[1] [2] This complex of caves was discovered during an ongoing routine exploration of the local territory on February 1, 1970 by a team[a] of speleologists of the Salento Speleological Group "Pasquale de Laurentiis" from Maglie.

[11] In response to the pending problem of public access restriction to the site the Lecce provincial government approved the "Memorandum of Understanding for the creation and processing of three-dimensional virtual image reconstruction of the prehistoric paintings of the Cave of Porto Badisco and other related activities".

A joint team of the National Research Council Canada and the University of Salento was granted access and has produced a 3D documentation of the cave's interior.

[12][13][7] Critical statements have amounted to a near total consensus on the high degree of cultural and historical significance and the exceptional artistic quality of the cave's art.

[17] Maria Laura Leone's line of interpretation of the cave's artwork (with reference to Paolo Graziosi's 1980 monograph) in her 2009 publication: The Phosphenic Deer Cave of Badisco - Art and Myth of the Shadows in Depth (abridged version): Direct Link Leone suggests that the regularly recurring "deer" and hunting scenes represent some kind of "creation myth".

[18] She emphasizes that the incomplete knowledge of prehistoric societies and heterogeneous information on social and political organisation provides only a vague understanding of the true nature and correlation of power inside the Neolithic communities.

Mediterranean societies of the late Neolithic era had begun to engage in community organisation and planning (Printed ceramics industry, farming, towns, religion) and individuals pursued the first specialized traits.

[10][19] The artwork composition, implementation, thorough planning and conceptual thinking suggests that these Neolithic artisans belonged to the greater European, Mediterranean, Trans-Alpine pan-culture, "that lived at the margins of agriculture", endowed with a common set of ideas and an inherit understanding of surreal and metaphoric concepts.