Original article The rock art of Caraculo, Namibe province, Angola L’art rupestre de Caraculo, province de Namibe, Angola Benjamim Fernandes a, *, Sara Garceˆs a,b,c,d , Luiz Oosterbeek a,b,c,d a Instituto Terra e Memo´ria, Mac¸a˜o, Portugal b Instituto Polite´cnico de Tomar, Tomar, Portugal c Centro de Geocieˆncias, Universidade de Coimbra (u. ID73 – FCT), Coimbra, Portugal d Museu de Arte Pre´-Histo´rica e do Sagrado do Vale do Tejo, Mac¸a˜o, Portugal L’anthropologie 127 (2023) 103212 A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Available online 25 November 2023 Keywords: Rock art Hunter-gatherers Pastoralists Namibe (Angola) Holocene A B S T R A C T The province of Namibe, in south-western Angola, is rich in rock art, which is distributed throughout the region, from the municipality of Camucuio, with its Cipopilo sites, to the Caraculo area, which has the largest number of shelters with rock art. The distribution extends throughout the region, including the munici- pality of Virei, where the Citundu-Hulu shelter stands out, and the commune of Iona, with the Monte Negro rock art site. To date, the Caraculo region has the largest number of rock art sites identified in Angola. In this paper, we will discuss the general state of rock art studies in Namibe province and, of the various shelters found in the region. We will focus our study on four new sites firstly published in this paper, as they are a good illustration of the diversity of rock art in the region: Muliolila, Mu´ cua II, Kandombolo and Cikotoue. These four shelters were subjected to a digital documentation protocol that is fundamental to the preservation and understand- ing of these archaeological sites. The methodology involved the application of a digital documentation protocol that included digital photography of the site, panels, figures and surrounding landscape, digital image processing, enhancement of the visuali- sation and interpretation of the rock art images using DStretch1 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: ben.fernandes33@gmail.com (B. Fernandes). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect et e´ galement disponible sur www.em-consulte.com https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anthro.2023.103212 0003-5521/ C 2023 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.