Methodological contribution to the integrated study of European Palaeolithic rock art: The issue of the audience and the perceptibility of Roc-aux-Sorciers rock art (Angles-sur-l'Anglin, France)

If some analytical tools prove to be appropriate and relevant, the application of the formulas from the optical field needs to be qualified for some results are clearly overestimated. This preliminary research brings interesting results although supplementary analytical criteria will be necessary to consolidate them (lightning, painted register, perception of relief forms). Roc-aux-Sorciers was a site with a natural collective vocation given its high accommodation capacity from 75 to 100 people, easily accessible and highly visible in the landscape on a wide area. This study shows two strategies of visibility of the rock art, towards the outside or the inside of the site depending on whether the observer looks at the decorated back wall or ceiling. Moreover, two levels of visibility and legibility separate on the one hand the monumental carved frieze dedicated to a large and public audience, on the other hand the register of small fine engravings which discovery is more individual. Thus this study yields evidence of four levels of perceptibility of Roc-aux-Sorciers rock art: from an area of 1 km around the site until a close observation of the walls which can meet different audiences and hence recover diverse uses of the parietal iconography for these populations. Beyond, it is part of the territorial structuring and mobility of these people that could to be organized around these elements of distant visibility and perception of this decorated site which the Magdalenians were aware of.