One of the most outstanding elements of world cultural heritage is rock art. Whether of additive (painting) or subtractive (engraving) nature, rock art often provides the only remaining graphic traces of prehistoric world views. Iberia is rich in rock art, with an extensive record of sites and a remarkable diversity of styles. This includes both Palaeolithic art (with two UNESCO World Heritage sites in Altamira and Foz Côa) as well as late prehistoric art (Neolithic, Copper Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age) with a host of styles and media (Levantine, Schematic, Macro-Schematic, petroglyphs, ‘megalithic’ art, engraved stelae, etc.) and hundreds of recorded sites. Going all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century (Breuil and Burkitt, 1929), the literature on Iberian late prehistoric rock art is quite extensive, including several hundred papers and dozens of monographs (syntheses in Beltrán Martínez, 1982; Peña Santos, 2001; Escoriza Mateu, 2002; Cruz Berrocal, 2005; Díaz-Guardamino, 2010; García Arranz et al., 2012; Bettencourt et al., 2017). Regarding archaeoastronomical studies, the very development of this approach is linked to the Iberian archaeological record (e. g., Belmonte, 1999; Belmonte and Hoskin, 2002).

Despite this long history of research, recent methods have provided fresh key evidence to understand Iberian late prehistoric rock art under a new light. Examples of this abound, including the use of digital technologies (Díaz-Guardamino et al., 2015; Cerrillo Cuenca et al., 2019), the application of analytical methods to date and characterise pigments (Carrera Ramírez and Fábregas Valcarce, 2002; Rogerio-Candelera et al., 2018) and specific discoveries providing empirical backing to long-held hypotheses, such as the association of engraved stelae to pathways and burials (Rivera Jiménez et al., 2021; García Sanjuán et al., 2025). Therefore, the re-examination of sites published long ago can lead to improved results and a new understanding of graphical techniques, chronologies and traditions.

In this paper, we present one such case. Discovered more than thirty years ago (Iglesias García et al., 1992; Chacón Cano et al., 1995), the site of El Riscal stands today as the only rock art station known in the province of Seville (Andalusia, Spain), a territory otherwise very rich in late prehistoric archaeological remains. Located near the village of El Madroño, in the northwestern area of the Seville province (Fig. 1), El Riscal is located at 368 masl (Fig. 2), crowned by a 3rd class survey point, very near the boundary with the province of Huelva.

From a geomorphological perspective, the hill top is a ‘tor’-like rocky outcrop with huge boulders exhibiting ruiniform morphology (Migoń et al., 2017) mainly due to thermoclasty. Geologically, the site is located in the South Portuguese Zone, within the Iberian Massif (Fig. 1A). This large palaeogeographic area extends from the Ossa-Morena Zone in the north, to the most recent formations of the Guadalquivir basin in the south. It presents rocks ranging from the Middle Devonian to the Permian and is divided into five palaeogeographic domains, namely 1) Pulo de Lobo Domain; 2) the Iberian Pyrite Belt; 3) the Southwest Portuguese Domain; 4) the Sierra Norte Batholith and 5) the Permian Viar Basin (Fig. 1B).

The Iberian Pyrite Belt (IPB) is located in the central part of the South Portuguese Zone, within a pull-apart intracontinental marine basin filled by a sequence of predominantly felsic volcanic rocks with abundant siliciclastic intercalations, deposited on a shallow marine platform sequence (Conde Rivas, 2016). The IPB is divided into the Phyllite-Quartzite Group (PQ Group) (Med.-Upper Famenian); Volcanic-Sedimentary Complex (VSC) (Upper Famenian-Middle Visean) and Flysch-type Sequence (Culm Group) (Upper Visean) (Fig. 1B).

The VSC is composed of two felsic subunits separated by a massive black shale sulfide horizon. The lower subunit shows pyroclastic features, consisting of dacitic crystalline and vitric tuffs interbedded with a sequence of volcanic shales. The upper subunit is composed of dacite sills, domes and volcaniclastic deposits with subordinate rhyolitic sills and cryptodomes, and rare basic volcanics (Almodóvar et al., 1998). The northern sector of the Pyrite Belt (volcanic sequence), presents a stratigraphic sequence that includes an important basal andesite unit followed by basalt flows and intrusions in sedimentary intercalations and two felsic dome-roof units (Conde Rivas, 2016). In the study area, andesites appear, overlying the alternation of slates, silstones, meta-sandstones and quartzites and underlying the basalts with levels of black slates with radiolarians (Fig. 1C).

Today, El Riscal hill is covered by Mediterranean vegetation dominated by Quercineae (Quercus ilex, Q. suber, Q. rotundifolia) and Cistaceae (Cistus ladanifer, C. salviifolius). The Cistaceae, particularly, cover densely the terrain, and following the spring rains, access to the rock art station is rendered difficult. The boulders compose a sheltered structure, a “Poor Man’s Cave” of sorts (Chacón Cano et al., 1995), with inner and outer spaces in which some of the surfaces were engraved. The first publication of the site (Iglesias García et al., 1992) revealed seven engraved panels (designated as CR1-CR7), arranged in several parts of the shelter. After that publication, the same authors (Chacón Cano et al., 1995) redefined the engravings as belonging to three groups, basically two decontextualized ones (CR1 and CR7), and one group including the rest, although no graphical illustration of the panels were provided.

The purpose of this paper is to present new research, based on a multidisciplinary approach and non-invasive methods, aimed at providing a new understanding of the El Riscal engravings. The results lead not just to a greatly improved record of the engraved surfaces and motifs in themselves, but also to a new analysis and assessment of a little-known rock art style that has hardly ever been documented in southern Iberia.

The multi-method approach followed in this study was intended to a) enhance the visual record of the motifs; b) detect possible painted areas and characterize possible pigments; c) generate new contextual renderings of the engravings in order to produce updated tracings suitable for a spatial analysis; d) analyse the archaeoastronomical dimension of the site, and e) provide archaeological background through archaeological survey of the immediate surroundings.

The empirical evidence gathered for this study greatly expands previously published descriptions of the rock art present at El Riscal. The new renderings of the motifs and the more precise contextualisation of the panels across the topography of the shelter point to a complex rock art station, with ‘indoor’ and ‘outdoor’ engraved panels. Two kinds of engravings were identified: U-section circular motifs, and V-section linear grid designs. An important observation concerns the evidence of overlapping and over-cutting of the engraved motifs in some of the panels, which points to an extended use of the shelter. Two major types of motifs were found, which can be tentatively grouped in two differentiated ‘phases’ or ‘graphic horizons’ (although the chronological implications of these ‘phases’ are far from clear). Horizon 1 is characterised by the presence of circular figures, sometimes with concentric circles (CR1, CR2, CR5, CR6a, and CR7). Conversely, Horizon 2 is predominantly composed of intricate grid designs (CR3, CR4 and CR6b). It is noticeable that the two ‘phases’ are not mixed and do not occupy the same panels. The formal differences between the motifs of these panels could also be attributable to functional or symbolic variations, and not chronological.

Some of these engravings, in particular CR2 and CR4 panels, show a peculiar reddish colour. However, subsequent analysis has failed to detect any traces of paint. The red colouration is hypothesised to result from thermal transformation of some of the rock minerals, possibly induced by recent wildfires.

High-resolution archaeological survey of the shelter and its immediate surroundings provided some surface findings potentially compatible with activity between the Neolithic and the Iron Age. Particularly, the non-siliceous stone utensil and the stone hammer point to a chronology between the Neolithic and the Copper Age, although later chronologies cannot be ruled out. Only future numerical dating of samples obtained through excavation will allow a more precise chronology of the site.

El Riscal currently stands as the only rock art location published for the province of Seville. In Constantina (Seville), some 120 km to the east, a geological site with marine fossils (jellyfish dating to the Cambrian period) called Piedra Escrita (’Written Stone’) was wrongly interpreted as a rock art station until recently (Mayoral et al., 2004). But in the province of Huelva, not far from El Riscal, there are other rock art sites with engraved motifs. These include Los Aulagares (Del Amo, 1974, with updated photographic documentation in Escacena, 2018), in the municipality of Zalamea la Real, some 20 km as the crow flies from El Madroño; Las Tierras (Belén Deamos, 1974), in the municipality of Villanueva de los Castillejos, and Los Azulejos (Pérez Macías, 1988), in the municipality of Santa Ana la Real. The graphic renderings available for these rock art sites follow publication standards of the 1970s, wherein the 2D tracing presents the existing engravings without any consideration of the supporting rock characteristics or shapes. They are mostly based on direct, naked-eye, hand-made tracings, often without the use of a minimum reference scale.

Formally, the engravings at El Riscal are completely different from those at Los Azulejos (Fig. 10C) which are more closely related to the repertoire of the Spanish painted schematic rock art. The art present at Horizon 1 at El Riscal holds a considerable formal similarity to that found at Los Aulagares (Fig. 10A), or even Las Tierras (Fig. 10B), in which circular shapes are clearly predominant. In particular, panel CR1 (Fig. 7A), including the circular motifs arranged vertically, displays a clear similarity to the motifs engraved at Los Aulagares. Interestingly, at least two circular shapes are shown in the tracing of Los Azulejos provided by Pérez Macías (1988) (Fig. 10C).

Given the lack of precise dating and the dearth of background information on prehistoric rock art for the western Andalusian provinces of Seville and Huelva, it is difficult to contextualise the style recorded at El Riscal within the wider Iberian framework. In general, painted rock art of the schematic style is quite abundant across central and southern Spain (Acosta Martínez, 1968; Martínez García, 2022). To the east of El Riscal, schematic rock art abounds in the provinces of Málaga (Maura Mijares, 2011) and Córdoba (Bernier Luque, 1969); to the north, in Badajoz (León and García Verdugo, 1984; Domínguez García and Aldecoa Quintana, 2007); and to the south-east, in Cádiz (Breuil and Burkitt, 1929; Topper and Topper, 1988; Carreras Egaña and Caballero García, 2006). And yet, save for Los Azulejos, this style is conspicuous by its absence in Huelva and Seville (and, further to the west, in Portugal). The El Riscal motifs, like those at Los Aulagares, are formally more akin to the engraved motifs, usually described as petroglyphs, found in north-west Iberia (Peña Santos, 2001; Bettencourt et al., 2017) or the British Isles (Bradley, 2023), where circles in isolation or forming complex arrangements are common.

Thus, a non-comprehensive list of rock art sites with motifs similar to those found at El Riscal should include Outeiro dos Lameiros (Baiona), Pedra da Serpe (Valga), A Pedreira 2 (Caldas de Reis), Monte Xiabre 2, and Sobreiras 4 and 5 (Vilagarcía de Arousa) (Cabrejas Domínguez et al., 2008), or Aldea Deiro (Vila Nova de Arousa) in Galicia; and others such as Monte das Fortes, and O Escarabelhão (Valença do Minho) (Bacelar Alves and Reis, 2017), Moulães, Pereiras, and Monte da Porqueira 2-3 (Monção), Penedo dos Sinais (Valdez and Oliveira, 2005-2006), Quinta do Paço (Cardoso, 2013), and Citânia dos Briteiros (Guimarães), or Laje dos Sinais (Carvalhas-Barcelos) (Cardozo, 1951) and Pedra Escrita (Serrazes) (Sobrino Lorenzo-Rua, 1957) in northern Portugal. These and more examples are published in the website “Megaliticia”³. The recent discovery of engraved stelae of the ‘warrior’ type in Huelva (Rivera Jiménez et al., 2021; García Sanjuán et al., 2025), firmly places this territory within the general background of the late prehistoric stelae known along the basins of the main Iberian rivers draining into the Atlantic (the Guadalquivir, Guadiana and Tagus). Therefore, it is unsurprising that the best analogues for the motifs found at El Riscal are not found in the Levantine or schematic styles, which are deeply-rooted in central, southern and eastern Spain, but rather from the western tradition visible in northern Portugal and Galicia.

Atlantic and schematic art represent two distinctive rock art traditions within Iberia, and (variously arranged) circles are a pervasive image, strongly characteristic of the former (Bacelar Alves, 2012, p. 198). In this sense, it is worth noting that circles (often concentric) interpreted as ‘shields’ are one of the most recurrent motifs in late prehistoric ‘warrior’ stelae, a form of rock art of strong Atlantic distribution (Hernando Grande, 1976; Díaz-Guardamino, 2010). They are also found in the ‘megalithic art’ present in the Soto dolmen (Trigueros, Huelva), located 60 km to the south-west of El Riscal (Obermaier, 1924). The reticulate motifs are also present in a variate sample of Atlantic rock art sites, as those already quoted of Monte dos Fortes, O Escarabelhão, Pereiras, and others.

Certainly, the interpretation of rock art encompasses a multitude of factors beyond the formal variability of the motifs. Landscape settings, context and association to other archaeological remains carry as much interpretative weight, or more, than the motifs themselves. In the case of Huelva, however, the presence of schematic (Los Azulejos) and Atlantic (El Riscal) rock art within the same territory points to the kind of ‘border’ or ‘fringe’ interaction between styles already noted for Galicia (Bradley and Fábregas Valcarce, 1998, 1999) and, with a different definition, in other areas (Bueno Ramírez et al., 2009; Collado Giraldo and García Arranz, 2013; Santos-Estévez et al., 2020). Needless to say, we do not conceive the term ‘border’ in a literal sense (as in the political border of a modern state, for example) but rather as a zone of transition between regions where different styles prevail. This is consistent with the very geographical position of sites like El Riscal or Los Azulejos, which are within the Atlantic hydrological domain, but relatively adjacent, and well connected, with the Mediterranean.

Though it is tempting to try to ‘identify’, or connect, the circles as specific forms (whether they be landforms, shields or other artefacts or more abstract ideas), and there is no shortage of such interpretations in the literature–Iberian late prehistoric stelae are a supreme example of this–, no attempt will be made here to it. While greatly enhanced, the new ‘image’ of El Riscal is still partly blurred, as chronology and context are yet poorly understood. Regardless of the specific meanings, which of course would have changed over time, the site appears to have remained a local focus of activity for an extended period of time. As noted for north-west Iberia, in the Bronze Age and Iron Age, new carvings were certainly created or added onto previously existing motifs, a process of renewal or re-appropriation of sites and pasts (Bacelar Alves, 2012, p. 208).

This phenomenon could well have been connected with the periodical frequentation of the site at specific times of the year. The archaeoastronomical analysis shows that some of the engravings may have been illuminated at particularly relevant moments during the year. In this regard, the CR3 engravings appear as particularly interesting, and the location seems to have been chosen so that they could be illuminated during a period of time each day in the course of the winter months. In Iberia, a similar phenomenon has been noted at A Ferradura, in Galicia, north-west Spain (García Quintela and Santos Estévez, 2008), as well as in other places, like inside the chamber of some megalithic tombs in Ireland (see Prendergast et al., 2017 for a recent review). Elsewhere, it is worth mentioning Fajada Butte (New Mexico, USA) (Sofaer et al., 1979; Williamson, 2015). This suggests that there might have been ritual areas connected to specific periods of interest for the people who made the engravings. It would also be interesting to verify whether Area 2 would be directly lit a few hours after the winter solstice sunrise.

Fresh, multi-disciplinary research undertaken between 2022 and 2024 at El Riscal (Seville, south-west Spain) has greatly expanded the understanding of this remarkable site, further emphasizing its importance to comprehend the geographical distribution of Iberian rock art traditions and styles, and providing suggestive evidence that underlines its pervasive significance through time. The results presented demonstrate the importance of re-studying specific rock art sites in the light of novel methods and techniques. Furthermore, they underscore the need for additional research to address new, more precise questions.