VuRA: A proposal for calculating vulnerability and risk in rock art sites. The experience in Foz Côa

• To improve its protection, management of rock art heritage should consider risk evaluation. • To evaluate risk, a good quantification on vulnerability and hazardousness is needed. • VuRA is a proposal intended for the analysis of vulnerability, hazardousness and risk in rock art. • VuRA has been applied to a set of rock art sites in the Foz Côa area (Portugal). • VuRA has allowed the definition of detailed strategies for the protection and conservation of the group of sites studied. As part of a project with very ambitious goals ( LandCRAFT - the sociocultural contexts of art from Recent Prehistory in the Côa Valley ), the authors were entrusted with tasks related to the conservation of a large set of rock art sites. In order to achieve these goals, and given their complexity, a standardized inspection and measurement strategy was designed to determine the degree of vulnerability and risk of this group of archaeological sites. In a research area in which proposals and bibliographic references are particularly rare, the developed formula has reached such a high level of complexity and interest that its publication and submission to the analysis and criticism of the scientific community has been deemed necessary. Indeed, we consider that scientific dissemination could not only improve this formula but also turn it into a useful tool for public use. Consequently, we would like to present here the first version of VuRA (Vulnerability of Rock Art), an integrated set of record sheets aimed at determining vulnerability and risk in rock art sites. This proposal combines detailed field observation with territorial information and the support of data offered by other disciplines (archaeology, chemistry, geotechnics, etc.), with a level of detail and complexity that can be regulated by the editors, depending on the objectives of the study. In the case of the LandCRAFT project, VuRA was used to define in detail the management strategies (protection, presentation, conservation, etc.) of the set of sites covered by the project.