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Alberto De Giuli, Ausilio Priuli The Wall Paintings of La Balma Dei Cervi in the Antigorio Valley (Lepontine Alps - Piedmont) The Alpine region is particularly rich in pre- historic evidence and especially in that one we usually define as “prehistoric art”. To the great “sanctuaries” of figurative art as Vallecamonica, Valtellina, the Asiago Plateau, the slopes of Baldo Mount and Bego Mount , who house thousands or even hundreds of thousands of figures, scenes and symbols, we have to add hundreds of sites characterized by small, medium or spo- radic figures and symbols, and especially by “smaller expressions” as cup-marks, graffiti and fusiform engravings made with re- peated scratches. This small valley, crossed by the river Every day we discover new sites and new Toce, connects with the Formazza Valley engravings, especially in places where the that, through the San Giacomo Pass (2313 engraving tradition with ritual function was m. asl), communicates with Switzerland not replaced until the complete coming of through the Bedretto Valley, while climbing Christianity. up the Devero Valley and the Arbola Pass One of the latest discoveries, in chrono- (2409 m. asl) we descend into the Valley logical order, has particular importance be- of Binn, or climbing up Valtendra Pass we cause it is not characterized by rock engrav- reach the Veglia Alp in the Divedro Valley, ings, but by many figurative red paintings, which in turn leads to the Simplon Pass. located in a place far away from the big There is no doubt that in the course of time sanctuaries of prehistoric art and which un- it has been an important communicating til now had shown almost exclusively cup- valley that allowed to communicate with marks, and so symbolic expressions, result of the Rhone Valley in the Valais part. the popular piety. The archaeological findings The geographical position in the Antigorio Valley The pictorial group of what we have called In the Antigorio Valley a series of archaeo- “Balma dei Cervi” is located in the middle logical findings were found, mainly from of Antigorio Valley, one of the valleys ori- Roman times, some prehistoric and proto- ented northwards of the Ossola Valley that historic ones and boulders with cup-marks. originates north of Domodossola and enters In the municipality of Crodo, in Arvenolo into the Lepontine Alps. area, there is a megalithic wall which is Adoranten 2013 89 called the “Devil’s Wall”. It was built with which is difficult to interpret and to date, large stones cut with the cugnere system. were found, while in the Cianciavero area The so called cugnere are large notches for lithic finds dated back to the final phase inserting wooden wedges, which, enlarg- of the Mesolithic period and consisting of ing because of water, smash the stones. tools, for the most part made of rock crystal This megalithic complex, whose functions and few ones made of flint, were found in a remain until now a mystery , seems to have seasonal camp of hunters. These mesolithic been built in Roman times. findings have typological comparisons with Between 1969 and 1973 in Molinaccio the lithic production found in Mergozzo. area grave goods dated back between the One can’t exclude that the Veglia area first century B.C. and the second century. hunters settled during the winter months in A.D. were found. the valley and along the shores of the lakes. At the alpine pasture Sass di Bar in The territory also provided evidence Cravegna, in 1935, a tomb of the second of figurative art, which it is certainly not century A.D. was found. quantitatively and typologically comparable At Mozzio other tombs of the first to the great alpine sanctuaries, but at the century A.D. and a grave with Campanian same time very important for the country. ceramic and a Gallic sword, dated back to Here the expressions of the figurative the second half of first century B.C., were rock art show geometric and schematic pat- found. terns or with cup-marks, as for example in There are Roman remains also in Baceno. the Piano di Crodo or Salecchio Superiore They were in tombs dated back to the sec- area and elsewhere. We would like to re- ond century AD, while from the Devero Alp port the recent and unpublished discovery comes a Marcus Aurelius coin (161-180 AD). of a stone with cup-marks found at Vova At Premia, in the locality of Prem, three Alp, at 1600 meters above sea level: it has grave complexes dated back to the Augus- about ten cup-marks, including one filled tan period were found. by a tuft of grass that once emptied ap- The oldest evidence until now discovered peared very large and deep (diameter 20 in the Antigorio Valley comes from the cm, depth 10 cm) and on the bottom had a Pontigei Alp: it is a fragment of a lithic ax, large number of white quartzite fragments, made of serpentine stone, which is dated which were certainly deposited for a ritual back to the Copper Age. A kind of axe that purpose. seems to have persisted up to the ancient The rock paintings, subject of this pre- Bronze Age. liminary note and discovered and reported At Marani Pass (2510 m asl), near “La in 2011 to the Archaeological Group of Bocchetta dell’Arbola” which connects Mergozzo and to the writers by Mr. Livio the Formazza Valley with the Binn Valley Lanfranchi, were the subject of a 2012 first and where findings from the Iron Age and analysis, but further study and stratigraphic from the Roman period were discovered, exploration in the site will be the subject of a bronze dagger blade of the Veruno type future interventions. (1600 - 1300 BC) which was broken in the The pictorial group was made along a upper part was found in a geode of quartz vertical rock, in a panoramic position over- crystals. looking the valley, sheltered by a large and So, if the permanent settlements in Ro- imposing balma (a rocky sheet), which has man times were fairly common among the protected and guaranteed the conserva- Ossola valleys, only a few sporadic findings tion of the paintings for several millennia. allows us to go back to the Copper Age and In fact, though surely during the winter to the Bronze Age. months the snow blown by the wind and For going back further in time we have the ice have always occupied the entire to go to Veglia Alp, where, at the Balm shelter, the height and the angle of the della Vardaiola, some pottery from the Iron balma did not allow the rain to drum on Age and the faint trace of a red painting, 90 Adoranten 2013 Fig. 1. The Balma of the deer the painted wall causing its erosion or de- the thin limestone crust on which they were tachment. painted. Under the long, and in some points, The images are distributed on a vertical deep rocky ledge there are many collapsed wall about 6 meters long, on a zone little boulders some of which have cup-marks more than 1 meter high. They are oriented of uncertain execution; at the end of the South-North and so facing west. rocky ledge there is the balma: a natural rock shelter with a projecting and high roof which houses the paintings . Geological survey In the light of the traces which indicated of the rock paintings the constant presence of ungulates, it came The rocks on which there are rock paintings naturally to call the place “Balma dei Cervi” belong to the group known in geological (“Balma of the deer”). literature under the name of mica schists of The paintings, made in red ocher and in Baceno: it is a mica schist with many lenses good condition and very visible, appeared of milky quartz, associated with veins and immediately of ancient workmanship. The lenses of various sizes of other fine-grained first sensation was that they were probably dark green rocks that are characterized by a works made with a fingertip after being basic chemism. dipped directly into the colored pigment; in In these leaden gray mica schist, charac- addition we have immediately also the feel- terized by silvery brightness, there are other ing that they had been realized in a short characteristic minerals, as wine garnets, rare lapse of time, if not probably even by the iron sulphides and millimetric patinas of same hand. blue - green copper oxides. Some of the paintings have appeared As in our case, sometimes the surfaces incomplete because of the detachment of have calcareous scales which appear as “natural plastering.” Adoranten 2013 91 Fig. 2. The first group of paintings The water evaporation of these saline so- according to the intentions of those who lutions along large surfaces causes a chemi- made them. cal deposition of microscopic calcite crystals The group of paintings starts with a red and of neo-formation aragonite, on which dot at eye-level and ends with another, it was possible to paint with natural colors, more or less at the same height, at the with excellent adhesion and resistance to opposite end, as if the two points indi- the degradation caused by the passing of cated the limits of the space that has to be time. painted. The dominant representations of the pic- torial complex are schematic anthropomor- Description of the paintings phic figures made with soft and rounded For the first time in the Alps, an entire wall lines and connected with dot-like ideo- of a large under rock shelter homes a set grams, maybe digital ones, and arranged of many images and ideograms associated into lines, double lines, geometric groups together and forming ,for those who made and “enclosures”.

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