Cueva de las Manos

A cave in Argentina’s Santa Cruz Province, famed for prehistoric rock art, especially hundreds of hand stencils made by blowing pigment around hands held against the rock.

Hand stencil: An image made by spraying pigment around a hand placed against a surface. Hundreds of negative hand images are the cave’s most recognizable motif.
Hunter-gatherers of Patagonia: Mobile peoples who lived by hunting, gathering, and fishing in Patagonia before and during European colonization. Archaeologists associate the cave’s imagery with ancient Patagonian hunter-gatherer communities.
Stencil: A device or method that transfers an image by applying material through or around a shaped boundary. Hand stencils use the body itself as the shape around which pigment is applied.
Hand symbolism: The use of hand images or gestures to communicate identity, presence, status, or belief. Repeated hand stencils raise questions about whose presence or group affiliations they marked.
Guanaco: A wild South American camelid native to the Andes and Patagonian regions. Guanacos appear repeatedly in the cave’s painted hunting scenes.
Radiocarbon dating: A method for estimating the age of organic material by measuring its carbon-14 content. Radiocarbon evidence helps establish the long chronology of occupation and image-making.
Blown pigment: Pigment dispersed onto a surface by blowing it through a tube or directly from the mouth. Artists created many hand outlines by directing pigment around hands against the wall.
Hunter-gatherer art: Visual expression created by societies whose subsistence relies mainly on hunting and gathering. The cave’s imagery belongs to a wider record of art made by mobile communities.
Patagonian rock art: Prehistoric and historic images painted or engraved on rock across Patagonia. The cave is one of Patagonia’s best-known rock-art sites.
Rock-art pigment: Colored material applied to rock surfaces to create painted or stenciled images. Mineral pigments produced the cave’s red, black, yellow, and white images.

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