Major motion pictures from our prehistoric past

Cambridge archaeologists are illuminating some of the oldest graphic art of the past, by applying some of the most advanced graphic technology of the present. Watching the sun arc and fall over one of these panels, and seeing the individual figures leap out then disappear was revelatory - Frederick Baker We tend to think of archaeological investigation as getting down and dirty with the physical evidence of vanished people - skeletal remains, submerged foundations, the charred detritus of daily life. This is evidence with substance that can be analysed, dated, pieced together. But what do archaeologists do with sculptures that are made of air? In the case of the 150,000-plus engravings of the Valcamonica valley in the Italian Alps, the images have been carved out of the sandstone rock. They are a subtraction from it. From about 4,000 BC up to medieval times, with activity concentrated in the 1st millennium BC, the peoples of the valley have hewn pictures out of the rocks with stones or tools. Dr Christopher Chippindale, rock art expert and Curator at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and Dr Frederick Baker, film-maker and Senior Research Associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, use the local dialect term for these engravings: pitoti , or 'little puppets'.