AR
Copyright © 2003 by Kevin Sharpe and Leslie Van Gelder. All rights reserved.
International Newsletter on Rock
Art
Children and Paleolithic ‘Art’: Indications from Rouffignac
Cave, France
by
Kevin Sharpe
Graduate College, Union Institute and University, Cincinnati, Ohio
Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, Oxford
kevin.sharpe@tui.edu
www.ksharpe.com
and
Leslie Van Gelder
Walden University, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
leslievg@OIScienceSpirit.com
ABSTRACT.
This paper develops and provisionally applies an empirical
methodology to examine finger flutings in Chamber A
KEY WORDS.
Finger flutings, Paleolithic children, prehistoric art, Rouffignac Cave, severines.
CONTENTS.
Conclusions
and General Discussion
The child’s or even baby’s hand held by that of an adult
while color is blown or spat over it offers visitors to Gargas Cave, France, an
icon to remember (Barrière
This paper
shows that children probably did indeed create ‘prehistoric art,’ in particular
in Rouffignac Cave. A methodology is developed whereby the possibility of
children’s authorship can be reliably ascertained and the results of
provisional studies using this are provided. This conclusion leads to further
questions – particularly because of the height of the ceiling above the floor –
and insight into the activities carried on in the chamber where children marked
the ceiling.
This paper only concerns finger flutings (the lines that human fingers leave when drawn over a soft surface). Flutings occur in caves through southern Australia, New Guinea, and southwestern Europe, and were presumably made over a considerable time span including some or all of the Upper Paleolithic. Most are not obvious figures or symbols.
Plassard (
The following terminology may help when discussing line markings:
· fluting refers to a line drawn with a finger;
·
graphical
unit (or, abbreviated, the word unit) refers to flutings drawn with one sweep
of one hand or with one finger (Marshack
· cluster labels an isolatable group of units that exhibit a unity, for instance because they overlay each other;
· severine is suggested for line markings that do not participate in the figurative part of a definitive figure or demonstrable symbol or sign (thus, the category ‘line markings’ not only comprises flutings and engraved lines, but, coextensively, also severines, figures, and symbols).
Chamber A1 of Rouffignac
Cave
Location
Rouffignac Cave lies in the Dordogne, France, near the
village of Les Eyzies de Tayac (see Figure
Figure
Despite previous controversy as to a Paleolithic date for
the cave, its authenticity is now generally accepted and a date usually given
for it is
Chamber A1
The flutings that form the basis of this study are those in
Chamber A
Figure
Elsewhere, these flutings have been named of the ‘Mirian’ form, characterized by:
lower-body movement on the part of the fluters (as opposed to them only moving their upper bodies). ‘Lower-body movement’ means that the people who fluted the walls or ceilings in the Mirian Form not only sometimes walked or otherwise moved their legs while fluting (thus the lines may extend beyond the arm range of a stationary fluter), but almost always moved their bodies from their hips to create the flutings by, for instance, bending, twisting, or shifting their weight (Sharpe and Van Gelder Preprint).
Figure
The Flutings in Chamber A1
‘The meanders [in the cave of Rouffignac],’ writes Marshack
(
Barrière (
The primary question this paper addresses is this: Were
children the authors of at least some of the flutings found in Chamber A
If this can be answered in the positive with a high degree of probability based on the physical evidence the flutings provide, then further matters may present themselves for research and other things may be ascertained about the fluters and perhaps even what the flutings meant – or more likely, what they probably did not mean – to them.
General Methodology
This research is part of a general research program whose
methodology is based on the severines themselves, without first bringing ideas
as to meaning and significance and then looking to prove those ideas (Sharpe
Preprint; Sharpe and Fawbert
Marshack, though he defers to his predecessors, pioneers strategies for this type of research. 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
This work continues from Marshack and, following him, Bednarik, d’Errico, and Lorblanchet. Lorblanchet (for caves) and d’Errico (for mobiliary artifacts) have notably extended this approach through experimentation, a move potentially of great help to studies of the Rouffignac flutings. The methodology adopted therefore not only examines the markings themselves, but may involve experimentation to ascertain how the markings may have been made and limitations on them given their means of manufacture.
Finger Widths
A probable characteristic of the flutings that may relate to the age of the fluters is the flutings’ width. Perhaps, narrow flutings suggest children being their creators. This prompted the starting point for this research.
Method
The approach used involved measuring the finger widths of
people of various ages, those of the flutings in Chamber A
1. The flutings made by the three central fingers were studied. This is because if only one or two digit flutings were studied, it cannot be told what finger or pair of fingers were used to create the flutings. Further, the marks made by the thumb and smallest finger can be usually ignored because they are characteristic: the thumb tends to make a scratch mark because it is held at an angle to the plane of the other fingers, and the little finger tends to trail the others forming a less significant mark.
2. Flutings
of fingers held apart are wider than flutings of the same fingers held
together. Therefore, measurements were restricted to the central three fingers
of hands held together. Many such impressions are found in Chamber A
3. For the drawing of subjects’ hands, the outlines of hands were traced on paper with fingers held together, drawing instrument held vertically, and wrist straight. Subjects added their gender and age to the page. Subjects included many school children and were of various races and demographic backgrounds.
4. Measurements (rounded to the nearest millimeter) were made across the width of the three central fingers, taken below the top of the shortest of the three where it reaches its maximum width.
5. Measurements
were made of the width of the impressions made by three fingers fluted in clay
and a comparison made between them and the measurements of the same fingers
outlined as in (
6. In
Chamber A
Assumptions
The study assumes that the people who made the flutings are
anatomically much the same as modern people (justifiable, given anatomical
studies of Cro Magnon), that left and
right hands are symmetrical, that the rounding of measurements to the nearest
millimeter does not distort the results, that the difference between the drawn
outline of the central three fingers or a hand and the impression the fingers
make in a clay medium is the result of (
Results
The difference
between the drawn outline of the central three fingers or a hand and the
impression the fingers make in a clay medium is seven millimeters. The other
results can be summarized in the following two tables:
Table
|
Width |
Adjusted Width |
Age |
Gender |
Width |
Adjusted Width |
Age |
Gender |
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F |
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M |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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M |
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F |
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M |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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F |
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