page_title: Painted Cave, Galdar
section_title: The settlement
hierarchical_section_title: Painted Cave, Galdar / Description / The settlement
caption_attribution_description: English: Cueva Pintada. Looking N-W from the GC-2 road. Behind the museum, slightly on the left: the two towers of the Santiago de los Caballeros church.
context_page_description: The Painted cave is an archaeological museum and park in the town of Galdar, located the northwest of Grand Canary in the Canary Islands, Spain. This centre is part of the Spanish Ministry of Culture, Historic Heritage and Museums of the town council of Grand Canary.
  Inside are found some of the most representative archaeological vestiges of pre-Hispanic Canaries, with characteristics unique within Spain. The Painted cave is considered as the "Sistine chapel" of the former inhabitants of the island, the Canarii.
context_section_description: Over twenty years of excavations have unveiled a whole settlement beyond the Painted cave. A whole hamlet used to spread from the bottom of the valley up to the present city centre. This was one of the neighbourhoods that constituted pre-Hispanic Agaldar. The hamlet was occupied from the 6th century until the 11th century, and again from the 13th century until the 16th century and the Spanish conquest of the island.
  The houses were quadrangular and were surrounded outside by circular walls. They had one or two lateral bedrooms, opening towards the south through a small corridor. The bedrock was used to lean walls against it, and was worked to form a flat floor in the houses. The floor was further covered with packed earth or, in some cases, of stones sometimes coloured with red ochre.
  The walls were made either of basalt or of well-dressed blocks of tuff. Nearly all the houses have kept remains of mortar and of paints of various colours that decorated the rooms.
  The enclave has an important role in the understanding of the final stage of pre-Hispanic Canaries - before the conquest - and the incorporation of the island to the crown of Castille.
  It is of note that some of the main artificial cave sites of the island are located in the relative vicinity of the Painted cave (cuevas del Hospital, Huertas del Rey or the Audience cave in the Four Doors cave site).
caption: The site, outside view (looking N-W)
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