Age (I mill. B.C.)
• Roman period (I-V cent. A.D.)
• Middle Ages