Significant Places in Central-Andean Prehistory Landscapes: Rock Paintings and Cultural Contexts at the Río Loco Basin, Peru

The purpose of this article is to expand on the information available on the Loco river basin rock art sites in Peru. To this end, a contextual analysis is applied within the landscape where they are framed, to infer the territory’s occupation modalities, the relations between places, and the cultural behaviors of the inhabitants of the valley in pre-Hispanic times. We present a new holistic reading of these sites which includes the characterization of the basin’s landscape to then focus on the art itself, including, formal characteristics, associations, conventions, and arrangements on the panels. On the baisis of this study, we propose a cultural sequence for two of the shelters. These are unique contexts which establish the use and tempo-rality of these sites, from their initial occupation by hunter-gatherer groups, probably during the Pleistocene to Holocene transition and subsequently their use by horticulturalists during the Early Intermediate Period. The spatial and contextual data obtained are discussed and compared with that on other known sites in the region. In turn, this opens up new perspectives related to topographies and ritual behaviors associated to rock-art.