The photos of the Saharan paintings and petroglyphs published so far in various books, papers or online websites, have usually been a mix of all styles and periods giving a limited overview of the rock art. Due to the enormous amount of images in this vast region, the system of their cataloguing has still to be determined.

 

One of the possible solutions is the division according to the styles, and this pioneering work is represented in this catalogue. It focuses only on the early group of rock paintings and petroglyphs of the Central Sahara called ROUND HEADS for the way in which the human head is represented.

 

This corpus of paintings and petroglyphs belongs to dark-skinned hunters who produced their images in the mountains of South Algeria, South Libya, North Niger and North Chad during a humid period which started around 10,000 BP. Their rock art has nothing from the everyday life; the scenes represent rituals, dancing, sophisticated masks and fantastic creatures, showing an extremely elaborated spiritual world.

 

• This catalogue of early paintings and petroglyphs introduces an innovative approach into the study of the Central Saharan rock art. Not only it presents the first online corpus of all Round Head rock art discovered so far but it is entirely dedicated to the hunting society which created these images.

See the CATALOGUE