ECO-MUSEUM OF BICORP

La Sarga Rock-Shelters are in the municipality of Alcoi, on the right side of Cova Foradada Ravine (Partida de la Canal Baixa). Despite being near farmland, it is an area of beautiful scenery and natural wildlife.

The paintings at La Sarga belong to the three cycles of post-Palaeolithic rock art in the Mediterranean Basin, and therefore comprise a compendium of artistic expression in the Neolithic and Copper Age. The three cycles are clearly identifiable at the site, because of the colour, techniques and themes. All three used reddish minerals which were mixed with an organic product and applied to the walls with brushes made from feathers, hair, vegetable fibres or simply with fingers. Rock-Shelter I has a group of archers, deer wounded with arrows in various parts of their bodies, painted over Macro-schematic anthropomorphs and serpentiforms, as well as two trees with fruit on the branches and on the ground, surrounded by human figures, two of which are of an outstanding quality. Rock-Shelter 2 has a herd of goats on one side and an archer hunting deer on the other side. La Sarga also has excellent examples of Schematic art, characterised by the simplicity of the human and animal representations, reduced to their basic lines, and geometric motifs that occasionally suggest parts of the human body and other times are related to their beliefs, in the form of idols. As well as lines in different positions, various types of anthropomorphs have been identified in Rock-Shelter II and Rock-Shelter III. The former also has a goat, a branching sign and a possible idol. La Sarga is undoubtedly the most complete and complex shrine in eastern Iberia. Several generations of agriculturalists and animal herders left evidence of their beliefs on its walls, in images that changed as their socio-economic life was transformed.