ART HISTORY: “Art is the signature of civilizations”

A.  Cave Art:  Notes

Cave art is often hidden deep in cave formations, suggesting that it was intended for a privileged subset of people; this theory is similar to that of burial sites such as at Stonehenge where remains of men of a certain age are found. It suggests a society built on hierarchies, one that was structured and ordered.

Prehistoric humans worked and painted in deep cave formations that would have been pitch-black by using animal fat lamps.

The various materials used were: natural pigment derived from stone and plant, charcoal, and applied using their hands or rough brushes. Some archaeologists believe that pigment may have been mixed in the mouth and then spat onto the walls (see the archaeological reenactment of painting techniques slide).

 Paleolithic paintings had the following characteristics (for example):

Guiding Questions while exploring the Caves: 

1. How do people express ideas through art?

2.  What can we learn about the people who lived long ago from the cave art?

3.  How has symbols or images been used throughout history to tell stories? 

4.  How have symbols or images been used throughout history to communicate our society’s values?  

5.  Why do people use images to tell stories and to communicate?

6.  What were the cave artists trying to say?

7.  Why do you think that there were so many animals and not as many people in the paintings?

8.  What can the paintings tell us about other aspects of the life of cave dwellers or Paleolithic people?

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From “LIFE at Lascaux: First Color Photos From Another World” (B. Cosgrove) (click)

“The Lascaux story is so improbable, so marvelous, that it feels more like the remnant of a dream, or a half-remembered myth, rather than something that unfolded within living memory. . . .

September 12, 1940. A warm afternoon in Dordogne, in southwestern France. Four boys and their dog, Robot, walk along a ridge covered with pine, oak and blackberry brambles. When Robot begins digging near a hole beside a downed tree, the boys tell each other that this might be the entrance to a legendary tunnel running beneath the Vézère River, leading to a lost treasure in the woods of Montignac. The youngsters begin to dig, widening the hole, removing rocks—until they’ve made an opening large enough for each to slip through, one by one. They slide down into the earth—and emerge into a dark chamber beneath the ground. They have discovered not merely another place, but another time.

In the cool dark beneath the sunlit world above, the boys found themselves in “a Versailles of prehistory”—a vast series of caves, today collectively known as Lascaux, covered with wall paintings that, by some estimates, are close to 20,000 years old.

 In 1947, LIFE magazine’s Ralph Morse went to Lascaux, becoming the first professional photographer to document the breathtaking scenes. Morse shared his memories of that time and place with LIFE.com, recalling what it was like to encounter the strikingly lifelike, gorgeous handiwork of a long-vanished people: the Cro-Magnon.

“The first sight of those paintings was simply unbelievable,” he said. “I was amazed at how the colors held up after thousands of years—like they were painted the day before. Most people don’t realize how huge some of the paintings are. There are pictures of animals there that are ten, fifteen feet long.”

In 1948, a year after Morse’s pioneering photographic work, Lascaux was opened to the public. But in 1963, the cave was closed after 15 short years when experts determined that carbon dioxide from the breath of thousands of visitors, as well as spores and other post-Ice Age contaminants tramped in from above ground, were damaging the paintings. Today, only a handful of people are allowed inside Lascaux for a few days each year to monitor damage (a mysterious, encroaching mold is the latest culprit) while they work to keep the magnificent paintings adorning the walls from going the way of their creators, and vanishing entirely.”  (B. Cosgrove) 

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B.      Class Activity:  Cave Art Paintings: Investigate the Caves!


The Lascaux Cave
Lascaux Cave Paintings (c.17,000 BCE)

During the Upper Paleolithic period, which began about 40,000 BCE, Neanderthal man was replaced by a more "modern" version of Homo sapiens. At the same time, prehistoric art took a massive leap forward, as exemplified by the cave painting of western Europe, that reached its apogee on the walls and ceilings of Lascaux Cave.

Discovered in 1940, close to the village of Montignac, in the Dordogne region of southwestern France, Lascaux is especially famous for its painting, which includes a rare example of a human figure; the largest single image ever found in a prehistoric cave (the Great Black Bull); and a quantity of mysterious abstract signs, which have yet to be deciphered. Its most famous chambers include the "Hall of the Bulls", the "Axial Gallery", the "Apse" and the "Shaft".

In total, Lascaux's galleries and passageways - extending about 240 meters in length - contain some 2,000 images, about 900 of which are animals, and the remainder geometric symbols of varying shapes. The sheer number of images, their size and exceptional realism, as well as their spectacular colors, is why Lascaux is sometimes referred to as "The Sistine Chapel of Prehistory". Like the Chauvet Cave paintings, Lascaux's cave art was protected by a landslide which sealed off access to the cave around 13,000 BCE.

In 1979, Lascaux was added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, together with another 147 prehistoric sites and 25 decorated caves located in the Vezere Valley of the Correze and Dordogne regions. In 1963, due to continuing environmental problems inside the cave, Lascaux was closed to the public. In 1983, an exact replica of the Great Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery - created under Monique Peytral and known as "Lascaux II" - was opened a few hundred metres from the original cave, and it is this replica that visitors see today.

Discovery and Condition

The Lascaux cave complex was discovered in 1940 by teenagers Marcel Ravidat, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, and Simon Coencasin, and eight years later, it was opened to the public. By 1955, much of the cave's parietal art was beginning to deteriorate due to the amount of carbon dioxide exhaled by the 1200 daily visitors, and other environmental problems. Lichens and crystals began to appear on the walls. As a result, in 1963 the site was closed to the public. Since then, more threats to the integrity of Lascaux's cave paintings have been caused by microbial and fungal growths. This worsened during the 2000s, prompting the French Ministry of Culture to organize an international symposium in Paris in 2009 ("Lascaux and Preservation Issues in Subterranean Environments") to debate and resolve the problem.

Today, only a tiny handful of people (mostly scientists) are permitted inside Lascaux for a few days each year in order to help prevent the magnificent paintings, drawings and engravings from joining their creators, and vanishing entirely. One task that has been successful is the restoration of the original entrance to allow sunlight to enter the cave. In 1999, a handful of researchers witnessed this event for the first time in 15,000 years. It is now established that the cave interior closest to the entrance - including the Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery - would have been bright enough to work by for about one hour, for several days each year.

Dating

Chronological questions about the age of Lascaux's cave paintings, over what period they were created, and the identity of the oldest art in the complex, are still being debated. The Paleolithic scholar Andre Leroi-Gourhan believes that Lascaux was decorated between the end of Solutrean art and the beginning of Magdalenian art (c.15,000-13,000 BCE). According to Leroi-Gourhan, the style of Lascaux's paintings was consistent with other art discovered during this period. Specific characteristics of the style include bison horns shown in front-view; front horns of bovines depicted by a simple curve while the rear horn is more sinuous; deer antlers depicted in a specific perspective, and so on. Other experts, however, as well as a radiocarbon test result of 17,000 BCE, obtained in 1998 from a fragment of a spearhead found in the Apse, places the art at the junction between the Solutrean era and the pre-Magdalenian Badegoulian era. This view is further supported by the 'Placard type' style of geometrical signs in the cave. According to Paleolithic scholar Jean Clottes, they are very similar to the 'chimney' signs found in the Pech-Merle cave paintings (Lot, France), whose art dates back as far as 25,000 BCE. In other words, the cave painting at Lascaux is most likely to date back to about 15,000-17,000 BCE, with the earliest art being created no later than 17,000 BCE. Furthermore, the unity of style found in the drawings and engravings at Lascaux, indicates that most were created during a relatively short period of time, perhaps less than two millennia. (Note: For a comparison with Gravettian imagery, see Cosquer Cave cave paintings.)

Layout of Lascaux Cave

General

The entrance leads directly into the main chamber called the Hall of the Bulls. This leads to the slightly smaller Axial Gallery (or Painted Gallery) (a dead end), or the Passageway, both of which are heavily decorated with various types of art, including paintings and engravings. The Passageway leads to the Nave and the Apse (both adorned with images), and then the Mondmilch (Moonmilk) Gallery, with its crumbly undecorated rock surface and, finally, the painted Chamber of the Felines.

Hall of the Bulls

The Hall of the Bulls - probably the world's most famous underground gallery of Paleolithic art - is 19 meters (62 feet) in length and varies in width from 5.5 meters (18 feet) at the entrance to 7.5 meters (25 feet) at its widest point. As one enters the main area (the Rotunda) the first image one encounters is a horse's head and neck with a fuzzy mane. The second is the mysterious Unicorn. Other notable pictures found in the Hall of the Bulls include the Frieze of the Black Horses (a long line of aurochs and horses), the Frieze of the Small Stags, and heads of some six bulls, a headless horse and a bear. There are two exits from the Hall of the Bulls: one leads to the Axial Gallery, a dead end; the other to the main Passageway.

The Axial Gallery (Also called the Painted Gallery)

This rectilinear gallery is over 22 meters (72 feet) long and leads to a dead end. Its unique feature is its opening, which art critics justifiably regard as the apogee of Paleolithic parietal art. All the classic prehistoric animals are pictorialized here in a swirl of major works of art: the Great Black Bull, the three Chinese Horses, The Falling Cow, the Fleeing Horse, as well as more aurochs, more bulls, bison, ibexes, and horses. The largest work is the 17-foot long Great Black Bull, whose monumental size is enhanced by the way the black hide is depicted against the pale background and by the absence of any other comparably sized figures nearby. Nearly all the bull's anatomy is represented, except for the front left hoof. The entire animal has been spray-painted. Thereafter, the Axial Gallery becomes a rather narrow pathway with a low ceiling. Many of the paintings have been drawn using the folds and contours of the walls to enhance depth and perspective. At the end of the Gallery, in a section known as the Meander, is the Upside-down Horse.

The Passageway

The section of the cave that connects the Hall of the Bulls to the Apse and the Nave is called the "Passageway". However, judging by the concentration of figures on its walls - 380 figures, including 240 complete or fragmentary animals like aurochs, bison, deer, horses and ibex; 80 signs, and 60 indeterminate images - prehistoric artists saw it not simply as a connecting passage but as an important gallery in its own right. It is about 17 meters (56 feet) in length and averages about 4 meters (13 feet) in width. In Solutrean times, its ceiling varied between 4 and 5 feet in height. Notable images include: a procession of engraved horses, the horse with the turned-back foot, and the bearded horse.

At the end of the Passageway is an intersection: joining from the right is the Apse; while the continuation of the Passageway is called the Nave.

The Apse

This is a semi-spherical cavern, not unlike the apse in a Romanesque basilica, hence its name. Judging by the number of ceremonial artifacts discovered here, as well as its art, the Apse is likely to have been the sacred heart of Lascaux. Roughly 4.5 meters in diameter (15 feet), its ceiling is about 1.6 to 2.7 meters in height high (5-9 feet). Almost every square inch of its limestone walls and ceiling are covered with overlapping petroglyphs in the form of engraved drawings. In all, there are more than one thousand figures: some 500 animals (mostly deer) and 600 geometric signs or other abstract markings. The Apse accounts for more than half of the decorative art in the entire cave. Curiously, the greatest density of images occurs in the deepest part of the chamber where the Apse meets the Shaft. Notable pictures include: the 6-foot wide Major Stag - the largest petroglyph at Lascaux - the remains of several large black aurochs, the Stag with Thirteen Arrows, the Panel of the Musk Ox, the Frieze of the Painted and Engraved Stags, and the Great Sorcerer.

The Shaft

In the floor of the Apse is a hole (now occupied by a ladder) giving access to "the Shaft of the Dead Man" a small part of an underlying cavern known as the Great Fissure. It is the deepest, most confined part of the entire cave. At the bottom of the ladder and on the adjoining wall is one of the most remarkable prehistoric pictographs yet discovered. The main scene depicts a fight between a bison and a man: the bison has been stabbed by a spear and appears to be dead. The man has a bird-like head and is stretched out as if he too is dead. Lying next to the man is a bird on a pole. Not surprisingly, given the fact that humans are almost never depicted in Stone Age paintings, and that complex narrative scenes like this one are equally rare, the pictograph has attracted fierce debate as to its precise meaning. Strangely, there are very few other pictures in the Shaft. Only eight have been found: four animals (bird, bison, horse, and rhino), and three geometric signs.

The Nave

The Nave measures eighteen meters (59 feet) in length, and averages 6 meters (20 feet) in width. Its ceiling varies between 2.5 meters (8.5 feet) at the entrance and 8 meters (27 feet) at the far end. The floor has a 19 percent slope, before levelling out as it leads into the Mondmilch Gallery. Most of the pictures in the Nave are engravings due to the softness of the rock. Notable areas of decoration include: the Panel of the Imprint (noted for its accompanying symbols and signs), the Panel of Seven Ibexes, the Panel of the Great Black Cow (regarded as the most beautiful scene in the cave), the Crossed Bison (best example of Magdalenian use of perspective), and the Frieze of the Swimming Stags, depicted swimming in an imaginary stream.

The Mondmilch (Moonmilk) Gallery

Between the Nave and the Chamber of the Felines, is the Mondmilch (Moonmilk) Gallery, named after its milky-colored stalagmite encrustation. Some 20 meters (66 feet) long and about 2 meters (6.5 feet) wide, the ceiling rises as high as 8 meters (27 feet). Its crumbly surfaces explains the complete absence of any artistic decoration.

The Chamber of the Felines

About 30 meters (100 feet) long, the Chamber of the Felines differs from Lascaux's other galleries by its narrow dimensions and steep gradient which makes movement difficult. As a result, the spectator must crouch down to see the art, which - as the name suggests - includes a number of cats. In addition, there are a number of horses, and signs. Notable images include: the cats in the Niche of the Felines, and an engraving of two lions mating.

The Cave Art

Two types of cave art predominate in Paleolithic culture: drawing and engraving. At Lascaux, however, it is painting that dominates - a comparably rare situation in French prehistoric caves. The main technique used by Lascaux's artists was the spraying of pulverized color pigments down a tube made of wood, bone or plant materials - a technique which appears to have worked successfully on all surfaces throughout the subterranean complex.

The 2,000 or so images divide into two main categories: animals and symbols. The animals consist of species that Magdalenian cavemen would have hunted and eaten (like aurochs, deer, musk-oxen, horses and bison), as well as dangerous predators that they would have feared (like bears, lions, and wolves). Curiously, in view of the fact that the Magdalenian era is nicknamed the "reindeer age", as well as the large number of reindeer bones discovered in the cave, there is only one image of a reindeer in the entire complex.

Research has established that each animal species pictorialized at Lascaux represents a specific period of the calendar, according to their mating habits. Horses represent the end of winter or the beginning of spring; aurochs high summer; while stags mark the onset of autumn. During their mating period, they are extremely active and animated. From this viewpoint, the animal art at Lascaux contrasts with that of several other sites, whose animal pictures offer a much more static outline.

Lascaux's artists were also extremely adept at capturing the vitality of the animals depicted. They did this by using broad, rhythmic outlines around areas of soft coloring. Typically, animals are depicted in a slightly twisted perspective, with their heads shown in profile but with their horns or antlers painted from the front. The result is to imbue the figures with more visual power. The combined use of profile and frontal perspective is also a common feature of Mesopotamian art and Egyptian art.

Distribution of imagery is quite uneven. More than half of the cave's total art is on the walls and ceiling of the Apse, which comprises only 6 percent of the surface area. The Passageway is the next most heavily decorated area.

When discussing the artistic quality of Stone Age cave art, one must bear in mind the adverse conditions in which Stone Age painters worked, including: bad light (most paintings were created with the aid of flaming torches or primitive stone lamps fueled by animal fat); and awkward working conditions (requiring the use of primitive scaffolding to reach high walls and ceilings). In addition, at Lascaux (as well as at least 20 caves in France and Spain), there are prehistoric hand stencils and prints of 'mutilated' hands left in clay. Experts have suggested that because thumbs remained on all the hands, the injuries may have been caused by frostbite.

Art Materials

Cave painting during the Stone Age would have required numerous resources. First, the artists had to select or hand-craft the tools necessary for engraving and painting; then collect the charcoal, minerals and other raw materials needed for coloration. This alone would have required a wide-ranging knowledge of the local district, and its potential. Also, special attention would have to be paid to the different chambers and rock surfaces to be decorated inside the cave. An experienced prehistoric artist would advise on what preparation was required - cleaning, scraping, or preparatory sketching - how best to apply paint to different surfaces, what combination of pigments and additives were needed, and so on. Certain equipment might be built, like scaffolding - as used in the Apse at Lascaux - while certain areas of the cave might be altered to facilitate decorative works. Lastly, the iconography of the cave would have to be determined and communicated to all artists.

Note:  At Lascaux, archeologists found sockets in the walls of the Apse, showing that a system of scaffolding was specially built to paint the pictures on the ceiling.

Paint Pigments

The color pigments used to decorate Lascaux, and other French caves, were all obtained from locally available minerals. This explains why the prehistoric color palette used by Paleolithic painters is relatively limited. It includes black, all shades of red, plus a range of warm colors, from dark brown to straw yellow. Only exceptionally were other colors created, such as the mauve color that appears on the 'blazon' below the image of the Great Black Cow in the Nave. Nearly all pigments were obtained from minerals, earth or charcoal. At Lascaux, for instance, research shows that all the painted and drawn figures were painted with colors obtained from powdered metallic oxides of iron and manganese. Iron oxides (iron-rich clay ochre, hematite, goethite), used for red and other warm colors, were widely available in the Dordogne, while manganese was also common. At Lascaux, curiously, the various black shades used in paintings were obtained almost exclusively from manganese: carbon-based sources (such as wood, bone charcoal) have rarely been identified so far. By contrast, carbon-based black pigments were used widely in the charcoal drawings at Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave.

Paint Brushes

Investigations at Lascaux show that the artists did not use paint brushes thus, in all probability, the broad black outlines of the figures were created with mats, pads or swabs of moss or hair, or even with blobs of raw color. Judging by the number of hollow, color-stained bones discovered at Lascaux and elsewhere, the larger painted areas were created using a form of prehistoric "spray-painting", with paint being blown through a tube (made from bone, wood or reeds) onto the rock surface.

Drawing, Painting, Engraving Techniques

The three graphic techniques used by artists at Lascaux were painting, drawing and engraving. They were used independently or in combination. For example, two methods were necessary to complete the Great Black Bull, in Axial Gallery. The head and most of the body were sprayed, while an implement (mat, pad, and swab) acting like a brush was used to paint the upper part and the tail. Drawing was done with the same implements, but also with edged chunks of manganese or iron oxide.

Engraving, probably the most common artistic technique used at Lascaux, involved scratching away the outer layer of rock, which generates a difference in color. The resulting 'engraved line' looks just like a drawing. In addition, thicker engraved lines were sometimes used to give added volume and relief to the outlines of animal figures.

Meaning and Interpretation of Lascaux's Cave Art

Are the pictographs and petroglyphs at Lascaux simply "art for art's sake"? It seems unlikely. The cave art at Lascaux has been carefully designed to convey some kind of story or message, rather than simply created because it looks beautiful. To begin with, why are only animals shown: why not trees and mountains? Why ignore certain very common animals, like reindeer? Why are certain areas of the cave more heavily decorated than others? The argument that Lascaux artists only painted things because they were beautiful, cannot answer these questions.

Another theory offered as an interpretation of the Stone Age art at Lascaux is the so-called "sympathetic magic theory". Championed by Abbe Henri Breuil, one of the leading French scholars of prehistoric art, it claims that Lascaux artists created their drawings and paintings of animals in an attempt to put them under a spell and thus achieve dominance over them. In other words, artists painted pictures of wounded bison in the hope that this type of primitive "visualization" might make the imagined scene actually happen. Unfortunately, this interpretation of Lascaux's cave art is not very convincing. First, there are many images that have no obvious link to hunting (the swimming horses, for instance, plus all the signs and symbols). Second, at Chauvet cave, in the Ardeche, very few if any of the animal pictures relate to animals that were hunted: most were predators, like lions.

Arguably the most convincing explanation for the cave paintings at Lascaux is that they were created as part of some spiritual ritual. According to analysis by the Paleolithic scholar Leroi-Gourhan, Lascaux was a religious sanctuary used for initiation ceremonies. Its seclusion and isolation would make it an ideal place to conduct this type of ritualistic ceremony. Furthermore, this explanation is consistent with the fact that some chambers at Lascaux are more heavily decorated than others, implying that certain areas (like the Apse) were especially sacred. The theory is also supported by a number of footprint studies, showing that virtually all the footprints in the cave were left by adolescents: a typical category of initiates.

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Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Chauvet Cave Paintings (c.30,000 BCE)  

Discovery and Preservation

The Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave - among the world's oldest sites of prehistoric cave painting, along with the El Castillo Cave Paintings (39,000 BCE), the Sulawesi Cave Art (37,900 BCE) and the abstract signs found at Altamira (c.34,000 BCE) - was discovered quite by chance in the Ardeche gorge in 1994, by three speleologists - Jean-Marie Chauvet, Eliette Brunel-Deschamps and Christian Hillaire - while they were surveying another cave nearby. Inside the Chauvet grotto, they found a 400-metre long network of galleries and rooms, covered in rock art and petroglyphs, whose floor was littered with a variety of paleontological remains, including the skulls of bears and two wolves. Some of these bones had been arranged in special position by the previous human inhabitants. Amazingly, Chauvet's entire labyrinth of prehistoric art had been left undisturbed since a landslide sealed off the entrance about 25,000 years ago.

What is the Significance of Chauvet Cave and its Art?

The discovery of the Chauvet cave, along with its galleries of prehistoric drawings, paintings and petroglyphs, was significant for two main reasons. First, both the content of the imagery and the artistic techniques used to create them, came as a major surprise. The types of animals represented was unusual, because previously most of the species depicted in Stone Age art were game animals that were hunted for food. However, at Chauvet, it is the more dangerous animals - not generally hunted for food - that account for a majority of the images. Furthermore, Chauvet's Stone Age painters employed more sophisticated techniques of drawing, shading, perspective and composition in their murals than was previously expected, at least for the period in question. As a result, Chauvet contains numerous dynamic and powerful compositions consisting of multiple images skillfully executed and arranged to fit in with the contours of the cave chambers. There is also some evidence to suggest that a significant quantity of the charcoal drawings were painted by a single, master artist.

The Cave Paintings at Chauvet

Chauvet contains a total of over 300 paintings and engravings. These were grouped in specific ways. In the most accessible part of the cave, most images are red, with a few black or engraved ones. In the deeper part, the animals are mostly black, with far fewer rock engravings and red figures. Also, there are groupings of specific animals: for example, the Horse Panel and the Panel of Lions and Rhinoceroses. What makes Chauvet such an important example of Franco-Cantabrian cave art, is the sophistication of its paintings. No other Aurignacian cave contains compositions with the same degree of realism, naturalism and complexity.

Animal Figures

The most noticeable animals in the cave (accounting for some 60 percent of all such images) are lions, mammoths, and rhinoceroses, all of whom were rarely hunted, thus unlike most other caves, Chauvet is not a pictorial showcase of daily Stone Age life. Other rare animals include a panther, a spotted leopard and an owl. In addition, the cave features the usual horses, bison, aurochs, ibex, reindeer, red deer and musk-oxen.

Abstract Art

As well as figurative pictures, Chauvet contains an abundance of abstract art in the form of geometric symbols (though less than sites in the Cantabrian region of Spain), a number of indecipherable marks, as well as a quantity of red-ochre prehistoric hand stencils and handprints.

Painterly Skills and Techniques

According to researchers, the workmanship of Chauvet's prehistoric artists is excellent. Shading, perspective and relief are skillfully used, the body proportions of the animals are natural, and species are clearly defined with numerous details of anatomy shown: for example, mammoths are drawn with an arched belly, bison are presented in frontal perspective with a bushy mane, horses too have thick manes, while the rhinoceroses have very distinctive ears. Chauvet's Stone Age painters also used engraving techniques to emphasize the lines, volume and relief of the animal figures, and mixed floor clay with charcoal to create different hues.

Cosquer Cave Paintings (c.25,000 BCE)

Hand Stencils, Animal Engravings/Paintings, Abstract Signs

Summary

The Cosquer cave is home to a unique cache of prehistoric art on the south coast of France. Occupied by Stone Age artists during the early period of Gravettian art, it can now only be entered through an underwater tunnel whose entrance is some 40 meters below sea level. This is because when it was first decorated, during the last Ice Age glaciation, around 25,000 BCE, a vast amount of frozen water was stored in polar regions with the result that sea levels were 120 meters (400 feet) lower than they are today. As a result, about three quarters of the cave painting has been destroyed.

As in the case of the contemporaneous Pech-Merle Cave paintings, scientists have determined that Cosquer's cave art was created during two main phases. The oldest artworks - hand stencils, handprints and some animal engravings - were done during the Gravettian, while the rest of the animal engravings and paintings were completed during the following period of Solutrean art, from 19,000 BCE onwards. Together with the Abri Castanet Engravings (35,000 BCE) in the Dordogne, the Chauvet Cave Paintings (30,000 BCE) and the Grotte des Deux-Ouvertures in the Ardeche, Pech-Merle and Roucadour Cave (24,000 BCE) in the Lot, Cosquer contains some of the oldest Stone Age art in France.

Discovery, Location and Description

The Cosquer cave is located in limestone hills around the Calanque de Morgiou not far from Marseille. After the Ice Age, the Mediterranean rose. The entrance to the cave is located about 120 feet underwater. It was discovered by the deep-sea diver Henri Cosquer in 1985, who returned several times before discovering a number of hand stencils, pictographs and petroglyphs on the cave's walls. In 1991, archeologists were informed of the discovery of this rock art and performed several investigations before the cave complex was assigned to the French Ministry of Culture.

Dating

The earliest art at Cosquer, made from 25,000 BCE onwards, consists of 65 hand stencils, finger fluting and other geometric symbols, as well as a number of small animal engravings incised on the slanting wall next to the big submerged shaft. The later rock art, created from 19,000 to 17,000 BCE, consists of some 170 images of animals, including marine creatures like fish and seals, as well as a number of more complex abstract symbols. Many of these abstract signs are rectangular in shape with strange appendages and do not occur in any other Franco-Cantabrian cave art of the period. Note: For more about chronology and dating, see: Prehistoric Art Timeline (from 2.5 million BCE).

Cave Art

Cosquer's parietal art consists of 177 engraved and painted animal figures belonging to 11 different species. It features horses (63), bison and aurochs (24), ibex (28), red deer (15), chamois (4), megaloceros deer (2), saiga antelope (1), and felines (1), as well as a number of highly unusual images of marine life, such as seals (9), fish (4), auks (3), jellyfish, penguins and squid. A further 20 animal figures are unclear and 3 are combinations of different creatures. In addition, there is one anthropomorphic figure of a human figure with a seal's head. The majority of the animals are depicted in the form of rock engravings, with less than a third actually painted. Although quite a few drawings of fish have been found in different caves, the Cosquer images of seals are extremely rare in Stone Age art, the only other known examples being in La Pileta Cave and Nerja Cave in Andalusia, Spain.

Hand Stencils

Cosquer is arguably best known for its hand stencils - it has 44 black and 21 red stencils, more than any other cave in Europe, except for the Gargas Cave Hand Stencils in the Hautes-Pyrenees, and possibly El Castillo Cave in Spain. All Cosquer's hand stencils belong to adults, and many of them have incomplete fingers. In addition, the abstract art at Cosquer includes some 220 geometric signs and about 10 indeterminate markings.

Significance

Cosquer Cave is mainly significant because it is situated in an area where no Paleolithic art had ever been found before. This underlines the possibility that many prehistoric coastal caves around the Mediterranean in France, Italy and Spain have been lost to rising sea levels, along with all their cave paintings and other artworks. Archeologists estimate that if Cosquer had remained above sea level, it would now contain something like 600-800 animal images alone, and would rank alongside the Lascaux Cave paintings - and those in the caves of Trois Freres, Altamira or Chauvet - as a major center of ancient art during the Upper Paleolithic.

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Lesson Homework:

Read:  “Herzog Finds His Inner Cave Man”

Watch: “Documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams (by Werner Herzog)

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Article: “LIFE at Lascaux” (B. Cosgrove)






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