Entanglements: the Role of Finger Flutings in the Study of the Lived Lives of Upper Paleolithic Peoples
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Entanglements: the Role of Finger Flutings in the Study of the Lived Lives of Upper Paleolithic Peoples April Nowell 1
& Leslie
Van Gelder 2
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract During the Upper Paleolithic, Ice Age peoples in Europe and Australia used their fingers to trace figurative and non-figurative images in soft sediments that lined the walls and ceilings of the limestone caves they encountered. The resulting images, while fragile, are preserved in at least 70 caves with the oldest dating to approximately 36,000 years ago. During the first 100 years of the study of Paleolithic cave imagery, these finger flutings were largely ignored. Though they make up a larger percentage of cave art than any other form, they are enigmatic and not always visually appealing. In 1912, Henri Breuil famously referred to them as “traits parasites” (parasite lines) and deleted them from his re-drawings of cave images, believing they detracted from the figurative art. Flutings have been interpreted alternately as doodling, serpent or water images, the residue of surface preparation for making, and evidence of the moment when a shaman touches the “skin” of the otherworld. In this paper, we argue that there are three reasons why finger flutings have taken on greater significance in the study of Pleistocene visual cultures. First, theories concerning the meaning and relevance of finger flutings were developed without supporting evidence as no methodology existed by which to study flutings until the beginning of the twenty-first century. Second, there has been a broadening of the definition of “art” in a Paleolithic context to include categories of materials, including finger flutings, which would traditionally have been excluded from consideration. Third, there has been a concomitant shift from a focus on the final product—“the artwork” to an exploration of the embodied process of manufacturing the imagery—the “work” of art. Finger flutings carry with them physical evidence of this process. Finally, by presenting a detailed study of finger flutings at Gargas Cave (France), we consider what is gained by including finger flutings in the study of Paleolithic art and what this “archaeology of intimacy” can tell us about the lived lives of Ice Age peoples. Keywords Finger flutings . Upper paleolithic . Affordances . Children . Gargas cave .
Rouffignac cave * April Nowell [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Nowell and Van Gelder
Introduction During the Upper Paleolithic, Ice Age peoples sometimes used their fingers to trace images in soft sediments that lined the walls, floors, and ceilings of the limestone caves they encountered. In English, archaeologists refer to these traces as finger flutings. To “flute” means to create a surface that is grooved, channeled, or ribbed, and thus, the term “finger fluting” captures the three-dimensional morphology of these lines. Finger flutings are found in caves in modern day France, Spain, and Australia.
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