Nouvel essai de classification et de structuration des motifs des gravures rupestres du Haut Atlas (vallee de l'Ourika, Maroc) Atlas Mountains (Ourika ... Morocco) [An article from: L'Anthropologie]

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Description:
We have been sometimes forced to notice that there are forgotten rupestral arts: until recently, they were only studied by explorers or informed travellers and are rarely reported in the scientific literature. This is in part the case of engravings in the Moroccan High Atlas to which I have devoted my research (Ezziani, 2002, 2004a, 2004b). J Malhomme is among the people who were most invested in their investigation. He spent ten years in noting and collecting a considerable number of engravings: more than one thousand figures dispersed on the sides of the Atlas in places of difficult access at more than 2000 masl. He published many papers about his discoveries, which led to the publication of a remarkable corpus in two parts (Malhomme, 1959-1961). However, this corpus is far from being exhaustive. Recently, A. Rodrigue carried out new and excellent drawings within his research activity (1996). He added to the corpus of Malhomme a large number of figures discovered by A. Simoneau (1967, 1968, 1970), A. Jodin (1964, 1966) (two other researchers who have been closely interested in the High Atlas engravings) and himself, but unfortunately some engravings were damaged: whole flagstones have disappeared, so that the original drawings from Malhomme still remain very useful. All these data constituted the documentation base of my own work. In this paper, first I review some classification methods, then I propose my own and point out the inherent difficulties in this task. I conclude with a proposal for an outline of the structure of the High Atlas engravings.