Definition: Antiquity
Cave art, also called parietal art or cave painting, is a general term referring to the decoration of the walls of rockshelters and caves throughout the world. The best known sites are in the Upper Paleolithic (UP)of Europe, where polychrome (multi-colored) paintings made of charcoal and ochre and other natural pigments were used to illustrate extinct animals, humans and geometric shapes some 20,000-30,000 years ago.
The purposes of cave art, particularly UP cave art, are widely debated. Cave art is most often associated with the work of shamans, religious specialists who may have painted the walls in memory of past or support of future hunting trips. Cave art was once considered evidence of a "creative explosion", when the minds of ancient humans became fully developed: today, scholars believe that human progress towards behavioral modernity began in Africa and developed much more slowly.
The oldest yet dated cave art is from Chauvet Cave in France, direct-dated to between 30,000-32,000 years ago. Art in rockshelters is known to have occurred within the past 500 years in many parts of the world, and there is some argument to be made that modern graffiti is a continuation of that tradition.
Dating Upper Paleolithic Cave Sites
One of the great controversies in rock art today is whether we have reliable dates for when the great cave paintings of Europe were completed. There are three current methods of dating cave paintings.
- Direct dating, in which conventional or AMS radiocarbon dates are taken on tiny fragments of charcoal or other organic paints in the painting itself
- Indirect dating, in which radiocarbon dates are taken on charcoal from occupation layers within the cave that are somehow associated with the painting, such as pigment-making tools, portable art or collapsed painted roof or wall blocks are found in datable strata
- Stylistic dating, in which scholars compare the images or techniques used in a particular painting to others which have already been dated in another manner
Although direct dating is the most reliable, stylistic dating is the most often used, because direct dating destroys some part of painting and the other methods are only possible in rare occurrences. Stylistic changes in artifact types have been used as chronological markers in seriation since the late 19th century; stylistic changes in rock art are an outgrowth of that philosophical method. Until Chauvet, painting styles for the Upper Paleolithic were thought to reflect a long, slow growth to complexity, with certain themes, styles and techniques assigned to the Gravettian, Solutrean and Magdelenian time segments of the UP.
Direct-Dated Sites in France
According to von Petzinger and Nowell (2011 cited below), there are 142 caves in France with wall paintings dated to the UP, but only 10 have been direct-dated.
- Aurignacian (~45,000-29,000 BP), 9 total: Chauvet
- Gravettian (29,000-22,000 BP), 28 total: Pech-Merle, Grotte Cosquer, Courgnac, Mayennes-Sciences
- Solutrian (22,000-18,000 BP), 33 total: Grotte Cosquer
- Magdalenian (17,000-11,000 BP), 87 total: Cougnac, Niaux, Le Portel
The problem with that (30,000 years of art primarily identified by modern western perceptions of style changes) was recognized by Paul Bahn among others in the 1990s, but the issue was brought into sharp focus by the direct dating of Chauvet Cave. Chauvet, at 31,000 years old an Aurignacian period cave, has a complex style and themes that are usually associated with much later periods. Either Chauvet's dates are wrong, or the accepted stylistic changes need to be modified.
For the moment, archaeologists cannot move completely away from stylistic methods, but they can retool the process. Doing so will be difficult, although von Pettinger and Nowell have suggested a starting point: to focus on image details within the direct-dated caves and extrapolate outward. Determining which image details to select to identify stylistic differences may be a thorny task, but unless and until detailed direct-dating of cave art becomes possible, it may be the best way forward.
Sources
See Portable Art for comparison. This glossary entry is a part of the guide to Upper Paleolithic, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
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von Petzinger G, and Nowell A. 2011. A question of style: reconsidering the stylistic approach to dating Palaeolithic parietal art in France. Antiquity 85(330):1165-1183.
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