The pictorial complex which, from a content and iconographic point of view, constitutes a unicum in Basilicata, has interested several scholars, not only as regards the interpretation of the representations, but above all for the dating of the paintings, which has undergone, at depending on the orientations and the state of the discoveries, notable declines. The typology of the painted figures seems to know only one other example in Italy, as Ranaldi had already asserted, in the Cala dei Genovesi on the island of Levanzo (Egadi).

Both Ranaldi and Biancofiore in 1965, the day after the discovery, published the results, engaging above all in the description and interpretation of the representations.

Biancofiore interprets the representation as a hunting scene that distances itself from the expressive contents of Paleolithic art, in which the ideology of the animal appears predominant; in the case of Tuppo dei Sassi there is also a human representation (represented by the lobed figures). This composition insists on the man-animal relationship, highlighted in three presences and dominated by the large human figure placed at the top right. Specifically, the scene would represent the capture of animal species (bovid, deer, canid) perhaps used for domestication. According to the Scholar, these paintings would be referable to the moment in which the Mesolithic communities began to organize themselves on an agricultural economic basis and Biancofiore does not exclude that the Riparo Ranaldi was frequented for ritual purposes.

A more detailed study in 1990 was carried out by Edoardo Borzatti von Löwenstern (Department of Quaternary Ecology Studies, University of Florence) which provides a different interpretation of the paintings. The paintings are divided into a central complex and a secondary one, probably executed later with the intention of integrating the original representation. These are vaguely comb-like designs, points and lines that seem to refer to the central zoomorphic representation. The animals would all be deer and the lobed figures would be representations of vegetables. The Scholar ventures the hypothesis that the artist wanted to represent a forest populated by deer portrayed in the typical attitude of the adult male, who has the habit of stripping the bark of an oak tree, demonstrating ownership of the territory. Borzatti von Lowenstern does not exclude that the wall was painted several times over the course of time. Some paintings have been lost due to vandalism and both atmospheric and chemical agents. The veristic style of the figures has led the scholar to date the paintings to the late Palaeolithic or Mesolithic; this chronological collocation would make it possible to find a connection between the lithic industry of the shelter sediment, excavated by Borzatti von Lowenstern himself in 1972, and the paintings themselves. Items and artifacts are small, with some exceptions involving blades. Laminar artifacts are scarcely present. Both the microlithisation, reduction of the Paleolithic substratum, and the lack of pottery date this type of industry to the Mesolithic, although, at first, Borzatti hesitated to place these objects in a precise facies of the period, given their numerical scarcity , and therefore to connect them to the paintings.

In 2012 Antonio Affuso proposed a new dating for the paintings of Tuppo dei Sassi. The reference chrono-geological context is the period following the last Wurm glaciation and the beginning of the Holocene, characterized by rains and higher temperatures which favored the diffusion of small mammals and the anthropization of the area, since the subsistence economy begins to be based on the control of natural resources and no longer on the levy. In the rock paintings of Tuppo dei Sassi the anthropomorphic figure that stands out at the top right of the scene would express magical-religious meanings that connect it to the representations of the Goddess Mater, especially the plastic ones, widespread in the pre-protohistoric cultures of the Mediterranean area and Europe continental. The surrender of the crutch arms, the pointed ending, the use of the red color refer to the so-called "Venus of Gaban".

An element of support for the hypothesis of the spread of the cult of the Goddess Mater in Basilicata in an advanced phase of the Middle Neolithic comes from Alianello, where a steatopygian female statuette was found, now conserved in the National Museum of Siritide in Policoro. Outside the region there is a reference, once again, to the anthropomorphic representations on the walls of the cave of Cala dei Genovesi in Levanzo, while the zoomorphic ones, especially cervids, find close comparisons with the pictograms of the Cave of the Deers of Porto Badisco (Otranto), all advanced Neolithic contexts. The Tuppo dei Sassi complex can be considered an iconographic system relating to occasional magical-religious rituals that took place in isolated places. The clear comparisons of the depictions with Neolithic contexts in southern Italy and the Iberian peninsula suggest a similar chronology for the rock paintings of Tuppo dei Sassi. This hypothesis is also supported by the discovery on the site of "ceramic shards" - as Biancofiore had defined them - belonging to the pottery of the "civilization of Matera", which included the Neolithic ceramics of Matera. Furthermore, the close stylistic comparisons with the zoomorphic figures of the cave of Porto Badisco provide further elements to bring Tuppo dei Sassi back to Neolithic environments of the advanced phase. In conclusion, the rock paintings of Tuppo dei Sassi di Filiano can be placed chronologically in the advanced phase of the Neolithic and are related to magical-religious activities.

Historical notes

In September 1966 The "London News" reported the news of the discovery of rock paintings at "Tuppo dei Sassi", or rather "Serra Pisconi", as was later specified by Edoardo Borzatti von Lowenstern, in the Filiano countryside, which took place in 1965 thanks to Francesco Ranaldi. The latter, following the traces indicated by some farmers in the Filiano area, found the pictorial complex located under a 65x52cm shelter; made of red ocher applied directly to the rock surface, it extends like a parallelogram for a height of cm. 52 and for a width of cm. 46.