New archaeological excavations at the Penascosa site, in Vila Nova de Foz Côa

Archaeological work is underway again at Penascosa, one of the Palaeolithic art sites in the Côa Valley, classified as a National Monument, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list and open to the public.

The excavations, which began last week, aim to search for new engraved rocks and traces left by artists during the various phases of the monumentalization of the Côa Valley, as happened during the last intervention in 2018, which resulted in the identification of two new engraved panels.

The Côa Museum explains that “this new excavation campaign also aims to assess and document the impact of stone extraction in modern times, in order to contribute to a well-founded interpretation of the distribution of known engraved rocks”.

These works, carried out within the scope of the Programmed Research Project “Côa 3P – Paleogeography, Paleoecology and Paleoethnology of the Côa and surrounding territories”, include, in addition to the institutions involved in the research team, the participation of PhD Fellows in Non-Academic Environment from the Foundation for Science and Technology and students from the Faculties of Arts of the University of Lisbon (Uniarq) and the University of Porto.