The Painted Shelters of Korien Hardanga (Ennedi, Chad) (original) (raw)

The Chiguéou II rock art site revisited (Ennedi, Chad)

Zenodo, 2016

The Chiguéou II site, located in the southwestern sector of the Ennedi, was first reported in 1956 by Gérard Bailloud, who documented two large engraved cattle figures, which coats are decorated with intricate geometric motifs. These monumental figures are not the sole rock art present at Chiguéou II; this site hosts some more engraved cattle figures remarkable for their large dimensions plus many faded paintings attributable to the recent cattle and camel periods, which were not published at the time of the first reporting but deserve to be added to the inventory.

Idiosyncratic paintings from a distant past in Sivré I (Ennedi, Chad)

EXPRESSION N°31, 2021

Despite the variety of motifs documented in the Ennedi rock art tradition, dating from the mid-Ho- locene to the present day, representations of fantastic entities seem extremely rare. The pre-Islamic beliefs in an impersonal creator god and ancestor worship (Fuchs 1961; Tubiana 1964), along with an overt veneration for cattle, explain the rock art’s secular ap- pearance, referred to as the pastoral period (Menardi Noguera 2018). The much older paintings from the pre-pastoral peri- od (the archaic period in the local rock-art terminol- ogy (Bailloud, 1997)), include representations of hu- mans and a selection of African fauna, exceptionally extended to the aquatic realm (Gauthier and Gauthier 2019). At first glance, this ancient art seems primari- ly motivated by interest or fear. The represented ani- mals are the best possible game, like the elephants and giraffes, or the most dangerous, like the big cats, as expected from ecological studies of ancient and con- temporaneous hunter-gatherers’ behavior (Halfon and Barkai 2020, Bugir et al. 2021).

The painted shelter of Baradergolo I revisited (Ennedi Chad)

2022

The rock art site of Baradergolo I is home to many paintings, recorded mainly by direct tracing in 1957. A new digital photographic survey of the entire site has confirmed the excellent quality of these historical reproductions, revealing further details and completing the inventory of existing paintings, most of which date from the Final Cattle and Ancient Camel periods. The earliest paintings consist of a few faded paintings from the early pastoral or archaic periods and a single Hohou style figure.

The Gherbescina painted shelters (Ennedi, Chad)

Les Cahiers de l'AARS, 2014

Hiking along the old trails detected by interpreting the satellite images of Wadi Baba, east of the most explored region in the Ennedi, resulted in the survey of two major painted shelters at high elevations, one particularly significant for the very rare painted elephants it contains, attributable to the Sivré style. En randonnée le long des anciennes pistes détectées par les images satellitaires de Wadi Baba, à l’est de la région la mieux connue de l’Ennedi, on a relevé deux grands abris peints à haute altitude, dont un particulièrement important pour les très rares éléphants peints qu’il contient, attribuable au style de Sivré.

Flocks of sheep in the rock art of the Ennedi (Chad)

Les Cahiers de l'AARS - N°21, 2020

The study of several painted shelters reveals the importance of sheep herds in Ennedi, suggesting a shift from a cattle-oriented pastoral system to dependence on small livestock. This response to aridification eventually led to a production system based on camels, sheep and goats, similar to the one in place today.

The Chéïré-1 painted shelter (Ennedi, Chad)

Zenodo

Chéïré-1 is a large painted shelter located in the SW sector of the Ennedi, east of the renewed Wadi Archeï guelta, particularly rich with fine paintings portraying the cattle herders who inhabited the region during the early Iron Age. Chéïré-1 was discovered during the 1997 winter by Andrea Bonomo. Revisited in March 2014, the site was fully documented using cross-polarized flash lights, a basic photographic technique first introduced in rock art studies by Henderson (2002). In all, 485 motifs have been referenced and indexed after image enhancement by D-Stretch (Harman, 2002). Chéïré-1 est un grand abri peint situé dans le secteur sud-ouest de l'Ennedi, à l'est de la célèbre guelta du Wadi Archeï, particulièrement riche de belles peintures dépeignant les éleveurs de bétail qui ont habité la région dans la premier âge du fer.