The Rooks' Shelters

The Grajos Shelters are located in the ravine of the same name to the northwest of Cieza, very close to the town, and within the Sierra de Ascoy, a mountain range with gentle morphology and little vegetation cover, which has an average altitude between 400 and 600 m. The slopes of this mountain range are crisscrossed by numerous ravines and gullies. Among them, the deep and steep Barranco de los Grajos (Ravine of the Grajos) presents three rock shelters along its course that feature important cave paintings with manifestations of prehistoric art, included in the catalogue of Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin, declared a World Heritage Site. Humanity by UNESCO in 1998, which have undergone significant restoration work, leaving them closed to public access, and only through guided tours is the possibility of seeing them inside, thanks to the use and improvement of their access and the conditioning of the shelters for tourist use.

The three shelters mostly contain rock art depictions in the Levantine Naturalist style, although there are also examples of the Schematic style and even depictions of historical chronology from the Roman and medieval periods.

Shelter I is the richest in representations, with some 50 figures spread across two panels. Panel I presents one of the most complex ritual dance scenes of its style, both for the number of elements represented and the variety of gestures displayed by the male and female dancers.

In Abrigo II or Abrigo Grande, Paleolithic occupation levels have been found, and its pictorial representations extend into historical chronology.

A few hundred meters up the ravine, at the confluence of a tributary valley, lies Shelter III, a small cave with six Levantine art figures. Its interior was used as a burial site during the Chalcolithic period.