Cosmic Engravings and Sanctuary Orientation: Astronomical Alignments in the Rock Art of Naquane

Carved into glacier-polished sandstone on the slopes of Pizzo Badile Camuno in northern Italy, the rock art of Naquane encodes one of prehistoric Europe’s most sophisticated relationships between human culture and celestial observation. Italy’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site and the first archaeological park established on Italian soil, Naquane preserves across 104 engraved rocks a visual record of how the ancient Camunians organised their sacred landscape, their ritual calendar, and their cosmological worldview around the movements of the sun, the shadows of their mountains, and the recurring theatres of light produced twice each year at the equinoxes.

Key Takeaways

UNESCO World Heritage designation: The Rock Drawings of Valcamonica (UNESCO Site No. 94) were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1979 under criteria C(iii) and C(vi), recognising over 140,000 symbols and figures carved across 8,000 years. Naquane, with its 104 engraved rocks in a 30-hectare park at Capo di Ponte, forms the heart of this inscription and the site of Italy’s first archaeological park, established in 1955.
The equinox hierophany: Twice a year, at the spring and autumn equinoxes, the shadow of Pizzo Badile projects a spectacular luminous phenomenon into the sky, while the setting sun simultaneously sends a focused beam of light through a deep cleft in La Concarena on the opposite side of the valley. This natural light event, which scholars consider fundamental to the Camunian theological system, is mirrored in the orientation of praying figures (oranti) at Naquane, which face La Concarena at equinox sunset.
Solar iconography across millennia: From Neolithic oranti raising their arms before solar disks, through Bronze Age radiate wheels and sun-chariot boats, to Iron Age Rosa Camuna symbols and rock inscriptions dedicated to Sol Divinus in the Roman period, the astronomical dimension of Camunian rock art spans the entire arc of the tradition and constitutes its most persistent religious theme.
Rock 1 as cosmological stage: The Grande Rupe (Rock 1) at Naquane, approximately 65 metres in length, centres on a Cretan-type labyrinth understood as an initiatic pathway, surrounded by ritual scenes including female dancers in funerary contexts, sun-chariot boats, cup marks, and praying figures. Angelo Fossati and others identify this rock as the most important area of cultic activity in the entire Valcamonica tradition.
Two sacred mountains, one theological axis: Pizzo Badile (east) and La Concarena (west), understood by ancient Camunians as masculine and feminine divine principles respectively, define the astronomical and cosmological axis of the middle valley. The greatest concentration of rock art in the world accumulates precisely between these two peaks, not by accident but as an expression of the sacred geography that made this terrain cosmologically significant.
Active archaeoastronomical research: The Capitello dei Due Pini at nearby Paspardo, subject to systematic solstice and equinox observations between 1997 and 1999 by Mario Codebò, Piero Barale, and colleagues, demonstrated that specific engraved rock sites in the Valcamonica tradition were positioned with deliberate attention to solar calendar events. Elena Gervasoni, Andrea Arca, and other researchers continue to develop this archaeoastronomical framework for Naquane itself.

Introduction: Reading the Sky from Stone

The sandstone outcrops of the Naquane National Park of Rock Engravings at Capo di Ponte, in the middle section of the Val Camonica in Lombardy, represent one of the densest accumulations of human marking on natural surfaces anywhere on earth. Across 104 glacier-polished rocks, the ancient Camunians — a pre-Roman people who occupied the valley from the Neolithic through the Iron Age and whose territory was absorbed by Rome in 16 BC — engraved a layered archive spanning roughly six thousand years of active use. The imagery ranges from hunters pursuing deer with dogs and warriors riding into combat, to women working looms, ritual labyrinths, priests in ceremonial attire, and the image long identified as the earliest known depiction of the antlered deity Cernunnos on Rock 70.

Yet the most enduring thread running through Naquane’s engraved surfaces is astronomical. Sun symbols proliferate across every chronological phase of the tradition. Praying figures orient themselves toward the equinoctial setting point in the mountains. The valley’s two dominant peaks — Pizzo Badile and La Concarena, facing each other across the valley floor like sentinels — produce recurring light phenomena at the equinoxes that ancient Camunians encoded as the central axis of their sacred geography. The cluster of rock art between these two mountains, the greatest known concentration of prehistoric engravings on earth, occupies a terrain that the Camunians understood as cosmologically privileged precisely because of what happened there twice a year when the sky and the stone of the mountains performed together.

Understanding Naquane as a sanctuary oriented toward the sky requires reading not just the symbols carved into individual rocks but the landscape as a whole: the positioning of the park on the hillside between two sacred mountains, the facing directions of ritual figures, the iconographic evolution of solar symbols from simple disks to complex rosette forms, and the explicit persistence of solar religious identity well into the Roman period, when Camunian solar deities received Latin names and inscriptions on the same valley walls their ancestors had been marking for millennia. This article traces that astronomical dimension through the evidence preserved at Naquane and across the broader Valcamonica tradition, drawing on the archaeoastronomical research that has progressively clarified the relationship between sky, stone, and ceremony in one of Europe’s most extraordinary prehistoric sanctuaries.

The World Heritage Sanctuary of Naquane: Site, Setting, and Chronological Framework

The Naquane National Park of Rock Engravings stands on the slopes of Pizzo Badile Camuno above Capo di Ponte, covering thirty hectares of chestnut, ash, and birch forest in the middle section of the Camonica Valley. Established in 1955 by the Archaeological Superintendence of Lombardy, it was the first archaeological park to be created in Italy and, in 1979, became the first Italian site to be inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The site forms the nucleus of the broader “Rock Drawings in Valcamonica” designation, UNESCO Site No. 94, inscribed under criteria C(iii) and C(vi) for its exceptional documentation of prehistoric customs and mentality and for the outstanding universal value of its cultural tradition. Together with seven other parks distributed along the valley, Naquane belongs to a protected complex that encompasses over 180 rock art sites across 24 municipalities, preserving a total of over 140,000 symbols and figures carved across eight thousand years of continuous engraving activity.

The engraved surfaces at Naquane are grey-purple Permian sandstone, heavily polished by the Würm glacier and presenting naturally smooth faces that the Camunians used as drawing surfaces by pecking with stone, bone, horn, and ivory tools. The 104 large rocks within the park range from modest slabs a few square metres in extent to the Grande Rupe (Rock 1), approximately 65 metres in length and covered with hundreds of superimposed figures representing every phase of the Camunian tradition. Archaeological chronology, developed through systematic survey by Emmanuel Anati from 1957 onward and refined by subsequent researchers including Andrea Arca, Angelo Fossati, and Umberto Sansoni, divides the tradition into four main stylistic periods: a Proto-Camunian phase (Epipaleolithic, before 8000 BC), a Neolithic and early Copper Age phase characterised by geometric topographic compositions and the first oranti, a Copper Age and Bronze Age phase of expanding solar iconography and weapon imagery, and a dominant Iron Age phase (approximately 900–16 BC) of narrative scenes, warrior images, labyrinths, and the Rosa Camuna.

The park’s setting is not incidental to its function. The rocks at Naquane lie on the eastern slope of the middle valley, facing west across toward La Concarena — the massif that frames the sun’s setting at the equinoxes. The hillside location gives the site clear sightlines to both major sacred peaks: Pizzo Badile rising directly above to the east, La Concarena visible across the valley to the west. The five visitor paths within the park, totalling approximately three kilometres, traverse a terrain whose topographical relationship to the astronomical calendar was as legible to the Camunians as any symbol they carved into stone.

The Sacred Landscape Between Two Mountains: Pizzo Badile and La Concarena

No element of Naquane’s astronomical significance is more important than the relationship between its two flanking mountains, and no phenomenon more central to understanding Camunian religion than the biannual equinox events those mountains produce. Pizzo Badile Camuno, rising sharply to the east in an angular, pointed peak, was understood by ancient Camunians as a masculine principle — a divine force expressed in the mountain’s narrow, ascending silhouette. La Concarena, on the opposite western flank, with its broad dolomitic ridges punctuated by deep vertical fissures near the summit, embodied the feminine principle. Together, these two peaks defined a sacred axis whose theological significance was renewed twice each year by natural phenomena of extraordinary visual power.

At the equinoxes — one event in early spring, another in early autumn — two complementary light spectacles occur in rapid succession. In the morning, before sunrise, sunlight refracts around the angular silhouette of Pizzo Badile, projecting an enormous shadow into the sky that is simultaneously framed by bright radiating rays. This display, still known locally as the “spirito della montagna” (spirit of the mountain), lasts only a few minutes as the sun climbs behind the peak. Then, as the same equinoctial day draws to a close, the setting sun aligns with the deep vertical groove in the summit of La Concarena and passes through it, sending a sharp beam of focused light upward into the already-darkening sky. The research published in the Springer volume “Arms and the Armed” describes this evening event as lasting a few minutes before the valley falls into darkness: “onlookers remain surprised, staring, and speechless — even today.”

Scholars identify this double phenomenon as a hierophany — a manifestation of the sacred that renders a place cosmologically exceptional and periodically re-validates its sanctity through repetition. Ausilio Priuli, who spent decades studying Camunian religion, identifies the solar cult as the dominant religious tradition of the valley. The research published under the framework of the Valcamonica Symposia, including the 2016 paper “Cautopates and Sol Divinus” by Andrea Arca, situates this mountain-framed astronomy at the basis of the Camunian theological system: the sun rising from behind the masculine peak, casting its spirit into the sky, and then sinking into the fissures of the feminine mountain — a cosmic union enacted twice yearly that encoded the deepest religious convictions of the valley’s inhabitants. This is why the greatest concentration of rock engravings in the world clusters precisely in the terrain between these two peaks. The Naquane park sits in this charged middle space, its rocks oriented to face the same western horizon into which the equinoctial sun descends.

Equinox Events and the Orientation of Naquane’s Engraved Surfaces

The orientation of praying figures (oranti) at Naquane toward La Concarena at equinox sunset, documented by archaeologist Andrea Arca and illustrated in the handbook chapter “Astronomical Symbolism in Bronze Age and Iron Age Rock Art,” represents the clearest direct evidence that the engravers of Naquane consciously related the positioning of their ritual imagery to the astronomical calendar. The oranti — stylised human figures with arms raised, interpreted as individuals in acts of worship, prayer, or ceremonial dance — appear across multiple rocks at Naquane facing westward toward the mountain that framed the equinoctial setting sun. This is not a coincidental orientation produced by the overall westward slope of the engraving surfaces: the figures are deliberately positioned to face the spectacle rather than simply to face downhill.

The equinox orientation of oranti at Naquane is consistent with the broader distribution of rock art in the valley. The engraved zone of Valcamonica, approximately 40 kilometres in length, concentrates most densely on the eastern slope of the middle valley — the slope that faces west toward La Concarena and toward the setting sun. Rocks on this slope receive the setting sun’s light directly, and surfaces used for engraving were selected in part for their visibility in the late afternoon and evening light that would have illuminated the freshly pecked surfaces most dramatically. The equinoctial evening, when the sun’s last rays enter the cleft of La Concarena and project that beam of light into the sky above, presented the most cosmologically charged moment for any ritual activity performed on these surfaces.

The specific orientation of Rock 1 (Grande Rupe) also reflects this astronomical logic. The great rock’s elongated surface runs broadly east-west, with its primary engraving face open to the western sky and to La Concarena. The labyrinth at the centre of Rock 1, identified by Angelo Fossati as the focal point of cultic activity, occupies the broadest section of the surface facing directly toward the setting equinoctial sun. Ritual activities performed at this rock — whatever form they took — unfolded with the hierophany of La Concarena’s illuminated cleft directly in view to the west. The rock itself thus functioned as a stage set against an astronomical backdrop that renewed its sacred character twice annually.

Several subsidiary rocks within the Naquane park carry engraved figures whose orientation reinforces this pattern. The oranti of Rocks 1 and 23, discussed by Andrea Arcà in the context of female funerary ritual and ceremonial dance, occupy positions where the figures face west. Their upraised arms, iconographically linked to solar invocation since the Neolithic, point toward the horizon from which the equinoctial sun will descend. Whether these figures were engraved as part of a deliberate programme of astronomical orientation, or accumulated over generations as the culturally correct way to depict solar worship given the topography of the sacred landscape, the cumulative result is a body of rock art in which the astronomical calendar is inscribed both in the imagery and in the physical facing of the figures themselves.

Solar Iconography at Naquane: Radiate Wheels, Oranti, and the Evolution of a Cosmic Vocabulary

The iconographic record of solar worship at Naquane spans every period of the Camunian engraving tradition and constitutes the most persistent single theme across the site’s thousands of individual figures. Reading this record chronologically reveals not a static tradition but an evolving cosmic vocabulary, growing in complexity as the society that produced it developed from small agricultural communities to a stratified Iron Age polity with professional priests, warrior elites, and a sophisticated astronomical theology.

In the earliest recognisable phase of Camunian engraving, Neolithic geometric figures include the first circular disk forms that later develop into explicit solar symbols. The oranti that follow — stylised human beings with arms raised skyward — appear before circular disks in scenes that Ausilio Priuli and Emmanuel Anati read as sun-worship rituals. On Rock 1, several groups of oranti adopt the upraised-arms posture that scholars connect to solar invocation across prehistoric European and Near Eastern traditions. Elena Marchi’s 1997 study of sun images in Valcamonica and Valtellina, published in TRACCE Online Rock Art Bulletin, traces this iconographic lineage from the Neolithic disk through the Copper Age and into the mature solar imagery of the Bronze Age.

The Bronze Age introduces the radiate wheel, one of the most abundant solar symbols in Valcamonica. Appearing on Rock 50 at Naquane (among many other locations), the wheel is interpreted variously as the physical wheel of the solar chariot — the vehicle in which, across Indo-European mythology, the sun travels across the sky — or as a pars pro toto representation of the sun itself, with its spokes representing rays. The same rock carries what is perhaps the most explicit solar narrative at Naquane: boats with ornithomorphic prow and stern elements, whose bird-headed extremities identify them as sun boats of the type documented in Scandinavian Bronze Age art from the same period. On Rock 50, these boats are associated with Reto-Etruscan inscriptions, suggesting that the solar boat retained cosmological significance into the Iron Age when the Camunians adopted writing.

By the Iron Age, solar symbols at Naquane diversify further. The Rosa Camuna — discussed in its own section below — joins a repertoire that includes single-point disks, multi-rayed sun figures, and scene compositions in which mounted warriors and priests appear alongside celestial symbols. Iron Age compositions on Rock 35 include the famous “Running Priest,” a ceremonially garbed figure whose association with lunar or solar cult activities remains debated but whose ritual function is not in doubt. Across the park’s 104 rocks, the density of solar imagery — wheels, disks, rays, praying figures, boats — reflects what scholars describe as the sun cult’s status as the organising principle of Camunian religious life.

The Rosa Camuna: An Astronomical Symbol Carved in Stone

The Rosa Camuna, the most famous single symbol to emerge from the Valcamonica tradition and today the official emblem of the Lombardy region, appears on at least 27 rocks within the wider Valcamonica complex in a total of 84 documented examples. At Naquane, the symbol appears on engraved surfaces in association with other Iron Age imagery, dating primarily to the period from the 7th to 1st centuries BC. Its distinctive form — a meandering closed line winding around nine cup marks in three basic configurations — has generated substantial scholarly discussion about its meaning, with the astronomical interpretation maintaining a central place in the debate.

Paola Farina, who created the most complete corpus of Rosa Camuna examples in her 1998 study published in the journal NAB, identifies three basic structural types. The swastika type has nine cup marks arranged in a 5×5 cross pattern with a contour forming four bent arms, each enclosing one of the outer cup marks; sixteen examples of this type are known. The asymmetric-swastika type shares the cup mark arrangement but differs in contour, with only two right-angle arms, the others joining in a bilobate configuration; twelve examples exist. The quadrilobate type, by far the most common with 56 known examples, arranges the nine cup marks in three parallel columns of three and develops a contour with four orthogonal symmetric arms each enclosing a cup mark. This last type is the form adopted as the regional symbol of Lombardy.

Two major interpretive positions have emerged from the literature. Emmanuel Anati, the archaeologist whose systematic study of Valcamonica produced the foundational chronological framework, interprets the Rosa Camuna as “a complex religious concept, perhaps a solar symbol linked to astral movement” — a symbol encoding the sun’s motion through the sky rather than simply representing the sun as a static object. Paola Farina’s research argues that the symbol had an original solar meaning that subsequently broadened into a more encompassing symbol of positive power, fertility, and good fortune, the solar significance remaining embedded in the iconographic memory of the tradition even as the symbol’s social applications diversified.

The cup marks at the core of the Rosa Camuna’s structure are themselves archaeoastronomically significant. Cup marks across European prehistoric rock art sites — from Valcamonica to Scandinavia to the British Isles — have been interpreted as stellar maps, particularly where their arrangement recalls recognisable constellations. The nine-cup arrangement of the Rosa Camuna does not map directly onto any single known constellation, but the combination of a circular or rotational outer form with a fixed inner arrangement of nine points connects the symbol to both the cyclic motion of the sun and the fixed patterns of the night sky. The swastika variants, with their rotating-arm configuration, are particularly compatible with the depiction of apparent solar movement — the sun’s path through the sky as observed from a fixed point across the seasons.

Rock 1, the Grande Rupe: A Cosmological Stage at the Centre of Naquane

Rock 1, the Grande Rupe, stands at the heart of Naquane as both its largest single engraved surface and its most important focus of cultic activity. Angelo Fossati, whose study “Following Arianna’s Thread” examines the symbolic programme of Rock 1 in detail, identifies the Cretan-type labyrinth at the centre of its surface as the key to the rock’s cosmological function: “This probably was one of the most important areas of cultural activities related to the rock art tradition in Valcamonica.” At approximately 65 metres in length and covered with figures from multiple overlapping periods, Rock 1 represents not a single moment of engraving but a palimpsest built up over centuries as the rock’s sacred status drew successive generations of Camunians back to the same surface.

The labyrinth at Rock 1’s centre requires particular attention. Of Cretan unicursal type — the form in which a single path winds without branches from the entrance to the centre — the Naquane labyrinth appears, according to archaeoastronomical scholar Jeff Saward, “to have a pair of eyes pecked at its centre.” This figure occupies the middle of a surface surrounded by Iron Age imagery: crowds of fighting warriors, hunting scenes with men and dogs pursuing deer, women working at looms, warriors following an armed horseman who scholars identify as a chief. The labyrinth, placed at the geometric centre of this world of action, functions as a stillpoint — an initiatic figure whose path leads to a focal point watched over by the two pecked eyes. The comparison with the Knossos coin labyrinth, explored by archaeometry researchers who identified structural parallels between the Naquane example and the Cretan pattern, suggests contact with Mediterranean cosmological traditions during the Iron Age, when the Camunians were producing alphabetic inscriptions in Northern Etruscan script and demonstrably engaged with wider Mediterranean cultural networks.

Cup marks distributed across Rock 1 supplement the labyrinth and figurative imagery with the simplest and most widely distributed form of prehistoric astronomical marking. Cup marks appear in structured groupings across the surface, connected by engraved lines that create relational patterns between individual cups. Several scholars, citing comparable Scandinavian cup-mark arrangements interpreted as stellar maps, have proposed that specific cup-mark clusters at Valcamonica represent constellations, though the identification of specific star patterns remains contested without additional supporting evidence. What is secure is the long history of cup-mark production at Naquane — spanning from at least the Copper Age into the Iron Age — and the association of cup marks with cosmological imagery across the surface of Rock 1.

The female figures on Rock 1 and Rock 23, discussed by Andrea Arcà in the context of ritual dance and funerary practice, add a specifically celestial dimension absent in the warrior imagery that dominates the Iron Age repertoire. Female representations at Naquane disappear in the Iron Age, suggesting that the ritual practices they document belong to earlier phases — possibly the Bronze Age funerary and seasonal ceremonies in which women played central roles. Their positioning on Rock 1, oriented westward toward La Concarena, connects them to the equinox solar tradition. The upraised-arm posture of several figures on Rock 1 — the orant position — places them in the tradition of solar invocation that runs from the Neolithic through to the Roman period’s explicit dedications to Sol Divinus.

The Capitello dei Due Pini: A Hilltop Solar Observatory Above Naquane

The most rigorously documented case of astronomical orientation in the Valcamonica tradition comes not from Naquane itself but from an elevated site directly above it — the Capitello dei Due Pini, known also as the Roccia del Sole (Rock of the Sun), in the locality of Plas above Paspardo in the province of Brescia. Mario Codebò, Piero Barale, Marco Castelli, Henry De Santis, Liliana Fratti, and Elena Gervasoni published their systematic archaeoastronomical investigation of this site in Quaderni del LASA in March 2005, documenting observations carried out from the winter solstice of 1997 through the summer solstice of 1999.

The site’s topographical position establishes its relationship to Naquane immediately: the Capitello dei Due Pini occupies a dominant elevated position from which the full concentration of rock art in the middle valley — Capo di Ponte, Cemmo, Bedolina, Nadro, Naquane — is visible below. This prominence, offering over 180 degrees of panoramic visibility on the western slope of the valley, is one of four characteristics that Codebò associates with elevated cult sites in the Alpine arc: dominance over a vast area below, wide panoramicity, traces of prehistoric cultic activity, and signs of Christianisation (later crosses and a chapel at the Capitello dei Due Pini attest to the site’s perceived sanctity across different religious eras). The site lies, like Naquane below it, between Pizzo Badile to the east and La Concarena to the west — the same sacred astronomical axis that structures the entire middle valley.

The central petroglyph studied by Codebò’s team, the “petroglifo del Sole,” consists of a large central circle flanked by two smaller circles, from which three bundles of rays project downward — a vertical central bundle and two oblique flanking bundles. This symbol appears elsewhere in the Valcamonica tradition on anthropomorphic stelae from Caven, Cornal, and Valgella, and on the engraved boulders at Borno; its common identification as a solar pendant or solar symbol in the scholarly literature led the research team to investigate whether the site itself had been positioned with regard to solar calendar events. The site is dated to the period camuno III-A, the Bronze Age of the third millennium BC.

Codebò and colleagues conducted solstice observations at winter and summer solstice and equinox observations on both the spring and autumn equinoxes. Their methodology employed a graduated spherical square with direct readout to five centesimal minutes, a gravity inclinometer with direct readout to one degree, a radio-controlled chronometer, and a prismatic compass with direct readout. The results confirmed the site’s orientation toward solar events: the steep eastern valley wall, rising almost vertically and ensuring that the sun rises well toward its zenith before becoming visible at Plas, focuses the site’s astronomical horizon overwhelmingly on the western sky — toward La Concarena and toward sunset. The petroglyph’s three downward-pointing ray bundles, interpreted by the researchers as representing the atmospheric refraction phenomena visible at both Pizzo Badile (at sunrise) and La Concarena (at sunset) around the equinoxes, encode in stone the very celestial events that made the sacred mountains sacred.

Cup Marks, Star Maps, and the Limits of Archaeoastronomical Interpretation

Cup marks — small hemispherical depressions pecked into rock surfaces — represent the simplest and most widely distributed form of engraving at Naquane and across the Valcamonica tradition. They appear as isolated features, in clusters, in structured geometric arrangements associated with the Rosa Camuna, as central points within radiate wheel symbols, and in the nine-cup configuration at the heart of the Rosa Camuna itself. Their astronomical interpretation, while proposed by several researchers, remains one of the most contested areas of Camunian archaeoastronomy.

The case for astronomical cup-mark interpretation rests primarily on parallels with cup-mark sites elsewhere in Europe. At Dalby in Denmark, cup marks are engraved in arrangements that scholars have argued correspond to specific constellations, suggesting that prehistoric communities used cup marks as a medium for star-map production. In Valcamonica, Andrea Arca and others have noted that some cup-mark clusters at sites including Naquane show non-random spatial patterning that could reflect the mapping of stellar positions, though without additional evidence — stratigraphic association with astronomical instruments, alignment with specific rising or setting stars, or interpretive inscription — the identification remains speculative. What is less contested is the cup mark’s role as a ritual pit or offering receptacle: the deliberate hollowing of a surface to create a depression that catches light, liquid, and the gaze of those performing rituals at the rock face has parallels in votive and altar contexts across the prehistoric Mediterranean.

The structured cup marks within the Rosa Camuna raise a specific interpretive question. The nine-cup cross configuration used in the swastika and quadrilobate types does not correspond in any obvious way to a known constellation, but the number nine carries cosmological significance in Indo-European religious traditions — from the nine worlds of Norse cosmology to the nine zones of some Mediterranean sacred geographies. Whether the nine cups of the Rosa Camuna represent a specific stellar or planetary counting system, a structural principle derived from the geometry of the symbol, or simply a conventional number embedded in the tradition without direct astronomical reference remains unresolved. Paola Farina’s extensive typological study treats the number as a structural feature rather than an astronomical count, while Emmanuel Anati’s broader reading of the symbol as encoding “astral movement” leaves room for the stellar interpretation without specifying it.

The broader methodological debate in European archaeoastronomy — most extensively articulated in the controversies around Alexander Thom’s megalith alignments and Clive Ruggles’ statistical reanalysis of them — applies directly to Valcamonica. The risk of finding astronomical significance in any sufficiently large collection of points or surfaces, simply because coincidences accumulate in large datasets, requires that alignment claims be tested statistically and corroborated by iconographic, stratigraphic, or contextual evidence. At Naquane, the strongest astronomical claims — the orientation of oranti toward the equinox sunset, the positioning of Rock 1 facing the La Concarena cleft, and the deliberate siting of the sanctuary between the two sacred peaks — are supported by convergent lines of evidence from iconography, landscape analysis, and the physical phenomena of the mountains themselves.

Bronze Age Sky Religion: Solar Boats and Celestial Journeys at Naquane

The Bronze Age phase of Camunian engraving introduces one of the richest and most cosmologically explicit bodies of imagery in the Naquane record: the solar boat. On Rock 50 of the Naquane National Park, dated to the 6th century BC but belonging to a tradition of boat imagery that extends back through the Bronze Age, ornithomorphic protome boats appear with bird-headed prows and sterns — the distinctive feature that identifies them as solar vehicles in the comparative iconographic literature. Angelo Fossati’s analysis of these figures situates them within the wide Bronze Age European tradition of the sun’s boat, the vehicle in which the sun travels across the sky from east to west and then, through the waters of the underworld, back from west to east during the night.

The solar boat tradition in Valcamonica connects directly to Scandinavian Bronze Age art, where boat figures with bird-headed elements appear extensively on rock art from Bohuslän, Östergötland, and other Swedish and Norwegian sites. In Scandinavian sources, the boat is consistently interpreted as the sun’s vessel, transporting the solar disk across the sky in what Iron Age textual sources later codify as the journey of Sol across the heavens. The Camunian equivalents differ iconographically in some details but share the essential elements: birds guiding a vessel that carries celestial cargo, depicted in landscape contexts where their astronomical meaning is confirmed by association with radiate wheel symbols and solar disk imagery.

At Rock 50, the boat figures appear above Reto-Etruscan inscriptions interpreted by Alberto Morandi as personal names — possibly the names of warriors or initiated individuals whose connection to the solar boat imagery may indicate a belief in the solar journey of the soul after death. The combination of boat, bird, inscription, and probable personal name suggests a funerary or initiatic context in which the solar boat served as the vehicle for the transit of the soul from the world of the living to the afterlife, echoing the Greek-Roman tradition of Charon’s boat crossing the underworld rivers. This afterlife dimension of the solar boat adds another layer to the astronomical significance of Rock 50: the rock encodes not just the daily journey of the sun across the sky but the deeper cosmological narrative of death, transit, and renewal that the sun’s circuit models for human existence.

Emmanuel Anati identifies the late Bronze Age as the period in which “the cosmological, tripartite images of the previous period eventually reappeared” and “metal weapons were considered divine.” This tripartite cosmology — sky, earth, and underworld — structures the solar boat’s journey as a transit through all three realms and positions the celestial domain as the highest tier of a vertical cosmos whose axis runs through the sacred mountains. The solar boat, with its birds guiding it through the sky-water above and the underworld-water below, is the vehicle that traverses all three levels, making it the supreme cosmological image of the Bronze Age tradition — a tradition whose physical residue on the rocks of Naquane connects the carvings directly to the sky above and the mountains beyond.

Iron Age Synthesis: Warriors, Priests, and the Institutionalisation of Solar Worship

The Iron Age, roughly from 900 BC to the Roman conquest of the Camunni in 16 BC, represents the most prolific phase of engraving at Naquane and the period in which the solar religious tradition was most fully institutionalised. Emmanuel Anati identifies the Iron Age as the moment when Camunian society developed complex professional specialisation: “society became complex as professional priests and warriors appeared.” The rock art of this period reflects this stratification. Scenes of battle, ritual, and ceremony populate the surfaces of Naquane with an intensity absent in earlier phases, and the solar symbols persist and multiply within this newly complex social context.

The “Running Priest” on Rock 35, one of Naquane’s most frequently cited figures, represents the professional religious specialist in motion — his ceremonial attire and dynamic posture distinguishing him clearly from the warriors who dominate adjacent surfaces. Whether his running relates to solar cult activities, to a ritual hunt, or to a liminal ceremony associated with the labyrinth on Rock 1 remains debated, but his identification as a priest — a figure whose role exists by definition in relation to the sacred — places him within the framework of institutionalised solar worship that the Iron Age tradition reflects. The explicit appearance of shrines, temples, and hut images on Iron Age rocks at Naquane, noted by Anati as new features of this period, indicates the construction of permanent religious infrastructure in the valley — physical sites where the astronomical calendar was observed and marked with appropriate ceremony.

The Iron Age labyrinths at Naquane and at other Valcamonica sites — Dos del Merichi and Luine also carry labyrinth figures, according to Saward’s survey — appear in consistent association with warrior imagery: “crowds of fighting warriors surround other examples at Dos del Merichi and Luine.” This association connects the labyrinth, an initiatic figure encoding a journey to a centre and back, with the warrior initiation traditions of Iron Age Celtic and Italic societies. The initiatic journey has an astronomical analogue in the sun’s daily and seasonal circuit: departure from the horizon at sunrise, transit through the sky, descent into the underworld at sunset, and return at the following dawn. The labyrinth at the centre of Naquane’s Rock 1, surrounded by warriors and ritual figures, maps this cosmic journey onto the stone surface where the equinox setting sun casts its last light.

The Rosa Camuna achieves its maximum documented presence in the Iron Age, with the vast majority of the 84 known examples datable to this period. The coincidence of the Rosa Camuna’s florescence with the Iron Age’s institutionalisation of professional priesthood and warrior identity suggests that the symbol served as a cosmological badge — encoding solar and astral authority in a form that could be claimed, displayed, and reproduced by those who understood its astronomical meanings. The symbol’s adoption as Lombardy’s regional emblem in 1975 preserves this identity function, though transformed from cosmological marker to cultural heritage icon.

Roman Period: Sol Divinus, Cautopates, and the Persistence of Solar Theology

When Rome conquered the Camunni in 16 BC, integrating the valley into the Roman imperial system as Civitas Camunnorum, the solar religious tradition of the valley did not end — it was renamed. The Latin inscriptions from Valcamonica that post-date the Roman conquest include explicit dedications to solar deities that reveal the persistence of Camunian astronomical theology beneath Roman linguistic veneer. The inscriptions CIL V 4935, 4938, 4948, and 4951, from sites in the valley including Fontes Divini and Pescarzo, dedicate monuments to Cautopates, Sol Divinus, and related solar figures — a body of epigraphic evidence discussed in detail in the 2016 paper “Cautopates and Sol Divinus” by Andrea Arca published in the proceedings of the III International Congress on Sanctuaries.

Cautopates, whose name appears in Roman Mithraic iconography as a torch-bearer who accompanies the solar deity Mithras, takes on a specific and apparently local character in Valcamonica. Arca’s research argues that Cautopates in this context represents the survival of a pre-Roman Camunian solar god, anthropomorphised under Roman influence. The deity’s association with the transition from day to night — with the descent of the sun into darkness — connects him to the equinox phenomenon of La Concarena: the moment when the sun “sinks into” the mountain’s cleft and vanishes into darkness, only to return. The Roman name thus wraps a Camunian theological concept that was already thousands of years old by the time the Latin inscription was carved.

Sol Divinus, the Divine Sun, attested in inscription CIL V 4948, is less specifically localised but equally revealing. The explicit identification of the sun as a divine being receiving votive dedication continues a tradition whose roots in Valcamonica reach back to the Neolithic oranti and whose first Bronze Age formalisations in the radiate wheel and solar boat date to the third and second millennia BC. The Roman administrative and linguistic overlay did not suppress this tradition; it provided it with a new vocabulary while the underlying cosmological content — the sun as deity, the mountains as its sacred theatre, the valley as its terrestrial sanctuary — remained structurally unchanged. Even pagan cults in the valley persisted long after the Roman period: documented evidence of pre-Christian ritual practices in Valcamonica extends into the 18th century, with witchcraft trials from 1485 to 1558 indicating the survival of indigenous cultic traditions in mountain villages centuries after official Christianisation.

The Museo Nazionale della Valcamonica in Cividate Camuno, established more recently to house the Roman period finds from the valley, holds the physical evidence of this religious continuity: statuary, inscribed stones, and votive objects that document the Roman-Camunian synthesis. Seen in the context of the rock art tradition that preceded them by millennia, these objects demonstrate that the valley’s relationship with the sun did not change with political conquest — it only changed languages.

Methods and Challenges in Camunian Archaeoastronomy

Archaeoastronomy at Naquane and in the broader Valcamonica tradition deploys a methodology that combines precision field survey with iconographic analysis, landscape archaeology, and historical analogy. The discipline’s application to rock art presents specific challenges not encountered in the study of built monuments like Stonehenge or Newgrange, where the orientation of walls and passages can be measured with high precision and the astronomical target of an alignment inferred directly from the architecture. Rock art panels do not have architects in the same sense: their orientation is partly determined by the topography of the outcrop, and the direction in which individual figures face may reflect artistic convention, narrative logic, or astronomical intent in proportions that cannot always be disentangled.

The research team that investigated the Capitello dei Due Pini from 1997 to 1999 addressed this challenge by combining direct azimuth measurement with actual observation of solar events. Using a graduated spherical square, a gravity inclinometer, and a radio-controlled chronometer, Codebò, Barale, and colleagues conducted fieldwork at the winter solstice, summer solstice, spring equinox, and autumn equinox, recording the precise azimuths at which the sun appeared relative to both the engravings and the natural horizon features of the site. This direct observational approach — being physically present at the site when the solar event occurred — provided data that no desk-based calculation of historical solar positions could fully substitute, because the actual phenomena at Pizzo Badile and La Concarena involve atmospheric refraction and mountain topography in ways that require empirical observation.

For the orientation of oranti toward La Concarena, Andrea Arca’s work combines azimuth measurement of the direction in which figures face with identification of the natural horizon feature that this facing direction targets. The convergence of the figures’ facing direction with the equinoctial sunset point, confirmed by the visual spectacle of the La Concarena light phenomenon on those specific days, provides the corroboration that transforms an orientation measurement from a possible coincidence into a probable intentional alignment. The additional convergence with the iconographic tradition — the oranti’s upraised arms identified across the broader record as a solar invocation gesture — adds a third line of evidence.

The main methodological debate in European archaeoastronomy concerns the risk of false positives: finding astronomical alignments in large datasets of sites or figures where statistical coincidence alone could account for apparent patterns. Clive Ruggles’ re-evaluation of Alexander Thom’s megalith alignments demonstrated that some of Thom’s claimed high-precision solar and lunar targets were not statistically robust when the full dataset was analysed. In Valcamonica, the scale of the challenge is significant: with over 140,000 figures distributed across thousands of rock surfaces, any claim that a specific orientation is astronomically intentional requires corroboration beyond a simple correspondence between facing direction and a solar calendar event. The most secure claims at Naquane — the oranti orientation, the siting of the sanctuary between the two sacred peaks, and the convergence of solar iconography with topographical phenomena — are secure precisely because multiple independent lines of evidence converge on the same conclusion.

Comparative Perspectives: Naquane in European Prehistoric Astronomy

The astronomical traditions documented at Naquane place the site within a wider European pattern of Bronze Age and Iron Age sky-watching that connected communities from the British Isles to the Iberian Peninsula and across the Alpine arc. This comparative context illuminates both the specific character of Camunian astronomical knowledge and the broader cultural networks that transmitted ideas about the sun, its path, and its representation across prehistoric Europe.

The Galician petroglyphs of northwestern Spain, concentrated in sites such as Campo Lameiro, A Ferradura, and Laxe das Rodas, share with Valcamonica a tradition of radiate wheel symbols, sun-disk imagery, and deer engravings whose spatial organisation archaeoastronomers have studied for solar alignments. The paper “Astronomical Symbolism in Bronze Age and Iron Age Rock Art” published in the Springer Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy illustrates both the Naquane oranti facing La Concarena and Galician examples of three different solar alignments at A Ferradura, situating them within a European-wide tradition of rock art astronomical orientation. The wheel motif, the boat with bird-headed elements, and the praying figure before a disk appear in both traditions, suggesting either shared cultural origin, later cultural contact, or — most likely — convergent development within a common Indo-European religious substrate.

The Mont Bego tradition in the Alpes-Maritimes of southern France and northern Italy provides a closer Alpine parallel. The approximately 40,000 engravings at Mont Bego, concentrated in the Valle delle Meraviglie and Fontanalba zones at high altitude, include weapon figures, bovid symbols, and geometric compositions that invite comparison with Valcamonica. Both traditions were active in the Bronze Age and share a mountain-sanctuary character in which the engraving sites are embedded in dramatic alpine landscapes that may have served astronomical calendar functions. Research by Henry de Lumley and colleagues establishes the Chalcolithic-Bronze Age peak of activity at Mont Bego (approximately 2500–1700 BC), contemporary with the Bronze Age solar imagery flourishing at Naquane.

The Nebra Sky Disk, found in Saxony-Anhalt and dated to approximately 1600 BC, offers a material object analogue to the iconographic tradition at Naquane. The disk encodes the sun, a crescent moon, and a cluster of stars possibly representing the Pleiades, with arced gold strips that scholars interpret as indicating the range of sunrise and sunset positions between the summer and winter solstices. The disk represents the same kind of astronomical knowledge being encoded simultaneously in the rock art of Valcamonica: an understanding of the sun’s annual path, the significance of the solstice and equinox turning points, and the representation of celestial events in a portable or engraved medium designed to preserve and transmit that knowledge. The concurrence of the Nebra disk with the peak of solar chariot imagery and radiate wheel engravings at Naquane reflects a pan-European Bronze Age horizon in which solar observation and solar symbolism achieved their greatest elaboration.

Conservation of Naquane’s Astronomical Heritage

The Naquane National Park of Rock Engravings operates under the jurisdiction of Italy’s Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Lombardia, a regional office of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, under the framework of the Cultural Heritage and Landscape Code (Legislative Decree 42/2004). The UNESCO designation of 1979 added international monitoring and conservation standards, with the Soprintendenza responsible for implementing the principles of the Venice Charter in all restoration and maintenance work. The network of eight parks distributed along the valley — Naquane, Massi di Cemmo, Seradina-Bedolina, the Ceto-Cimbergo-Paspardo Nature Reserve, and others — coordinates conservation policy across the broadest extent of the World Heritage inscription.

The physical risks to the engraved surfaces at Naquane are multiple. Weathering by frost, rain, and thermal cycling acts on the Permian sandstone continuously, gradually degrading the shallow pecked lines that define most of the figures. The removal of vegetation cover and the installation of visitor infrastructure in the mid-20th century, before current conservation protocols existed, created additional erosion pathways. The five marked visitor routes within the park channel foot traffic away from the most fragile surfaces, and barriers protect rocks including the Grande Rupe from direct contact. The park offers partial disabled access, reflecting the tension between accessibility and preservation that characterises all major rock art sites.

The astronomical dimension of the site poses a specific conservation challenge that has no parallel at enclosed monuments. The hierophany of Pizzo Badile and La Concarena — the equinox light phenomenon that gave the valley its cosmological significance — requires an unobstructed view corridor between the two mountains for its full effect. Infrastructure development in the valley floor, changes to the tree cover on the engraving-bearing slopes, or the installation of structures that interrupt the western horizon sightlines from the engraved rocks would compromise not just the physical integrity of the park but its experiential and cosmological character. The management framework for the site must balance these concerns alongside the more conventional challenges of surface erosion and visitor pressure.

In 2014, the National Museum of Prehistory of the Camonica Valley (Museo Nazionale di Preistoria della Valcamonica, MUPRE) was established at Capo di Ponte to provide an interpretive infrastructure for the UNESCO site. The museum houses research collections, provides context for visitors before they enter the parks, and serves as a centre for ongoing scientific investigation. Emmanuel Anati’s Camunian Center of Prehistoric Studies, founded in 1964 and based at Capo di Ponte, continues to coordinate international research on Valcamonica rock art, publishing the journal Notizie Archeologiche Bergomensi and hosting the biennial Valcamonica Symposium that has brought archaeoastronomers, rock art specialists, and prehistorians together to advance understanding of the tradition since 1968.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Naquane National Park of Rock Engravings?

The Naquane National Park of Rock Engravings is Italy’s first archaeological park, established in 1955 at Capo di Ponte in Val Camonica, Lombardy. It covers 30 hectares on the slopes of Pizzo Badile Camuno and contains 104 engraved rocks — large glacier-polished sandstone surfaces bearing figures from the Neolithic through the Iron Age, spanning roughly from the 5th millennium BC to the 1st century BC. The park forms the nucleus of the UNESCO World Heritage inscription “Rock Drawings in Valcamonica” (Site No. 94, inscribed 1979), which protects over 140,000 symbols and figures across the broader valley. Five marked visitor paths of varying difficulty traverse the park, with Rock 1 (the Grande Rupe) serving as the principal showpiece of the engraving tradition.

Why were Pizzo Badile and La Concarena considered sacred mountains?

Pizzo Badile Camuno and La Concarena were understood as sacred by ancient Camunians because of two spectacular natural light phenomena that occur at the equinoxes. In the mornings of the spring and autumn equinoxes, the sun rises behind the sharply pointed Pizzo Badile, refracting around the peak to project an enormous shadow surrounded by bright radiating rays into the sky — the “spirit of the mountain.” On the same evenings, the setting sun aligns with a deep cleft in the summit of La Concarena, sending a focused beam of light upward into the darkening sky for a few minutes before the valley falls into darkness. These biannual hierophanies, which scholars identify as foundational to the Camunian theological system, made the terrain between the two peaks cosmologically privileged. Pizzo Badile was identified with a masculine divine principle (pointed, ascending form), La Concarena with a feminine one (broad, fissured form). The greatest concentration of rock art in the world clusters in the valley floor between them.

What is the Rosa Camuna and what does it have to do with astronomy?

The Rosa Camuna is a distinctive Iron Age engraving consisting of a meandering closed line winding around nine cup marks in one of three basic configurations. It appears on 84 documented examples across 27 rocks in Valcamonica, primarily dating from the 7th to 1st centuries BC. As the most famous symbol from the tradition, it was adopted as the official emblem of the Lombardy region in 1975. Emmanuel Anati interprets the Rosa Camuna as “a complex religious concept, perhaps a solar symbol linked to astral movement,” while Paola Farina argues that it originated as a solar symbol before broadening into a more general emblem of positive power and life force. The nine cup marks at its core — potentially star-like points — and the rotational character of the swastika variants connect it to both the circular path of the sun and the fixed patterns of the night sky. It remains the most debated astronomical symbol in the Valcamonica tradition.

Who are the key researchers in Camunian archaeoastronomy?

The archaeoastronomical study of Valcamonica draws on a community of researchers spanning several decades. Elena Gervasoni pioneered the field in the valley from the 1990s, introducing archaeoastronomical analysis to sites including the Capitello dei Due Pini. Mario Codebò and Piero Barale, working with a team that included Marco Castelli, Henry De Santis, Liliana Fratti, and Elena Gervasoni, conducted the systematic 1997–1999 field observations at the Capitello dei Due Pini whose results were published in 2005. Andrea Arca documented the equinox orientation of oranti toward La Concarena and contributed the Naquane material to the Springer Handbook chapter on astronomical symbolism in Bronze Age and Iron Age rock art. Emmanuel Anati’s foundational chronological framework, Angelo Fossati’s analysis of Rock 1’s cultic programme, Ausilio Priuli’s identification of the sun cult as the dominant religious tradition, and Elena Marchi’s iconographic study of sun images all provide the scholarly infrastructure on which the archaeoastronomical work builds.

What is the labyrinth on Rock 1 at Naquane?

The labyrinth on Rock 1 (Grande Rupe) at Naquane is a Cretan-type unicursal labyrinth — a single winding path without branches, leading from an entrance to a central point — placed at the geometric centre of the rock’s most densely engraved surface. Angelo Fossati identifies it in his study “Following Arianna’s Thread” as the focal point of the most important cultic activity in the Camunian tradition. It appears with a pair of eyes pecked at its centre, surrounded by Iron Age imagery: warriors, hunting scenes, women at looms, and ritual figures. The parallel between the Naquane labyrinth and the form on Knossos coins from Crete has been noted by several researchers, suggesting contact with Mediterranean cultural networks during the Iron Age. The labyrinth’s astronomical dimension lies in its function as an initiatic pathway whose structure mirrors the sun’s journey — departure from the threshold, transit through a winding path, arrival at the luminous centre, and return.

What did the Camunians engrave on Rock 50 at Naquane?

Rock 50 at Naquane carries one of the most cosmologically explicit scenes in the park: boats with ornithomorphic (bird-shaped) prow and stern elements, dated to the 6th century BC, with Reto-Etruscan inscriptions above them that Alberto Morandi interprets as personal names. These ornithomorphic protome boats belong to the widespread Bronze Age tradition of the solar boat — the vessel in which the sun travels across the sky and through the underworld, guided by water birds whose position at prow and stern indicates the direction of travel. The same iconographic tradition appears extensively in Scandinavian Bronze Age rock art and in the material culture of the Nordic Bronze Age, attesting to a pan-European theological framework in which the sun’s daily and seasonal journey served as the template for cosmic order. The personal names inscribed above the boats at Rock 50 suggest that individuals were identified with the solar journey, possibly as part of funerary or initiatic belief systems in which the soul followed the sun’s path after death.

How do archaeoastronomers distinguish intentional astronomical alignments from coincidence?

The central methodological challenge of archaeoastronomy — distinguishing intentional astronomical orientation from coincidental correspondence — is addressed through convergent evidence from multiple independent sources. At Naquane, the strongest alignment claims rest on at least three independent lines of support: precision azimuth measurement showing that specific figures face the astronomical target, iconographic analysis demonstrating that the figures in question (oranti with upraised arms) belong to a documented solar worship tradition, and direct observation confirming that a visually dramatic natural phenomenon (the La Concarena equinox light event) occurs at precisely the target horizon position. The combination of facing direction, iconographic identity, and natural spectacle constitutes a much stronger case than any single line of evidence alone. Statistical testing, as pioneered by Clive Ruggles in the context of British megalith alignments, provides an additional analytical tool, ensuring that claimed alignments do not simply reflect the proportion of sites expected to coincide with any given astronomical direction by chance.

What happened to the Camunian solar tradition under Roman rule?

The Roman conquest of the Camunni in 16 BC transformed the form but not the substance of the valley’s solar religious tradition. Latin inscriptions from Valcamonica include dedications to Cautopates (CIL V 4935), Sol Divinus (CIL V 4948), and related solar figures that scholars identify as Camunian solar deities given Roman names. Andrea Arca’s research argues that Cautopates in this context represents an ancestral Camunian sun god anthropomorphised under Roman influence, connected to the deity’s role in the transition from day to night — precisely the moment of the La Concarena equinox phenomenon. Rock art continued in the valley under Roman rule, incorporating Latin inscriptions alongside traditional imagery. The syncretism of Roman and Camunian religious practices maintained the sacred character of the mountains and the sun’s theological centrality throughout the imperial period, and evidence for the continuation of indigenous cultic traditions survives in records as late as the 18th century, with trials for alleged witchcraft in valley villages documented from 1485 to 1558.

How is the Naquane rock art conserved today?

The Naquane National Park of Rock Engravings operates under the jurisdiction of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Lombardia, a regional office of Italy’s Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, under the framework of the Cultural Heritage and Landscape Code (Legislative Decree 42/2004). Conservation work follows the principles of the Venice Charter, with all intervention subject to ministerial approval. The five marked visitor paths within the park channel foot traffic away from fragile surfaces, and barriers protect key rocks including the Grande Rupe from direct contact. Ongoing research at the site is coordinated by Emmanuel Anati’s Camunian Center of Prehistoric Studies (CCSP), founded at Capo di Ponte in 1964, which hosts the biennial Valcamonica Symposium and publishes scientific research on the tradition. The National Museum of Prehistory of the Camonica Valley (MUPRE), established at Capo di Ponte in 2014, provides interpretive infrastructure and houses research collections.

What is the chronological span of the rock art at Naquane?

The rock art at Naquane spans roughly the Neolithic through the Iron Age, from approximately the 5th–4th millennia BC through the 1st century BC, with the most recent pre-modern activity dating to the Roman and early medieval periods on some surfaces. Emmanuel Anati’s foundational chronological framework, developed from systematic survey work beginning in 1957, divides the Camunian tradition into four stylistic periods: Proto-Camunian (Epipaleolithic, before 8000 BC) for the very earliest figures in the broader valley; Neolithic and early Copper Age for the first topographic compositions and the earliest oranti; Copper Age and Bronze Age for the elaboration of weapon imagery, solar symbols, and radiate wheels; and Iron Age (approximately 900–16 BC) for the dominant layer of narrative scenes, warrior imagery, labyrinths, and Rosa Camuna symbols that characterise Naquane’s most densely engraved surfaces. Later research by Andrea Arca, Angelo Fossati, and others has refined and partially revised this chronology, reassigning some figure types (including certain oranti) from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age, but the general framework remains the foundation for chronological discussion of the tradition.

Cosmic Engravings and Sanctuary Orientation: Astronomical Alignments in the Rock Art of Naquane

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