Rock Art of South Oran (Algeria) - Classification of Henri Lhote

Classification of Henri Lhote

Henri Lhote distinguished seven series in the mural art of the South Oranian.

1. Large engravings of monumental naturalistic style, or Large-scale Hartebeest style. Beside the great hartebeest, elephants and rhinoceros, Lhote placed the numerous ostriches and antelopes, boars, lions and panthers. The animals are represented absolutely in profile apart from the hartebeest, in relative profile (the two-eyed formula being frequent). Lhote placed in this ensemble the human images which accompany them (of which the hands and feet have almost always six digits). No human figure with animal head having been found, he observed that "the hartebeest ensembles of the Saharan Atlas differ from those of Tassili-n-Ajjer and of Fezzan where these figures are running. The author also thinks that the domestication of the dog was achieved in this period and that the South Oranian presents the most ancient rock testimonies to it. This first stage also includes the "mythic animals". All these engravings are made by a punctuation of little dots or hollows, more or less connected, and then most often by a polishing apparently helped by a wooden utensil with the addition of wet sand. Some engravings show a beginning of polishing in the endoperigraphic area (head), others a complete polishing.

2. Small engravings in naturalistic style, or small-scale hartebeest stage. The stage would be constituted by the collection of engravings of more reduced size, of which the style has been designated as "School of Tazina" after the name of one of the sites. These naturalistic images show the same fauna (hartebeest, elephant and rhinoceros) as those of the preceding group but in very conventionalised forms, the legs and tails of the animals being very thinned out, the lines of the horns and the muzzle prolonged in a 'fantastic' way (Flamand), the lengthening of the body, the hind-quarters and the heads having inspired faulty identifications. The style is however not uniform and on certain murals these characteristic deformations co-exist with more realistic depictions. From a technical standpoint the finish of the engravings is regular, no trace surviving of a preliminary dotting-out, and the patina is similar to that of the preceding stage. The human depictions show the same character but the terminal parts of the limbs, hands and feet are generally rounded-off.

From a chronological viewpoint, a single station (Koudiat Abd El Hak) shows an indisputable over-drawing, a little antelope with attenuated legs being overdrawn by a large elephant, although another would appear to be later than it. This fact obliged Lhote "to ask himself if the small-scale school might be earlier than that of the large engravings, or even if the two schools might have been contemporary." This latter hypothesis would have implied the existence "of two different gatherings of humans living side by side or, at the least, two artistic schools operating in parallel."

In his analysis Lhote shows that beyond the great similarity of the fauna represented and of the presence of the "orant-ram" association in both stages, the "orant-hartebeest" association was not indicated in the second, whereas the antelopes there are more numerous and the lions rarer. He adds that "the small-scale style extends towards the south Moroccan as far as the Rio de Oro, although the large-scale style remained confined in the south oran area, with certain migrations towards the north-east." The author's opinion therefore leans therefore towards the existence of two groups. Furthermore the style of the small-scale art, by comparison with the static forms of the large-scale figures, reflects "rather an art which has already attained conventional formulae", "more advanced in the sense of a more evolved creative impulse" and therefore later. But in this hypothesis one should be able to rediscover traces of this so distinctive style in the later group of the decadent engravings, even though these seem, to the contrary, to derive from the large-scale school. In his conclusions the author considers that the small-scale engravings, often thought of as later decadent reminiscences, would be as old as those of the large hartebeest and elephants. "Whichever solution may prevail", concluded Lhote, one should consider that the identity of the fauna in each of the two groups indicates that there could not have been a great lapse of time between them, and that, despite the variation of styles, one can ask oneself if they do not represent two expressions of one and the same art."

3. Engravings of sub-naturalistic style or decadent hartebeest stage. These are characterized by the mediocrity of their style and technique, reduced to a fairly clumsy dotting and an irregular final polishing. Their patina is clearer than for the two preceding stages, an observation confirmed by the fact that they are often found on the same murals. Their dimensions are more reduced than the first group, but larger than those of the second, with which they have nothing in common. The most common theme is of sexually displayed human figures, in a semi-crouching position, seen frontally, often together with numerous lions and ostriches. The fauna, less varied than in the two first groups, still includes the last representations of hartebeest of which the horns are not always ringed, and images of elephants, cattle and panthers. The association of man-ram disappears, which seems "to mark a rupture on the environment of the foregoing stages and shows an evolution of religious beliefs", replaced by the man-lion association, hartebeest and elephants no longer holding the place which they had formerly occupied. It is, according to Lhote, "the end, very degraded, of that remarkable artistic epoch of the south Oranian.

4. Engravings of the sub-naturalist style of the husbandmen or the bovidian stage.

The domestic cow with long or short horns sometimes wearing little spheres dominates this stage, the fauna being composed otherwise of elephants, antelope and ostriches, while images of humans are rare. The engravings are in various different styles, the formula schematic and massive, called "quadrangular" by H. Breuil, seeming like the most ancient. The main group of these engravings are not found in south Oran but in the valley of the Saoura (Sahara): Lhote supposes "a different origin to that of the preceding groups", showing "secondary infiltrations which have come from the south." For the author, "this bovidian civilization has certainly emerged from a Saharan milieu, but it has only made a very superficial appearance in the south Oran," following the tracks from the Hills of Ksour, having perhaps "another direct contact with the Sahara in the region of Brésina.".

5. Engravings of schematic carriages, which ought to occupy a comparable chronological position to that of the carriages of the Sahara.

6. Libyco-Berber engravings.

7. Modern Arabo-Berber engravings.