AR102. 1 April 2007
Copyright © 2006 by Kevin Sharpe and Leslie Van Gelder. All rights reserved.
To appear in Rock Art Research.
by
Kevin Sharpe
Graduate College, Union Institute & University,
ksharpe@ksharpe.com
www.ksharpe.com
and
Leslie Van Gelder
Walden University, Minneapolis, Minnesota
lvangeld@waldenu.edu
We are grateful to Robert Bednarik for this opportunity to publish in the journal he edits and to reply to his response (2006) to our paper. He has played a significant role in the development of the study of finger flutings and we very much seek to carry this work further in the empirical spirit he seeks to uphold. Thus, while we appreciate the positive things he says of our work, we also open the various points we try to establish in the paper to qualification, alteration, or even abandonment according to the evidence available. The points below go through those Bednarik makes, one by one.
The first point for us to respond to concerns the cave floor and its alteration over time. A good portion of the current floor does not resemble the Pleistocene floor let alone its levels, and obviously so because it has been extensively altered since the 1950s to construct a train line through it. The train and its accompanying destruction of the floor does not venture into Chamber A and its subchambers, however, and thus the most obvious floor changes, those related to the train, do not apply to Chamber A1. Further, some of the train line along the section of Chamber G leading up to the ‘Great Ceiling’ passes by cave bear hibernation pits, suggesting that the floor here is still much the same (apart from that altered for the train) as during the Paleolithic. (Also of note are the several instances of bear scratches over human markings, including a broad clawing [suggesting it may have been done by a cave bear] over a mammoth drawn in the ceiling [Barrière 1982: 36, Fig. 74, the 3 lines either side of the mammoth’s belly; or Plassard 1999: 48]. This information, when juxtaposed to the more common scene of human markings over bear claw marks, suggests that the relationship between the human and bear occupation of the cave is not mutually exclusive. Hence the floors of the cave that each species used may have a complex relationship.)
The chief issue at this point is the level of the floor in the fluted subchamber of Chamber A1 at the time the ceiling was fluted. We have suggested it was much the same as at present. Bednarik disagrees, his first point involving the bear pits and scratches, or at least the lack of them in the fluted subchamber. On the other hand, numerous chambers in Rouffignac do not have cave bear pits and (intensely) scratched walls, which suggests that either they were not accessible to the bears or else that the bears were selective in where they hibernated and left some chambers untouched. Without evidence that the bears would use any and all available space in a cave for hibernation, it is premature for Bednarik to claim (2006: 196) that the lack of scratches and pits in Chamber A1 indicates ‘the floor was higher in the past, and that access to A1 may not have been possible to cave bears.’ The bears may not have ventured into A1 for reasons other than its inaccessibility.
The only positive evidence that we can think of that places some limit on the floor height is a fluting that runs down a wall in the fluted subchamber to approximately 60 cm above the current floor. This could of course mean the floor was up to 60 cm higher than at present.
Bednarik wishes to employ Occam’s Razor to say the floor level has changed markedly since the flutings were made, since this offers a simpler explanation than that it has remained much the same in height. To say this he has to believe that the floor could have been markedly lower than at present just as readily as it could have been markedly higher. His statement (2006: 196) that ‘the alternative explanation, that the floor was higher at the time the flutings were made,’ is incorrect unless he can show that floor levels only ever fall, which we are sure he would not suggest. Some chambers (e.g., Chamber L) in the cave show currently active clay deposits and may indeed be rising. If the floor were lower, then the same suggestion as we made, namely that the children had to be held up, would again make sense.
Whether the children were held up or not, the point that children made the flutings still holds and the interesting question as to what was going on in Chamber A1 still rises to the fore. That is the real issue to discuss.
What Bednarik says about the mining of clay for agriculture rather than ceramics is informative. We discussed the latter use because we have been told several times by a researcher of Rouffignac that the clay was mined in the fluted subchamber of Chamber A1, and that pottery is what it was used for. As far as we know, this opinion has not been published. No one has pointed us to hard evidence for this claim either. In part, the insistence may be prompted by the discovery of pottery shards in various chambers in the cave, including in Chambers A and E (Barrière 1975; 1982), the latter being another place we have been told mining took place. We accept that the case against mining has not been made irrefutably. On the other hand, if, as Bednarik thinks, the floor level was markedly higher when the flutings were made and when any mining took place, the proximity of the floor to the ceiling makes it even more possible that mining there might have led to marks on the ceiling.
The mining of chert from the ceiling – Bednarik’s suggestion – would leave obvious marks whereas, in the fluted section of Chamber A1, very little of the ceiling shows any marks apart from the flutings, modern graffiti and modern scrapes; only a few fossil shells are absent and a couple of chert nodules are missing. Despite what Bednarik thinks, we can say that there was probably no mining of the chert from the fluted ceiling.
Our point about the making of zigzags was to contrast the making of them by wrist movement (obviously involving the arms and fingers as well) with a more whole-body movement that involves the hips (and therefore obviously also involving, as Bednarik writes (2006: 196), ‘wrist, elbow, shoulder,…and legs’). What we wrote (Sharpe and Van Gelder 2006: 185: ‘The curves of zigzag made by wrist movement differ from zizag curves made by hip movement’) is a simplification but is not, as Bednarik writes, ‘oversimplification in the pursuit of explanation.’ Of course, a greater study could be made of what is needed to create the various flutings found here or anywhere else.
Of course we do not suggest that ‘cave water as such…dissolve[s] limestone,’ as Bednarik implies (2006: 196) we do. The flutings in the fluted subchamber of Chamber A1 were mostly made visible in clay. From much experience with washing overalls used in this subchamber, water does remove this clay, thank goodness. The point in this section of our paper concerns the survival of these clay flutings if the subchamber were flooded.
We agree with Bednarik (2006: 196) that ‘intentionality’ can be ‘a very rubbery concept’ and that its use in the context of the flutings in the fluted subchamber of Chamber A1 needs careful definition. To this end, the discussion requested by Bednarik would require far more space and development than this response to his comments allows, but is an important challenge to be followed up. In the meantime, it would be helpful if Bednarik would supply his basis for why the reasons we provide for intentionality, besides that of the subchamber’s morphology, are inadequate. Just saying they are not does not really help.
Bednarik misrepresents our reference to his 1985 paper in which we write about play and the difficulty of cave access. To quote him, with regard to Baume Latrone and Montespan caves, ‘Both these caves are of particularly difficult access. An explanation of the markings as the product of playful juveniles would lack plausibility in view of the hazardous underground journeys involved.’ This comes from page 8 of the manuscript for the paper, published as his 1985, and supports our reference (not a direct quote) to his work as suggesting what we write.
Bednarik then asks us to comment on the antiquity of the rock art in Rouffignac. This becomes a much larger issue than our paper hopes to cover, and Bednarik opens the question up even further by asking it for all of the cave and not just the fluted subchamber of Chamber A1. The comment below about C14 dating of charcoal associated with flutings in Chamber E offers one approach to this issue. Another is a discussion of the merits of the stylistic approaches (based on Breuil’s or other scholars’ schemas) and how they now appear inadequate for dating such sites as Rouffignac given the absolute datings published for Chauvet Cave (Clottes 2003) – besides the many contradictions they present. One could discuss the animals depicted in the cave and their extinction in this part of France. And then one could look at, as Bednarik writes (2006: 196), ‘the state of weathering,…the compositional properties of the red “patina,”’ and the relationship of the flutings in the fluted subchamber of Chamber A1 ‘to other features, especially other types of speleothems clearly present (and quite possibly datable).’ These are important subjects for continuing research.
The next section of Bednarik’s critique centers on Figure 6 from Chamber E: ‘What I see in it is a series of sub-parallel finger flutings, some of which bear compressed, smeared remains of the red surface deposit.’ The information on this chamber provided in our paper was very brief since another paper is being prepared on it, plus some of the research needs confirming in situ. The point of including it in our current paper is of course not to provide a full presentation but to use it as an indicator.
1. Bednarik writes (2006: 196) about this: ‘I regard the feature described as “careful re-layering with clay over the flutings” as entirely fortuitous; the fingers of the fluter were simply coated with red sediment.’ Yes, in this cluster and in the other similar clusters in Chamber E, much of the clay within the flutings was probably applied unintentionally from the residue on the original fingers doing the fluting. However, at least two of these flutings have then been scratched with a charcoaled stick and then clay has been applied over the charcoal scratch: fluting, then charcoaled scratch, then clay over both. This sequence is clearly obvious on close examination. In another cluster in Chamber E, one fluting has been gone over, as can be seen by their different ending points, and the second has a different colored clay on it from that on the other flutings in the cluster, different also from the clay in the immediate locality.
2. The cluster pictured in Figure 6, plus the other similar clusters in Chamber E, have been analyzed internally giving their order of manufacture plus the direction in which they were made. This was reported, with PowerPoint slides, at a conference at which Bednarik attended. There are several motifs or symbols portrayed in these clusters too, making them an even more ‘suberb study base to tackle the difficult question of symbolism,’ as Bednarik writes (2006: 197). To top this all off, a young child (from three-finger widths, probably one of those active in Chamber A1) has fluted above these clusters and probably while on the shoulders of one of the adults.
3. Bednarik then reiterates a point we made in the PowerPoint presentation, that these flutings and scratchings are ripe for dating. To heighten the opportunity here is the fluted clay over the charcoaled scratch over a fluting, meaning the charcoal here is probably from the time of the fluting. What we now need to actualize this first opportunity for an absolute dating of Rouffignac ‘art’ are permissions and finances.
Concerning our ‘repudiation of previous interpretations of the Rouffignac finger flutings,’ Bednarik writes (2006: 197) that they are ‘simply part of that huge corpus of nonsense that has been written about cave art over the last century. But it was written many decades ago, and we have moved on since then.’ (Hopefully, Bednarik means the ‘corpus of nonsense’ to include the previous interpretations of the flutings and not our repudiation of them; his text is unclear here.) This, unfortunately, is not quite so. The ‘nonsense’ still continues, even unabated, in the popular and scholarly media including on Rouffignac.
We are pleased that Bednarik supports our work in Chamber A1 of Rouffignac Cave; hopefully he also supports it in the many other places in the cave that are revealing a large amount of useful information, some of which he has yet to hear or read. We hope our work there will continue. We also find constructive dialogue about our work, especially suggestions as to subjects and research design very useful.
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Sharpe, K., and L. Van Gelder. 2006. Finger flutings in Chamber A1 of Rouffignac Cave, France. Rock Art Research 23: 179-195.