Museo y Parque Arqueológico Cueva Pintada de Gáldar

The Research Programme

The analysis of the information obtained during the 1970 works led to the belief that planting these plantations had in fact respected the pre-existing archaeological levels. This, together with the valuable written documentation from between the 14th and 16th centuries in which the populated settlement of Agaldar is described, justified the interest in starting a multi-disciplinary programme of documenting, safeguarding and recognising the importance of this exceptional group of caves.

In 1987 excavation works began under the management of Celso Martín de Guzmán and Jorge Onrubia Pintado. Since then a total of fourteen excavation projects have been carried out which have covered a surface area of more than 6000m².

The result of these excavations is that the Painted Cave has become one of the most important pre-Hispanic settlements in Gran Canaria, where the decorated cave now appears to be surrounded by a pre-Hispanic village of more than seventy houses and artificial caves. The different dating systems used, (Radiocarbon, Paleomagnetism, Termoluminiscence) have allowed us to date the site between the 6th and 16th Centuries. The indigenous settlement did in fact survive until sometime after the island’s conquest before its complete abandonment. In the 18th Century the area underwent its first agricultural conditioning. From the second half of the 19th Century onwards, the layering of the ground and planting of the banana plantations over the settlement meant that the settlement was preserved until the 1980’s which was when the excavation works began.