Save Guadiana rock art

Robert G. Bednarik auranet@optusnet.com.au

Guadiana petroglyph

This bovid figure is one of tens of thousands that have now been destroyed in the Guadiana valley. Photograph courtesy Footsteps of Man, Italy.

In late April 2001 a Portuguese NGO called Liga para a Proteccao da Natureza announced that there is a large body of rock art in the Guadiana valley, after receiving an anonymous tip-off. The large team of archaeologists working in the area to be destroyed by the Alqueva dam, about 100 of them, claimed that they never noticed the rock art, even though impact studies began in 1985 (under the aegis of the Instituto Portugues de Arqueologia, IPA, since its formation in 1996).

There are two possibilities: either the archaeologists knew of the rock art and kept silent about it so as not to prevent the construction of the massive Alqueva dam (largest man-made lake of Europe, completed at the end of 2001), or they did not know about it. The second possibility does not sound very plausible, and it needs to be remembered that the rock art became known because of an anonymous tip-off (presumably from one of the archaeologists).

The alternative, that the archaeologists concealed the existence of the rock art, is too ghastly to contemplate. But it must be remembered that this happened many times before in Portuguese archaeology, for instance in the case of the Coa rock art corpus, discovered in 1992, concealed from the public until a chance discovery by officials of the International Federation of Rock Art Organisations (IFRAO) in late November 1994. This led to the Coa campaign and the cessation of dam construction, at great cost to the Portuguese taxpayers. Similarly, construction of yet another reservoir that is to destroy rock art, in the Sabor valley, has proceeded for several years, under conditions of secrecy and with the full approval of the IPA. In fact the destruction of rock art with the full approval of archaeologists has been endemic in Portugal since the time of dictatorship.

When the Guadiana rock art was announced the IPA defended its destruction explicitly, stating that it is not of adequate importance to preserve. But the Guadiana complex of more than 600 sites is much larger than any remaining rock art concentration in Portugal, being in fact one of the largest in Europe. Moreover, IPA opposed and ridiculed the efforts of IFRAO to organise international opposition to the dam and to secure proper recording, and it sabotaged its campaign, heaping abuse on the committees and office holders not only of IFRAO, but also of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP). As a result of this abuse, the Portuguese government was flooded with official complaints from embassies and individuals, and its Director was sued for defamation.

Within a few weeks of the announcement of the Guiadiana rock art, the responsible Minister for Culture was sacked by the government. In early 2002, the archaeologist in charge of the Guadiana project resigned. On 6 May 2002, the new government of Portugal announced the downgrading of IPA and forshadowed further changes to Portuguese archaeology. The Director of IPA resigned immediately.

None of this helps the rock art of the Guadiana, condemned to inundation under billions of tonnes of lake sediment as the reservoir silts up over the next 70 years. The nation of Portugal has the same choice it faced in 1995: to needlessly pay a vast sum of money for preserving a significant heritage property, or to lose this heritage forever. But while the Coa mistake only cost in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars, this time the bill would be in the billions. The only hope of the massive rock art corpus on the Guadiana, one of the largest concentrations in Europe, is international intervention. The now completed dam was built largely with European Union funding, and the responsible EU administrators deserve condemnation for providing such generous funding for a large project without proper impact study.

IFRAO has established an international petition to save the Guadiana rock art, and by signing it you can contribute to this desperate effort. Other initiatives include IFRAO's demand that the Guadiana rock art, if it cannot be saved, be at least properly recorded in accordance with international standards IFRAO has detailed.

Please help us to save the rock art heritage of Europe.
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A PDF file (728 KB) of the petition to the Portuguese government and the European Union can be viewed here.

An open letter to the former director of the authority responsible for the destruction of the Guadiana rock art can be viewed at this site, a PDF file of 237 KB.

Please visit SOS Rock Art, a site dedicated to listing the most threatened rock art sites in the world.

AURANET

The Homepage of the Australian Rock Art Research Association (AURA)

Guadiana Petition

Please sign the international petition to save the Guadiana rock art in Portugal

Damned dams again

Article describing the Portuguese practice of state vandalism

Guadiana diary

Diary of the destruction of the Guadiana rock art

Join this group

Applications from new members

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