The vast majority of the petroglyphs are made on subglacially streamlined bedrock and glacial erratic surfaces revealed as the last glacier to form the valley retreated approximately 15,000 years ago.

[2] Their function pertains to celebratory rituals: commemorative, initiatory and propitiatory; first in the field of religion, then later even secular, which were held on special occasions, either single or recurrent.

[4] According to Anati's research results, Val Camonica is divided into Proto-Camunian, Camunian I, II, III, IV and Post-Camunian (Roman, Medieval ages and recent) periods.

[5] The earliest rock carvings date back to epipaleolithic (or Mesolithic, Proto-Camunian,[5] 8th-6th millennium BC), several millennia after the retreat of the glacier that covered the Val Camonica (Würm glaciation).

[5][12] These monuments, preserved mainly in the Archaeological Park of National Massi Cemmo and in that of Asinino-Anvòia (Ossimo), indicate a ritual function linked to the veneration of ancestors.

[13] During the Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC, approximately), engravings on rock outcrops took on the issue of weapons, reflecting the greater emphasis given them by the warriors in the Camunian society of the time.

[15] Topographic patterns are also present, mainly in the central part of the Iron Age (6th-4th century BC), like in the famous Bedolina Map, firstly studied by Miguel Beltrán Llorís[16] and more recently by Cristina Turconi[17] for the Milan University, one of the best known engraved surfaces of the Camonica Valley.

[19] The first documented report of the engraved stones dates back to 1909, when Walther Laeng pointed out to the National Committee for the Protection of Monuments two boulders decorated around Cemmo (Capo di Ponte).

Only in the 1920s, however, did the rocks pique the interest of scholars, including Giuseppe Bonafini, geologist Senofonte Squinabol, and, since 1929, Torinese anthropologist Giovanni Marro and Florentine archaeologist Paolo Graziosi.

Altheim started reading Nazi ideologies into the engravings, which were soon imitated in a fascist work by Marro, identifying them as evidence of a supposed ancestral Aryan race.

[20] The mapping and cataloging resumed after the Second World War, led by Laeng and conducted by scholars of the infant Museum of Natural Sciences of Brescia, consisting of both national and international experts.

In 1955, with the institution of the Parco nazionale delle incisioni rupestri di Naquane by the Archaeological Superintendent of Lombardy, work began to preserve the rocks and their inscriptions.