Cattle without herdsmen: Animal and human beings in the prehistoric rock art of the Western Sahara Joaquim Soler * , Narcís Soler Universitat de Girona, Plaça Ferrater i Mora, 1,17071 Girona, Spain article info Article history: Available online xxx Keywords: Sahara Western Sahara Rock art Prehistory African Neolithic abstract Because of the scarcity and discontinuity of the archaeological excavations in the Western Sahara, rock- art appears to be one of the most relevant sources of information in order to discuss the subsistence, technology and ideology of the neolithic communities. However, in contrast to what we would expect from the evident pastoral scenes depicted on the Central Saharan rock art, the Western Saharan art of Neolithic age is dominated by wild or isolated animals. The pastoral scenes always are more uncertain to describe than the hunting scenes, which are also marginal but easier to interpret. In the current state of the research, the nature of the Western Saharan Neolithic, the putative age of the images, and the type of information expected from rock art should be questioned. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The rock art studies in the Western Sahara were initiated with the Spanish colonization (Asensio, 1930) and experienced two waves of intense discoveries in the 1940s and 1970s. The research on field was interrupted in 1975 with the Spanish withdrawal after the Moroccan occupation and the consequent Sahrawi liberation war. In 1995, after the cease-fire of 1991, the University of Girona, in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture of the Western Sahara, started research, which has been mostly focused in the study and preservation of the rock art (Soler et al., 1999). At this moment, other teams are developing also promising research on the archaeology of the Western Sahara (Brooks et al., 2003; Mu~ niz, 2005; S aenz de Buruaga 2013e2014 in the zone under the con- trol of the Polisario Front, and Al-Khatib et al., 2008, in the Moroccan occupied territory) or analyzing documents obtained before the war (Balbín and de Bueno, 2009). Since then, hundreds of painted rock shelters and engraved slabs have been recorded (Soler, 2007). The rock paintings have been most intensively studied and, therefore, we are in condition to trace the regional rock art evolution. The analysis of many of the engraved slabs of Sluguilla Lawash, which is a major rupestrian site of the Western Sahara, is still in process. The stylistic methods we have employed have been proved useful to define a sequence of new pictorial regional styles, which inform about the technological, economical, ideological and ecological evolution of the prehistoric Western Sahara, particularly during the Neolithic. However, the paintings of the Zemmur, which are a very rele- vant ensemble in the regional context and are characterized by abundant depictions of human and animal beings, may not repre- sent enough pastoral scenes to properly describe the economic nature of the Western Saharan Neolithic (and non-agricultural). In the absence of well-dated and rich archaeological sequences, the missing iconographic evidence about the relation between Neolithic and pastoralism represents a serious obstacle towards the description of the economic basis of the Western Saharan Neolithic. In the past, rock art research contributed to the controversy on the nature of the Saharan Neolithic, particularly because of the early dichotomy established rock art researchers as Frobenius, Reygasse, Huard, Leclant, Allard-Huard, Mori and others between images belonging either to hunter or to pastoral communities (Le Quellec, 2008). That pioneer research alluded to a supposed absence of do- mestic animals in some groups of images to distinguish a supposed art of hunters from a supposed art of herders. Furthermore, the scholars already associated the existence of such a pastoral tradi- tion with the aesthetically decadent and low naturalistic de- pictions, in contraposition to a hunters' art tradition full of details and naturalism. Later, the discussion overflowed the aesthetic domain and the iconographic arguments were expanded to the rest of the material culture. A Saharan cultural group of hunters was defined after the * Corresponding author. E-mail address: joaquim.soler@gmail.com (J. Soler). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.09.068 1040-6182/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e10 Please cite this article in press as: Soler, J., Soler, N., Cattle without herdsmen: Animal and human beings in the prehistoric rock art of the Western Sahara, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.09.068