Introduction
The Tadrart Acacus is a sandstone massif range located in the southwestern side of Libya, in the core of the Sahara, close to the Algerian border. The area is today a harsh and dry landscape, inhabited by a few Tuareg families, but it has not always been a desert. During the humid climatic fluctuations occurring particularly in the Holocene, the area was greener and suited for animal and human life. Evidence of the ancient occupations is spread all over the massif and the neighboring areas in the form of open-air sites (isolated finds, scatters of artifacts, or megalithic structures) as well as stratified archaeological deposits preserved in rockshelters and caves. It is in these same contexts that one of the richest concentrations of Saharan rock art is hosted. In 1985, the rock art sites of Tadrart Acacus were inserted in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites as an example of “a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which...
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Gallinaro, M. (2014). Tadrart Acacus Rock Art Sites. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1267
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