Paleoarte y naturalezaanálisis historiográfico del paisaje neandertal

Abstract

This thesis starts with a conceptual and methodological mise en scène of the artistic discipline called Paleoart, which is the one that makes visible, through images, the study material that we need so as to analyze a shift in our visions on the Neanderthal and its landscape throughout history. We undertake the dogmatic task of disserting on the nature of Paleoart as public art, as well as on its history, methodology, tools, issues and sources of various kinds that launch its historiographical, landscape and informative work. We also address the paradigm of the concept of Nature and Landscape embedded in culture, History, Geography and Art History, to assemble Paleoart on the artistic journey of the paleolandscape. In the second part of the thesis, a critical review of the Neanderthal concept and its landscape is performed from the various iconographic materials, and from our own paleoanthropological and paleobotanical results, also taking into account the derivations and changes that it has experienced throughout of Science and according to the fossil records and the latest arguments of each period of iconographic expression. The fossil records are framed in correlation with the scientific discipline that solves them and in their historical, geographical, social and cultural context. A series of paleoartistic works on the Neanderthal and their environment are also selected to be discussed individually, articulated and exhaustively, according to their historical and landscape framework and according to the latest discoveries that gave rise to graphic representation. In such revision, emphasis is dually placed on the paleolandscape: on the one hand, revisiting the records of the landscape past, disserting on the reconstruction of Neanderthal ecosystems and, on the other hand, bringing to the bulk of the thesis works and empirical methods of paleolandscape expression. In this context we propose our own studies, both scientific illustration and Paleoart, with paleovegetation catenas and reconstructions of prehistoric landscape developed by the PhD student herself together with her research team. Some of them have been presented in prestigious International Congresses, and published in highly-cited international journals. These proposals are the result of her work under the auspicies of ongoing research projects led by the research team, ECCE HOMO (Evolution, Cenozoic, Quaternary, Ecology HOMO), at Research Group E005-11, University of Murcia. This thesis also provides a discussion about the current state of the aforementioned iconographic vision, proposing a methodological adaptation for future paleoartistic works on the Neanderthal landscape.