In this connection I cannot help recalling my address to an archaeological conference a couple of years ago, when I proposed borrowing the American practice of preserving rock art in situ by planting devilishly thorny…

In this connection I cannot help recalling my address to an archaeological conference a couple of years ago, when I proposed borrowing the American practice of preserving rock art in situ by planting devilishly thorny plants that would bar vandals from direct access to the surface of the stone. For this purpose cacti and plain thorny shrubs are used, which, incidentally, blossom very beautifully. This is of course better than fixing glass over the petroglyphs, as is done at certain sites in Russia. I also proposed, and even wrote about it to California, where the sites of Palaeolithic art that interest me are located, placing hives of stinging insects at spots that suffer particularly from close traffic: no signs asking people not to approach, not to touch and not to try to damage the images generally work. Meanwhile, the paintings in the Sierra de San Francisco can be examined perfectly well from a distance. We cannot, after all, make replicas of all the galleries of rock art, as the French thought of doing. In short, if you are stung by wasps while climbing up to a gallery of petroglyphs with a can of spray paint, perhaps they will be my wasps, and I hope it hurts