Rock art landscape of the central Saharan massifs. A contextual analysis of Round Heads style

Saharan rock art is undoubtedly one of the most renowned artistic expressions of Africa, as acknowledged by the international community. Up to now, this important heritage has not been adequately explored as a real informative archive of past living societies: its study has been indeed mainly focussed on chronological and stylistic issues. Recent investigations carried out on the rock art sites of the Messak and Tadrart Acacus massifs clearly demonstrate that an integrated perspective at a landscape scale constitutes a valid method of analysis both for specific archaeological issues (di Lernia et al. 2013) and cultural heritage management (di Lernia and Gallinaro 2011). Aim of this paper is to investigate one of the main debated rock art style, known as “Round Heads style”, in order to define possible patterns of Holocene occupation of the central Saharan massifs through the analysis of shared cultural traits and the use of the space. The rock art sites will be analysed taking into account both stylistic and technical aspects as well as topographical and geomorphological settings and their relationship with the settlement models proposed in base of archaeological research. A first phase of analysis will be performed on the whole archive of the rock art sites from the Tadrart Acacus, recorded by “the Italian-Libyan Archaeological Mission in the Acacus and Messak (central Sahara)”. A further step of analysis will be run on the published rock art contexts from the adjacent region of the Tassili n’Ajjer.