Carrazeda de Ansiães    Archeology

Cachão da Rapa is undoubtedly one of the most important sites of Portuguese prehistoric cave painting. The paintings are organized on the smooth, vertical plane of a granite panel over 4 meters high. On this surface, there is a sequence of schematic motifs with a predominance of rectangular and square geometric shapes expressed in shades of ocher red and dark blue, almost black. The geometrical inspiration of the authors of such manifestation gives the artistic set a unique peculiarity in the prehistoric painting of the Portuguese territory. Santos Júnior, one of the authors who studied the archaeological context of the cave paintings at Cachão da Rapa in greater detail, relates the site to a material culture characterized by numerous fragments of ceramics and other artifacts whose description and typologies could allow their inclusion in a chronological horizon. between the Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age.