5 Bodily Attributes and Semantic Expressions Knees in rock art and Indo-European symbolism Åsa C. Fredell and Marco V. García Quintela In this article we consider the problems relating to the interpretation of rock engravings, from inding more or less deceptive evidence to the diiculty of making sense of many igures. We propose a dual form of investigation to surpass those diiculties; on the one hand an ordered systematic treatment of the corpus of images that we are trying to explore, on the other hand the consideration of the linguistic and mythological Indo-European registry (valid for populations speaking this family of languages). hese approaches are, theoretically, independent, and would be possible to develop independently. Nevertheless, we propose to study whether their joint use reveals their double utility and complementariness. Our study aims to show how the rock art images represent the ambiguity of warriors, between the expression of force and violence (death) to their capacity of fertile reproduction (life). Introduction One of the accepted facts shared by academics working with rock art is the diiculty involved in correctly interpreting the images that are represented. Particularly, when we are faced with carvings made by existing populations or those that have a certain degree of cultural continuity with those made in the not-too-distant past, we may have relatively irm interpretative references. However, this is simply not the case with most of Europe’s pre- or proto-historic carvings. For this reason, it is no surprise that arguments arise when attempting to identify precise dates, making eforts to catalogue the materials, or carrying out research to obtain contextual information: what type of society made the carving, if there were individual artists, what activities took place around the carved rocks, or whether the images were realistic or symbolic. All of these factors are added to the work that has to be carried out in treating the carvings as historical heritage. One common theme shared by these researchers is that the motifs shown hardly require any type of efort in order to be interpreted. his is either because they are