Cave Paintings: Structure and Analysis
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ished from the Upper Paleolithic Age— that is, ca. 35,000-10,000 years ago. Hundreds of sites have been discovered since the beginning of the 20th century. Also since then, it has been proven that Europe was not the only area that had cave paintings. Apparently the art was a universal craft of many cultures. Rock shelters have been studied in South Africa but also in America (California, Texas, and Arizona in the United States, as well as Brazil, Argentina, etc.). Several sites, particularly those from Australia, seem to be as ancient as the European ones. Simultaneous research around the world on the different types of cave painting has provided evidence of a very complex expression of human kind, more elaborate than was thought before the discovery of this art. Today there are new approaches to the study of rock art, which are based on several facts: • Recent and very important discoveries, among them Cosquer near Marseille in the Mediterranean Sea, Chauvet in France, Siega Verde in Spain, and Foz Coa in Portugal. • Ethnological comparisons between sites around the world. The French archaeologist M. Lorblanchet, for example, studied the cave of Pech-Merle in the center of France (Quercy) and at the 48
same time carefully examined the Australian rock art. • The development of direct dating for cave paintings by the determination of the 14C ratio in organic materials using accelerator mass spectrometry. This technique provides absolute dates for minute residues of blood, binders, charcoal, and plant fibers that are either accidentally or deliberately incorporated into paintings.1 • The development of analytic methods in the field of archaeological materials science. At the beginning of this century, French Nobel Prize recipient in chemistry Henri Moissan, who discovered the element fluorine, analyzed the black and red paintings of prehistoric caves in Perigord in the center of France (La Mouthe, Font-de-Gaume). However his results, as well as those obtained by his colleagues, were not properly integrated into solving the archaeological problems. Most of the archaeologists and art historians focused at that time on identifying the corpus of prehistoric art. Some of them had the insight to realize that the analyses just mentioned were of great value—for example Father Henri Breuil who was considered the founder of paleolithic art during the first half of the century. Another key person from the 1960s was Andre Leroi-Gourhan, a French ethnologist who made significant advances in this art.2 At this time, after the pioneering period of archaeometric science (the measurement of properties of archaeological objects), we are poised for the development of the field of archaeological materials science, which has become increasingly integrated into archaeological programs. The examination of coloring media is traditionally aimed at tracing their origin and at describing the preparation tech-
niques. These issues may be addressed by studying the structure of the pigments and by quantifying the trace elements. So in ideal cas
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