This conference was moderated by the academic and archaeologist, Dr. Abdelkhalek Lemjidi, who underlined that Morocco is among the countries richest in rock heritage, noting that it is a wealth in the form of engraved representations and/or painted on rock, pre and protohistoric masterpieces which are defined in archeology as “Rock Arts”.
The archaeologist explained that the rock arts in Morocco are part of the large pre- and protohistoric rock art area of the Great Sahara and the Western Mediterranean, noting that the material nature of the rock arts results in the possibility of treating them archaeologically like any artifact , while their immaterial nature comes from their iconographic content which is a socio-cultural mirror of the ancient communities of Morocco.
In this regard, he indicated that the rock arts of Morocco cover stages of history ranging from the end of the Upper Paleolithic to sub-current representations (around 12,000 years), emphasizing that the most recent rock engravings are found in sites of the Western Anti Atlas where we can clearly see collective granaries (Igoudars) represented with details of huts and towers guarded by firearms.
In a statement to MAP, Mr. Lemjidi affirmed that Morocco has the merit of being a land of exceptional relief, centered by high altitudes which are, in fact, a large reservoir of water supplying, a downward dynamic, ancient waterways in the semi-arid area, intersecting with natural topographical corridors between mountain ranges thus facilitating communication between material cultures.
In this context, he noted that the geographical location of Morocco, between the great Sahara and the western Mediterranean, has made this area of the extreme northwest of Africa a historic-cultural space of convergence and mixing of cultures. material since the most ancient prehistoric times.
The academic noted that Moroccan rock arts reflect at least four cultural aspects, namely a pre-Neolithic style, probably the oldest, rare and poorly documented, represented by engraved miniatures underlying the so-called tazina representations, and the features deep polishes, and a style called “Tazina” of Neolithic hunters, whose sites are distributed throughout the territory south of the High Atlas, considered, until now, the oldest in Morocco, noting that the latter is characterized by representations of large wild fauna such as pachyderms (elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes and large antelopines).
The third cultural aspect concerns the so-called “Bovidian” style of Neolithic and early Bronze Age herders, distributed across Moroccan territory from the High Atlas, the Anti Atlas and beyond Es-Saguia Al- Hamra, he continued, specifying that the cattle represented in this style bear different indications of domestication among which there is the undeniable bearer ox.
Mr. Lemjidi noted that the last aspect is linked to the so-called “Libyco-Amazigh” style of transhumant herders, considered to be the descendants of the bovidians and constituting a bedrock of current North African cultures, making it known that the Libyco-Amazigh representations are the culmination of all the rock movements of northern Africa in their openings onto the Great Sahara and the Mediterranean.
The summer session of this edition of Moussem, organized under the High Patronage of HM King Mohammed VI, at the initiative of the Assilah Forum Foundation, in partnership with the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication (Culture Department) and the commune of Assilah, is devoted to the plastic arts.
On the program for this session, which will continue until July 27, are several symposia and conferences, which will bring together academicians, artists and art critics around the history of engraving and its evolution, as well as the history of printing and publishing in Morocco.
2024-09-28 20:08:48