Rock paintings, soot, and the practice of marking places. A case study in North-Central Chile

Abstract The study of rock art production has been traditionally focused either on the tools used in the process and/or in the components of rock paintings. In this paper we consider the role of fire and soot as substances that participated in the dynamic process of rock art making by Late Holocene hunter-gatherers from the Limari River Basin (North-Central Chile). Through Optical Microscopy, Raman Spectroscopy and SEM-EDS analyses, together with traditional strategies of rock art recording and radiocarbon dating of paintings, soot and materials recovered from a stratigraphic excavation, we study how fire and soot structured the practice of rock art making in Alero Cachaco. The results show that the deposition of soot on the walls and ceiling of the rockshelter, produced by fire associated with daily activities of the communities that inhabited it, covered paintings, leading people to re-paint the rockshelter for almost 3000 years.