Art Pariétal: Grottes Ornées Du Quercy

Art parietal: grottes ornees du Quercy, by Michel Lorblanchet . 2010. Editions de Rouergue, Rodez, 445 pages, ISBN 978-281- 260164-4.Art parietal: grottes ornees du Quercy is a valuable book. It is an account of the long-lasting endeavours undertaken by Michel Lorblanchet to make sense of the interrelationships between the caves painted and engraved during the Upper Palaeolithic in the causses between the valleys of the Dordogne and the Aveyron, and predominantly within the drainage of the river Lot. A concise account of the history of exploration and the work he has done in every cave in the region that is known to him is included. Two caves are central to his discussion. They are Cougnac, one of the more northerly caves of the area, and the various parts of the extensive cave system of Pech Merle, close to the north bank of the Lot in the centre. In a concluding section, on page 431, Lorblanchet sums up what he is about: 'L'etude de l'art parietal du Quercy presentee dans cet ouvrage confirme l'existence des deux groupes de grottes ornees que nous avions distingues dans la region, depuis longtemps deja'.It is a justifiable claim but it depreciates what he has done. He has made an intensive study of the marks made by people on the walls of the twenty-seven caves that he knows about over a period of some fifty years. He has worked out how the marks were built up, replaced and in some cases partially destroyed. He has sought the help of other archaeologists, and of physicists, chemists, palaeobotanists and palaeozoologists, whose work could assist him to discover when the marks that he records so exactingly were placed. He has established some useful theories about them and he has indicated a methodology that others can employ elsewhere to achieve understanding.He has concluded that there are two distinct groups of marks. One group was presumably understood, considered important and attended to throughout some twenty thousand years from the onset of the last glaciation until well after the final amelioration but was predominantly made before 20 000 bp. The other group was used for no more than the three or four thousand years prior to 10 000 bp and was probably made between 14 000 and 12 000 years bp. He recognises that the marks represent people, predominantly the outlines of women, and hands; animals, notably mammoth, aurochs, bison, horse, bear, megaceros, lion, ibex, reindeer, red deer, boar, saiga antelope and some unidentified birds. There are also shapes he does not recognise that he classifies as signes of various sorts and networks of lines which he also classifies as signes with other descriptive qualifications.Lorblanchet begins his study of a cave by drawing calques on acetate sheets held away from the rock surface and often with photographs underneath them to ensure that what he draws is to scale. Though he draws in front of the motifs he never draws releves on tracing paper touching the rock surface and damaging the images. His drawings are made as much to understand the marks, their evolution in the implementation of the image and its subsequent deterioration, as to produce a semblance of what is on the wall. Verisimilitude is achieved but in a sense it appears to be a secondary consideration. Accuracy with these calques obviously requires many measurements of various kinds and large numbers of photographs using different types of camera rigs at different times of year. Changes in humidity and temperature levels on the cave wall surfaces alter what is visible in an annual cycle.Alongside the effort to understand what is depicted there is the determination of dates. Small excavations undertaken in the winters between 1974 and 1979 in Pech Merle questioned the assumption previously common to prehistorians and exemplified particularly in the teaching of Andre Leroi Gourhan that discrete characteristics of a style were typical of a period when the depictions were created and could roughly be equated with a date. …