AR46. 7 August 2006.
Copyright © 2004 by Kevin Sharpe and Leslie Van Gelder. All rights reserved.
In process.
Add AR115 from 2nd section,….up the list in Word
The Study of Finger Flutings
by
Kevin Sharpe
The Graduate College, Union Institute and
University, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, UK
10 Shirelake Close, Oxford OX
kevin.sharpe@tui.edu
www.ksharpe.com
and
Leslie Van Gelder
Walden University, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
USA
10 Shirelake Close, Oxford OX
leslievg@ksharpe.com
Chapter
3. Approaches to Flutings
A personal
introduction – our stories: converging with the enigma of the lives in
Rouffignac.
Prehistoric finger flutings (lines that fingers leave on a
soft surface) occur in caves at least through southern
They are also called tracés digitaux or finger tracings and (though these terms are also in part interpretative) meanders, macaroni, and serpentines. Robert Bednarik coined the term finger fluting.
Generally they are made in a substance called moonmilk (or montmilch or mundmilch), a white and potentially soft precipitate from limestone comprising aggregates of fine crystals of varying composition usually made of carbonate materials, e.g., calcite, hydromagnesite, and gypsum. Sometimes they are made through a thin clay film into moonmilk underneath or perhaps just into clay.
As Henri Breuil has published, finger flutings have been
recognized since the early days of the 20th Century in
High school :
prizes
Imagine a 17 year-old boy in his school uniform, which by tradition had all of its male pupils in shorts. The hairy legged student, the subject of this paragraph, looked over the short selection of books in archaeology to select some for his school prizes that year. Considering his town was fairly small, this was a well stocked bookstore. His selection included Howells.
Kevin, the boy in question, fostered this nascent interest in prehistoric archaeology through these school prizes. They were for many things other than the archaeology; that subject was not taught at his school or probably at any school in his country at that time. He showed prowess in mathematics and physics besides singing and sports.
In college he devoured the complete works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit prehistorian, and began to see a way of reconciling religion and science, plus came to grips with some aspects of the evolutionary perspective in a broader context. Kevin rejected Teilhard de Chardin’s religious-scientific vision but still is inspired to pursue such a reconciliation.
To complete his Ph.D. in mathematics, Kevin moved to
Near the end of Kevin’s time in Melbourne, Gallus asked them to accompany him to Koonalda Cave, a site in the Nullarbor Plain in South Australia, which he was excavating and is famous for the debate and acrimony between Gallus and Richard Wright over the ages of the human artifacts Gallus unearthed (Wright says 22,000 years(???) and Gallus claims at least 35,000 ???). Wright also claims that Gallus’s archaeological method and assumptions are inaccurate. On this 1973 expedition that Christine and Kevin participated in, their respective jobs were to draw the excavation cross section in the huge trench (???10 meters deep by 1 meter wide) that Gallus had created, and, for Kevin, to photograph systematically and comprehensively certain line markings on the walls and ceiling at the rear of the upper portion of the cave.
Things did not work out like this for either of us. I started to photograph the lines, working backwards on the left hand side, and Christine started to look at the lines. On her way to them she noticed lines marked on the boulders on the floor. She called to me and we spent the rest of our time looking at the hundreds of large rocks with parallel lines incised into them. We first called out to Gallus, who was working at his excavation 30 m (100 ft) below in a lower level of the cave. His authentification of the lines as human made, significantly increased Christine’s and my resolve to study them as much as possible in the days remaining.
I took hundreds of photos of them and we drew maps of where they sat in the cave. They appeared to lie in specific areas to do with what we saw were paths and around cleared areas. We unfortunately gave names like ‘altar,’ and ‘directional stela’ to certain prominent rocks, unfortunately because other people have been critical of our superimposing such subjective reading onto the cave. Many of our understandings of our observations Kevin came later to reject.
Christine and Kevin were flying to the
Christine and Kevin moved back to the Southern Hemisphere,
in particular to
Kevin’s involvement with the lines over his next eight years
in
They moved back to the
With Mary, he visited several of the caves in the Dordogne,
So in 2000???, Kevin and his new partner, Leslie Van Gelder,
set off for Rouffignac from
Leslie’s adventures:
Leakeys; interest in people’s relationships with places
The challenge raised in Koonalda at last had the possibility of being addressed. What can we say about the lines, including their meaning, beyond that there are a whole lot of them made with fingers on the walls and ceilings?
AR46. 6 October 2007.
Medieval use of the cave is attested to by evidence found in the cave porch. The great multitude of names and initials, sometimes with dates, throughout the cave show that knowledge of the cave’s existence remained continually since the Middle Ages.
In 1575, François de Belle-Forest in his book, ‘La Cosmographie Universelle et de Tout le Monde’ ??? check title ??? describes the Cro du Cluzeau (the ‘hole of the Cluzeau’). In it, he records information from François Amault de la Borie and shows that the cave is known well. The cave then was in the estate of the Marquis de Miremont.
In 1759, Gabriel Bouquier drew the first plan of the cave.
In 1893, Édouard-Alfred Martel completed his topographical study of the cave, published in his 1894 work titled, Les Abîmes. It included commentaries and an explanation of how the cave network formed…the first scientific work on the cave. From 1945 to 1949, local speleologists, with help from those from Charentes, explored deep into the cave and from this drew up a detailed plan.
Breuil visited the cave in 1915 and Glory in 1948. Neither ventured very far in. Then. On 26 June 1956, Nougier and Robert entered and recognized what they saw on the walls as prehistoric. Much conflict ensued. They first consulted Breuil, without telling anyone else, who arrived on 17 July and stayed for 12 hours. He enthusiastically authenticated the authenticity of the art and submitted an official report. Nougier and Robert announced their find on 20 July at the 25th Prehistory of France Congress.
The ensuing conflict is understandable. Many people – probably hundreds – had already visited the cave and not noticed or recognized the significance of the art. Then there were those perplexed at the relative lateness of this discovery, decades after the other prehistoric art caves.
Speleologists Pierret and Faccio were convinced that none of the paintings existed when they explored the cave from 1945 to 1949, at least that is what the press reported. Nevertheless, they and Blanc, director of the Seventh District of Prehistoric Antiquities, admitted to have seen certain of the pictures. Only they thought them to be fakes.
They even suggested forgery since they said that certain of the drawings were not there the year before.
Three visits helped seal the authenticity.
On 9 August, specialists Graziosi from
A multidisciplinary international group under Graziosi and Almagro came to the cave on 12 September. Each specialist verified the art’s authenticity.
A more recent find of the text by François de Belle-Forest from 1575 where he mentions the presence of drawings of then unknown animals and the tracks of ‘large and small beasts’ helps seal the case. The style of the art, its themes, the anatomical detail of the animals depicted, the physical condition of the art, and the composition of the media used for the art, all point to the Paleolithic age of the art.
Where the flutings are
found in R:some representational, most are not.
AR46. 6 October 2007.
Meaningfulness of
Flutings
· Redirect discussion toward intentionality versus meaningfulness.
So not to focus on meaning at this stage. First find out what we can about the fluters. Meaning can be asked once the other research above has been done. Piece it all together and look at shapes etc. (in the composition) and ask about meaning. Other methods are then needed to explore possible meanings, e.g., for animal shapes and tectiform symbols.
Consider the fluted severines. What might they mean? What might the above studies contribute to the study of their meaning? It may be to say that the markings (or at least some or many of them) are very complex (and thus not easily dismissed) and deliberate and meaningful (the visual composition is meaningful or the act of creating the composition is meaningful).
Or are they arbitrary (namely accidental, haphazard, or doodles)? The research this paper reports may suggest that at least some of the flutings were meaningfully as opposed to arbitrarily made. That is, they are probably not:
· accidental or results of exploration – because of consistent styles in a local area;
· haphazard – also because of consistent styles in a local area and because those styles do not include every conceivable fluting possible; or
· doodles – because of the inseparable relationship that sometimes occurs at European sites between nonrepresentational flutings and representational figures.
(often standing still, facing wall and fluting; not just dragging hand while walking)
One of the chief questions asked of flutings and line engravings concerns meaning. Were they intentionally made to have individual- or socially-communicable meaning? If they have socially communicable meaning, do they mean something ‘simple’ like ‘Josephine Bloggs was here on 27 January,’ or a more complex narrative like the myth of ‘Eve and Adam’? While it is not suggested that any interpretation applies to all the markings, the suggestion that all the flutings are accidental, haphazard, or doodles should probably be rejected.
Initial impressions suggest meaningfulness. For instance:
·
The lines sometimes cover areas with difficult
access, many hundreds of meters from the surface. In
·
In
It was said above that they are not haphazard because they do not include every fluting possible. Why just straight lines? The experimental work we’ve done on flutings suggests that the only forms they can take if they are not haphazard are what we see. The physics of the body, arms and fingers, for someone standing in front of a wall necessitates many of the forms now seen. (However, engravings may be more versatile in the forms they take.) The variety visible, though, witnesses the possible universe of flutings. More research is required before the meaningfulness hypothesis can be more firmly established. Perhaps there are other reasons for the flutings not appearing accidental, haphazard, or doodles. For instance, if the above listed factors involved in ‘shapes’ and ‘comfort’ are taken into account, will the lines of necessity look the way they do? Is it possible to flute them in any way other than how they appear? Yes: zig zags do not appear. Thus, then meaningfulness is more probable. Still they are flutings and not a mass and mess of marks.
The specific intended meaning is further away still.
Scholars, mystics, and casual visitors have offered many
interpretations of finger and other line markings-in particular those that are
neither representational nor geometrical-found in caves and on rocks from
Europe to
Included are fluting marks the activity behind which is to remove the clay or montmilch. Can these be characterized and therefore isolated? Difference between gouging and making symbols (or motifs, figures, flutings). The taxonomy does include utilitarian uses, e.g., digging out clay (neither does it differentiate between severines, figures, and symbols).
It requires even further work to find – if one can be found – an explanatory framework for the flutings and to suggest why they were produced. Needless to say, ideas as to meaning must work from the analysis of how the lines were made, an analysis based on research using the method this paper develops.
Patty Jo Watson believes of the Indians who ventured deep
into a
·
McPartland, Kathleen.
Lorblanchet (
Lorblanchet (
Despite their prevelance in French, Spanish, Australian, and
Papua New Guinean caves, Little is written and known about finger flutings.
Clottes and Courtin (
barely a quarter of the finger tracings in some seventy
European Paleolithic painted caves has been the subject of surveys and precise
analyses. This clearly has to do with the indifferent aesthetic appeal of these
depictions, with the technical difficulty their study presents, and with the
uncertain and often insufficiently gratifying results that the researcher can
expect at the conclusion of the task (Clottes and Courtin
// Little is written and known about them, however. Clottes
and Courtin (
//Most investigators nowadays merely mention the occurrence of these lines, if they say anything about them at all. Thus, regarding Chauvet Cave, France, Chauvet and his colleagues do not mention them, whereas Clottes and his colleagues do, at least a little (compare Chauvet et al. 1996: Plates 29, 30, 32, 33 with Clottes 2003: Illustrations 84, 87, 88, 94). Aujoulat and Gély (2003: 91) write about a wall ‘covered with bear clawmarks’ in the Hillaire Chamber of the cave, ‘on which some long, sinuous vertical lines have been engraved [actually, fluted],’ and which they interpretively consider ‘a reminder of the clawmarks that probably inspired them.’ Previous understandings of nonfigurative flutings perhaps appear wanting and so scholars increasingly say less and less about them, and what they do say often is speculative.
//The reason for this, Marshack (
//barely a quarter of the finger tracings in some
seventy European Paleolithic painted caves has been the subject of surveys and
precise analyses. This clearly has to do with the indifferent aesthetic appeal
of these depictions, with the technical difficulty their study presents, and
with the uncertain and often insufficiently gratifying results that the
researcher can expect at the conclusion of the task (Clottes and Courtin
Some investigators speculate about the meaning of these lines (Breuil et al. 1915; Leroi-Gourhan 1958; 1972), but most nowadays merely mention their occurrence, if anything. Thus, regarding Chauvet Cave, France, Chauvet and his colleagues do not mention them, whereas Clottes and his colleagues do, at least a little (compare Chauvet et al. 1996: Plates 29, 30, 32, 33 with Clottes 2003: Illustrations 84, 87, 88, 94). Aujoulat and Gély (2003: 91) write about a wall ‘covered with bear clawmarks’ in the Hillaire Chamber of the cave, ‘on which some long, sinuous vertical lines have been engraved [actually, fluted],’ and which they interpretively consider ‘a reminder of the clawmarks that probably inspired them.’ Previous understandings of nonfigurative flutings perhaps appear wanting and so scholars increasingly say less and less about them, and what they do say often is speculative.
The reason for this, Marshack (
???? see next section ???? Speculation as to their meaning,
therefore, can run unchecked; they are seen, for example, as representing such
things as water (Marshack
·
Breuil (
·
Using statistics, Leroi-Gourhan (
·
Marshack (
·
Lewis-Williams (
In some instances, it seems as
if people were trying to penetrate the surfaces, to reach through the walls; in
other instances, people were simply touching – and leaving evidence for their
actions on – the walls. Why did they do this? [For Upper Paleolithic people,]
the walls, ceilings, and floors of the caves were…little more than a thin
membrane between themselves and the creatures and happenings of the underworld.
The caves were awesome, liminal places in which to be: Literally, they took one
into the underworld….Perhaps one could say that the caves were the entrails of
the underworld….What people believe[d] about the walls influence[d] those who
made the images [on the walls] (Clottes and Lewis-Williams
Severines, to restate Lewis-Williams (
[I proceed] from an assumption that in the Upper
Paleolithic the recognizable image was not derived accidentally from random
[severine] marking, first because the [severines] are not random but, more
important, because the ability to see an image in a random cluster (or a rock
or wall formation) requires culture. It is part of a process of description,
classification, comparison, and naming. It is a human, cultural activity. In
this regard, the ability to initiate and maintain an image system, such as the
[severine], requires naming and language….[This] is, of course, [in addition to
the] basic cognitive, kinesthetic, non-linguistic component in image-making and
recognition (Marshack
The chief problem is that investigators bring to their study preconceived, westerner notions as to what is meaningful and what constitutes a pattern. They introduce what they consider is the meaning of the severines and how the various forms of prehistoric ‘art’ relate to each other. Previous investigations try, Marshack writes,
to recognize or interpret images or signs on the basis
of what the modern eye sees or on what historic cultures might offer for
analogic comparison….to seek for the origins of ‘art’ in the recognizable
image, recognizable to us. Because recognizable images such as animals are
occasionally found among the [severines], it was assumed that it was out of
random marking that representational art was eventually born (Marshack
The focus on meaning leads to little real knowledge, merely
to much speculation. It may be mostly about the cultural or personal views of
the investigators. Should or can nothing therefore be said about severines?
Ucko (
This is too extreme a conclusion. However, it makes sense at this stage of the study of severines to leave aside the question of meaning; better would be to see what can be said about the marks themselves as they were made. Such investigations logically come before subjective-interpretative and meaning-seeking approaches to severines and may help sort out the various suggestions as to meaning or lay a solid foundation for seeking meaning.
Marshack, though he defers to his predecessors, pioneers strategies for this type of research and starts to break out of the meaning seeking paradigm. He writes:
I tried to develop techniques and a theoretical basis
for the intensive internal analysis
of the Upper Paleolithic symbolic materials….My effort was…directed toward…a
study of the cognitive processes
involved in the formation of an image, a study of the sequence of making an image or a composition or the sequence of
accumulating images on a surface….This enquiry was…functional and psychological
(Marshack
By placing a development of forms onto the forms themselves, and by expounding water as the meaning of the markings, Marshack retreats from grounded analysis to speculation, and does so without clearly differentiating between the two approaches. The core of Marshack’s methodology needs adopting and developing, and his speculations as to meaning and the evolution of ‘art’ need putting aside.
This proposed research continues to establish the more
objective and experimental approach to the lines (Sharpe Preprint; Sharpe and
Fawbert 1998; Sharpe and Lacombe
What can be said empirically about severines in general?
· Broderick 1963: 282ff (have).
Speculation as to their meaning, therefore, can run
unchecked; they are seen, for example, as mimicking bear claw scratches
(Aujoulat and Gély, mentioned above), or representing such things as water
(Marshack
· Breuil ( ??? 1915; ??? 1952) describes severines carefully, seeing them in part as the first scribbles by humans, though intuitive and random. The fluters probably recognized images in the severines and thus, from them, developed the tradition of simple and crude outline figures. Breuil’s interest lies in the development of a comparative typology and chronology of the styles of the ‘art.’ He speaks of severines as serpentine-meanders and thinks of them as snakes.
·
Using statistics, Leroi-Gourhan (
·
Marshack (
·
Nougier and Robert write of flutings on the
ceiling of Chamber A1 in
On Oct. 11 and 13, 1956, we found four anthropomorphs at Rouffignac, two of them…in the great red dome of the white uniters [flutings]. All four obeyed the rules of the species, that is, of the anthropomorphic series, that is – no rule at all. They were true ‘grotesques’; with big noses and big mouths, like Perrault’s deceased grandmother….The anthropomorph on the red ceiling of the uniters has a blunt chin, a receding forehead, a jutting nose, and a lively eye. From the point of the chin to the top of the head he measures 45 cm. (nearly 18 in.). A companion on another part of the roof, near-by is more mysterious. Drawn also with a finger, the head is excellent: forehead, nose, mouth, chin – then, going downwards, everything melts away in a shapeless mass. One of us tried to pick out the beginning of a leg and a pretty breast (Nougier and Robert 1958:60-61).
There probably are no drawings of anthropomorphs on the ceiling, just as there are no drawings of snakes there, despite what Nougier and Robert, and Barrière (1982) firmly declare (Sharpe and Van Gelder In Prep. 3).
Nougier and Robert observed the fluted ceiling through the
eyes of a paradigm that now must be bracketed if progress is to be made in
understanding the activities that took place there. Nougier and Robert believed
that the key to understanding the activities lies in recognizing shapes in the
maze of lines, and in their case they saw snakes and anthropomorphs. Observers
need to change from the Breuil approach (appearance in a recognizable form is
what the Breuil paradigm emphasizes because it primarily and dominantly
emphasizes meaning, versus asking about the act of manufacture and for
objective information on the fluter). The Breuil paradigm has blockages and
comes to an end because too much in prehistoric ‘art’ does not conform to what
modern people might see as figures and symbols.
·
Lewis-Williams (
In some instances, it seems as
if people were trying to penetrate the surfaces, to reach through the walls; in
other instances, people were simply touching – and leaving evidence for their
actions on – the walls. Why did they do this? [For Upper Paleolithic people,]
the walls, ceilings, and floors of the caves were…little more than a thin
membrane between themselves and the creatures and happenings of the underworld.
The caves were awesome, liminal places in which to be: Literally, they took one
into the underworld….Perhaps one could say that the caves were the entrails of
the underworld….What people believe[d] about the walls influence[d] those who
made the images [on the walls] (Clottes and Lewis-Williams
The Lewis-Williams and Clottes hypothesis – extrapolating from the San art in Southern African to worldwide – is becoming more and more popular because it offers a universal explanation for prehistoric art. At this point it is still a young idea and ought only to be considered a hypothesis, though it appears to be rapidly becoming a paradigm. It also strikes a chord in many people seeking to emphasize the spiritual side of life over against the material. However, a story – which is what it is – is a story is a story. Is it true? Is it empirically valid and fruitful? About flutings, Lewis-Williams writes:
Upper Paleolithic evidence suggests that parts of the caves, especially the deep passages and small, hidden diverticules, were places where visionary quests took place….In their various stages of altered states, questers sought, by sight and touch, in the folds and cracks of the rock face visions of powerful animals. It is as if the rock were a membrane between them and one of the lowest levels of the tiered cosmos; behind the rock lay a realm inhabited by spirit-animals, and the passages and chambers of the cave penetrated deep into that realm.
Such beliefs and rituals also account for…the various ways in which the walls of numerous Upper Paleolithic caverns were touched and otherwise treated. In some sites,…finger-flutings cover most of the walls and parts of the ceilings to a considerabe height….If we allow that Upper Paleolithic people believed that the spirit world lay behind the thin, membranous walls of the underground chambers and passages, the evidence for this and much otherwise incomprehensible behavior can be understood….In a variety of ways, people touched, respected, painted, and otherwise ritually treated the cave walls because of what existed behind their surfaces. The walls are not a meaningless support. They were part of the images, a highly charged context (Lewis-Williams 2002: 208-209).
We can explore this hypothesis for observable consequences. This passage might suggest that, for flutings, fingers would go into the walls trying to get as far as possible through the membrane toward the sacred. The fluters supposedly wanted to touch or pass through the membrane. Or that the surface would be taken away because it was sacred. If they were to flute, there would be little concern about the form used because the action of touching is what’s essential. On the other hand, in Chamber A1 of Rouffignac Cave, one of the greatest sites of flutings so far found, there are no finger holes produced by trying to get as far as possible into the surface. There’s no evidence that the surface was gouged out to be taken away. And there’s considerable concern about the form of fluting used. These flutings may be structured (this has not been investigated yet), but other panels of flutings in Rouffignac show a high degree of ordering and structure. Neither would careful relayering with clay over the flutings make sense, as in Panel I in Chamber E of the cave. Elsewhere, Lewis-Williams ( ??? ref actually the first part of the above quote) writes that shamans would enter the caves to paint or draw or flute, favoring low places with closed in ceilings. But from this perspective, the most inviting of the alcoves in Chamber A1 are not touched. All these observations would suggest that the shamanic hypothesis is incorrect in what it says about flutings. It probably does not apply to flutings. It comprises sweeping generalizations and lacks an empirical base.
??? Plus animals have hooves. ???
The
half-men/half-animal drawings: see creation myths that have such creatures.
Ie., there depiction doesn’t need shamans.
Bednarik also relies on entopic phenomena when trying to understand the fluting phenomenon. The chief difference from Lewis-Williams here is that Bednarik does not offer the cultural context of shamanic ritual as the means by which the entopic forms become experienced and the reason why they are expressed. Without such a context, Bednarik’s theory does not answer why people would want to express the entopic forms they experience. ??? give theories of both men and Bednarik’s critique of Lewis-Williams ???
Regardless of the hypothesis Bednarik wishes to offer for understanding
the origin and reason for the fluting phenomenon, he has devoted considerable
energy to searching for flutings, to examining them, to describing them, and to
studying their geomorphological and chemical environments and their physical
media. ??? explain more ???
Shamanism and the Origin of Religion
See literature review section above on Shamanism. Plus:
HIARPT paper on Wentzel
Lorblanchet et al. 2006
Dickson 1990
Raux 2004
On the history of religion, involving prehistoric
speculations:
Lévêque 1997
Patte 1960
Dickson 1990
Anati 1995
Prehistoric ‘art’ has in part become important because of what drawn and painted animals say about ritual and the artists’ inner lives, whereas nothing can really be said about these things; they are only speculation, despite the self-advertised promise of Lewis-Williams’ shamanism approach (Lewis-Williams 2002). What remains after removing ‘ritual’ and ‘spirituality’ from the art? What remains after removing the speculation? Very little if anything, except matters of technique, ingredient origin, and image distribution. Probably nothing can be said objectively about the people. Now much more progress can be made toward what would be acknowledged as the chief aim of the study of prehistoric artifacts, namely, to find out about the people who made them. The methodology suggested in this paper is an archaeological search for this, but it requires provisionally bracketing the question of meaning because otherwise meaning overrides other matters when looking at the flutings. Flutings are not important primarily because of what modern people think they mean; they are important because many say something about the people who made them. Whether they are intentional or not would make a better object of research than meaning. Then, once a lot more is known about the fluters, questions of meaning can be addressed and sifted with the information obtained.
The Breuil paradigm has several components. One of them concerns religion (not surprising since Breuil was a Roman Catholic priest) and this continues into the shamanic hypothesis with its emphasis on religious ritual. ??? names given to cave parts, including to Chauvet ??? The Paleolithic cave artists were seen to have been participating in religious ritual or expression when painting or drawing. This element of the paradigm continues very strongly. But it is without substantive ground and is purely speculative. It would be better to desacrilize the ‘art’ – in the case in point, the flutings – until proven otherwise. The caves were not necessarily considered holy in our sense of the word. They were not necessarily holy to the fluters, or held in reverence or in fear. ??? talk about our fear of the underworld that isn’t every culture’s ???
As mentioned above, the Breuil paradigm believes in an
evolution from crude scribbles (severines) to crude and simple outline figures,
to sophisticated art. The sophistication, beauty, yet considerable age of the
paintings and drawings in
that in the Upper Paleolithic the recognizable image was
not derived accidentally from random [severine] marking, first because the
[severines] are not random but, more important, because the ability to see an
image in a random cluster (or a rock or wall formation) requires culture. It is
part of a process of description, classification, comparison, and naming. It is
a human, cultural activity. In this regard, the ability to initiate and
maintain an image system, such as the [severine], requires naming and
language….[This] is, of course, [in addition to the] basic cognitive,
kinesthetic, non-linguistic component in image-making and recognition (Marshack
Time is ripe to desacrilize and delinearize Paleolithic
‘art’ ??? need to say why I apostrophize art ??? and to accept its
complexity and localization. ??? explain ??? Strike out the ‘this is the first instance, the earliest’
mentality. Generalizations about humanity. They are the ‘every people.’ Strike
these out because they can’t respond. It’s too easy for us. They were
individuals. They weren’t holy and stupid. We oughtn’t to project onto them a
pristine nature unsullied by the evils of modernity or the agriculture life,
and at the same time think of them as stupid and clueless. ??? ref Leslie’s work ???
One of the more enduring aspects of the Breuil paradigm – even in part able to endure in and beyond the shamanic hypothesis – is the emphasis on animal and human shapes and certain recognizable symbols. The belief that the only worthwhile or important prehistoric ‘art’ are these forms and symbols. Severines are still dismissed or disregarded as not worthwhile because of this belief.
Breuil referred to severines as ‘lignes parasites’; the ‘lignes parasites’ may actually tell more about the severine makers than does the creation of an auroch or horse.
· Les Eyzies de Tayac, sometimes known as the home of Cro Magnon and the World’s Center for Prehistory
· Forensic questions of other ‘art’ forms? Need to be much more involved with them – e.g., question of where artist was lying, etc.
· Recent paper in INORA on individual engravers.
· A revolution in prehistoric art studies. Could raise question of meaning at the end and summarize Breuil, Bednarik, etc., and our ideas. A concoction from our papers.
· Book needs to be written simply with respect to language and points raised.
· The methodology book deriving from this paper is a field guide: A Field Guide to Finger Flutings.
o A picture and questions book.
o Include a chapter on equipment.
o Amplification of the paper.
· When drawing flutings, use arrows to indicate the direction of the moving finger.
· In a cluster, we can layer or temporally sequence the various units by their relative overlays. However, there usually seem to be the stray or nonintersecting line or unit. How to incorporate these into the cluster’s analysis? An approach may be to associate such a line as much as possible with a unit already included: does it have the same cross-section or color or is it parallel to it, etc.?
· The method includes the manner of recording all this information including the direction the prehistoric fluter was facing and the distance of the fluter from the marked surface.
o Inconsistent practice of copying markings: incorporate them all in drawings
o Start marking and measuring where artist stood, direction of face, movement, distance from marker (artist) from wall or ceiling
o Marking engravings versus finger markings
· Some sort of symbol might be used to show the location of the fluter. Should also show the height of the person in relation to the fluting.
· To change the paradigms, we need some great stories, something convincing and compelling. Our new story: ‘Who were they?’
· Why has ‘ritual’ become so important? We can never know what the art means or meant to its creators; my critics would accept this. Consider the Ice Man: the interest is in who he was. This level of question is appealing culturally (see DNA research on skeletons).
· Dispelling the idea that caves were scary to these people. They went in in family groups! Kids didn’t stay outside with the women while the men went inside. We think that dark = bad. Paleolithic didn’t have dark = bad. Nature isn’t scary. So we’re trying to change the same paradigm we face in Place and in Science and Spirit: changing away from the bias of the Neolithic. The Neolithic view of the world says the art is ritual.
· The line makers were hunter gatherers, not agriculturalists. Therefore, there are no gods above and below and fertility isn’t as important.
· As an example of the technique: Pech Merle and Michel’s work there on the ceiling flutings (refer to his publications on it):
· Drawings above the rock had to be made by different persons or a person in different seated or standing positions (turns out to be standing) due to our work on arm reach and comfort.
· We should regroup the designs based on the possible positions for the drawings. Look for patterns.
· Michel showed some drawings made in extended position over the rock edge, which would have been somewhat precarious.
· Comment on Michel’s thoughts about the images emerging from the maze of lines, and how subjective this is given the non-obvious nature of the images. Also on the artist making them up high so they can be observed in a ritual context below; given the height, the lighting sources, and the necessity of angled lighting, would the image subtleties be observed from the floor of the cave below?
· Paper on conservation = vandalism (not for us to write!!??). Could mention it in passing in the methodology paper. => significance not always known.
· Using both hands at once, for instance to flute the two halves of a circle. // Some flutings are made by placing both hands on the ceiling. This is physically possible but difficult to assert or refute at this stage.
· The ritual explanation is a ‘god of the gaps.’ The gap is what does the art mean. Look at the origin on the ritual explanation: priests!
·
Can the catalogue of motifs from Grotte de Rouffignac
(assuming one can be created) be analyzed as are rock art assemblages in other
places?
Our story of R.
development of methodologies. Wrong routes. Eventually an ‘aha.’
Severines, to restate Lewis-Williams (
to recognize or interpret images or signs on the basis
of what the modern eye sees or on what historic cultures might offer for analogic
comparison….to seek for the origins of ‘art’ in the recognizable image,
recognizable to us. Because recognizable images such as animals are
occasionally found among the [severines], it was assumed that it was out of
random marking that representational art was eventually born (Marshack
The focus on meaning leads to little real knowledge, merely
to much speculation. It may be mostly about the cultural or personal views of
the investigators. Should or can nothing therefore be said about severines?
Ucko (
This is too extreme a conclusion. However, it makes sense at this stage of the study of severines to leave aside the question of meaning; better would be to see what can be said about the marks themselves as they were made. Such investigations logically come before subjective-interpretative and meaning-seeking approaches to severines and may help sort out the various suggestions as to meaning or lay a solid foundation for seeking meaning.
Marshack, though he defers to his predecessors, pioneers strategies for this type of research and starts to break out of the meaning seeking paradigm. He talks about severines as intentional systems of markings, and he writes:
I tried to develop techniques and a theoretical basis
for the intensive internal analysis
of the Upper Paleolithic symbolic materials….My effort was…directed toward…a
study of the cognitive processes
involved in the formation of an image, a study of the sequence of making an image or a composition or the sequence of
accumulating images on a surface….This enquiry was…functional and psychological
(Marshack
By placing a development of forms onto the forms themselves, and by expounding water as the meaning of the markings, Marshack retreats from grounded analysis to speculation, and does so without clearly differentiating between the two approaches. The core of Marshack’s methodology needs adopting and developing, and his speculations as to meaning and the evolution of ‘art’ need putting aside, at least in the meantime.
This proposed research continues to establish the more
objective and experimental approach to the lines (Sharpe Preprint; Sharpe and
Fawbert 1998; Sharpe and Lacombe
The approach being offered extends the internal analysis started by Marshack to building on forensics. This potential new paradigm for viewing people of the past by looking at the lines that Breuil saw as secondary. To see into the minds and cultures of the people. Lines humanize and individualize the people ??? this is a VIP emphasis ??? whereas focusing on the art has caused the opposite. The forensic methods individuate the lines. The individual in tension with the broad strokes of culture. This offers the chance to talk about the interrelationships between the individuals involved in a panel. It works from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It is into evidence rather than the big meanings.
Forms
Internal Analysis
Forensic Analysis
o Finger Widths ……
Zipf Analysis
· graphical unit…or, similarly, a set of subparallel lines engraved with one tool;
· Explore the analysis with only two fingers or 1 finger and not with three (finger/hand width wo age and unique person).
· Check by experiment and in the cave for nail produced lines versus pad produced ones.
· Kingdom: Artifacts.
Phylum: Human artifacts.
Class: Markings.
Order: Parietal markings.
Those categories below and including ‘family’ are the most relevant for this study.
· computer digital manipulation for further refining recording techniques.
· Re: continuity of severines (arguing for the continuity between engraved and hand/finger made markings):
· A case for placing severine lines into one category, as opposed to separating fluted from engraved (e.g.) severines.
· Intentionality (which I discuss somewhere): I’m looking for signs for or against its presence. I need to define it or choose a better word as it’s not to do with writing etc. but opposed to accidental.
·
Looking at Michel’s depictions of flutings in
the
· Combine AR06 and AR46? The book comprises (a) method (b) results so far (c) meaning, broken into (i) ‘results’ versus ‘doing’ emphases, (ii) Zipf’s law, implying communication, (iii) Ogham as a model, implying names.
· From AR47 (method paper):
o
Check
reference for: ‘Le Chain Graphique’ (Leroi Gourhan): what one person can
do without moving).
o Check reference for: Breuil referred to severines as ‘lignes parasites.’ Perhaps in one of the big drawing books.
o I could do a paper on this for submission to RAR and to the other journal that’s on archaeological methodology, the Bulletin of the Society of Primitive Technology, that my Union learner (Maria-Louise Sidoroff) has suggested (editor David Westcott, dwescot@aol.com). Also see their web site, www.primitve.org run by Tom Elpell Publish in Current Anthropology or Antiquity.
o When finished, send to my group for comments.
· In AR50 (Kirian paper) (this is a set of additional questions when studying a panel of flutings):
o Other categories for the method:
§ Other Severines than Flutings
§ What Movements of the Severine Maker Were Involved in the Marking Process?
§ What was the Original Floor?
§ What is the Height of Each Unit Above the Original Floor?
§ What is the Condition of the Unit in Comparison with Other Severines and With Graffiti?
§ What is the Layout of the Units in the Cluster?
§ What is the Layout of the Cluster in its Panel of Clusters?
§ What is the Position of the Panel in Relation to the Geography of the Cave?
§ Shapes
§ Age of Severines
§ What is the position of the panel in relation to the geography of the cave?
§
Other Occurrences within
o The core of the approach adopted is three fold (Sharpe and Van Gelder 2004; In Press 2):
Fieldwork
§ A thorough and repeated examination of the lines is made using non-intrusive techniques such as varied methods of lighting.
§ Photography with digital technology (sometimes with different filters, light sources (including infrared and ultraviolet)). And
§
Note taking of the severines are the foundations
of the field techniques (Lorblanchet
Analysis
After the fieldwork, the lines are drawn and reconstructed electronically. This redrawing often raises points about the image that need clarification and that only further field work can answer. From this work, specific questions can be formulated for further investigation.
Laboratory Experimentation
Research is undertaken in the laboratory to ascertain
what lines can and cannot be made in the situations of the severines, to
clarify what particular features of the severines still visible may imply about
how they were made and who made them, and to refine data recording techniques
(Lorblanchet
· What are the implications of our work for our knowledge of the evolution of humankind? E.g., for the development of mind? E.g., look at Mithen etc. for a context or all the current work on the evolution of religion or of the mind.
Richard Gould…Yiwara. Also see his [notes on] Recovering the Past (1990).
Continuing the discussion from the published paper and responses:
· Look at heights in A2 where there are bear pits. Clearly no mining here.
· Look at other places in the cave where 28’s height is clear (e.g., in I where the floor is Paleolithic).
The individuals, etc.
and reference to Gargas.
100,000 year old beads (NS 1 July 2006…Talk about bling…have)
For a fluting or a collection of flutings, it is not possible to know the meaning, but it may be possible to know the intention or at least some of the intentions. ??? this is also a VIP statement ??? There are different sorts of intention. Is intention looking outwards toward other individuals (writing)? Or toward itself? Viewed or experienced? This should be asked on each cluster of lines. Some flutings may be socially intended. Then we ought to ask about the grammar embedded in them. Nonverbal (and of course verbal) languages have grammars, which I presume are the relationships between some of their elements.
Marshack (1979 ??? ) on writing. He says no. the notational systems are personal not social, and no sense of lines or direction, etc. I may want to refute these for a wall. E.g., we don’t write on a wall in a neat and orderly fashion (graffiti) but with notes in different parts at different angles. We may find the linearity locally, though, and that may be the challenge on Paleolithic panels: to distinguish the different local pieces.
Probably no one meaning or set of meanings for all of the flutings, even in one time or cultural period, or probably in one cave or by one person. We have seen this in Rouffignac, for instance, or in Gargas.
Other sites for such work include:
Baume Latrome (Drouot 1953)
Anati, Emmanuel. 1995. La Religione Delle Origini. Studi Camuni 14.
Aslin, G. D., E. K. Bednarik, and R. G. Bednarik.
Aujoulat and Gély 2003.
Barrière, Claude.
_________.
Bednarik, Robert G.
_________. Parietal Finger Markings in
_________.
_________.
_________.
_________.
_________.
_________.
_________.
_________.
_________.
Breuil, Henri.
Breuil, H., H. Obermaier, and W. Verner. 1915. La Pileta
a Benaojan (
Chauvet et al. 1996.
Clottes 2003.
Clottes, Jean, and Jean Courtin.
Clottes, Jean, and David Lewis-Williams.
d’Errico, Francesco.
_________.
_________.
_________.
_________.
_________.
_________.
_________, Christopher Henshilwood, and Peter Nilssen.
Dickson, D. Bruce. 1990. The
Dawn of Belief: Religion in the Upper Paleolithic of
Drouot, Edouard. 1953. L'Art Paléolithique à la Baume
Latrone. Cahiers Ligures
de Préhistoire et d'Archèologie 2, pp. 9-46.
Gallus, Alexander.
Gould, Richard A. 1990. Recovering the Past.
Leroi-Gourhan, André.
??? 1972 + ???
1958. La Fonction des Signes dans les Sanctuaires Paléolithiques. Bulletin de la Société Préhistoriques
Française
Leroi-Gourhan 1972.
Lewis-Williams, David.
Lorblanchet, Michel.
_________.
_________.
_________.
_________, Jean -Loïc Le Quellec, Paul G. Bahn, Henri -Paul
Francfort, Brigette Delluc and Gilles Delluc. 2006. Chamanismes Et Arts
Préhistoriques: Vision Critique.
Marshack, Alexander.
_________.
_________.
_________.
_________.
Maynard, L. and R. Edwards. 1971. Wall Markings. In Archaeology of the Gallus Site, Koonalda Cave, Australian Aboriginal Studies no. 26, ed. R. V. S. Wright (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies), pp. 59-80.
Nougier, Louis-René, and Romain, Robert. 1958. The
Plassard, Jean.
Plassard and Plassard. 2000.
Sharpe, Christine E.
_________.
_________, and Kevin J. Sharpe.
Sharpe, Kevin. Preprint. Incised Linear Markings: Animal or Human Origin? www.ksharpe.com.
_________, and Helen Fawbert.
_________, and Mary Lacombe.
_________, Mary Lacombe, and Helen Fawbert.
_________, and Leslie Van Gelder. To Appear. Trois Formes de Tracés Digitaux (ou Sevérines) en Grotte de Rouffignac, France. To appear in Préhistoire du Sud-Ouest.
_________, and Leslie Van Gelder. Preprint. Young Children Create Paleolithic Art.
_________, and Leslie Van Gelder. Preprint
_________, and Leslie Van Gelder. Preprint
Ucko, Peter J.