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Ancient Peoples and Places
Cave Artists
Presents a detailed introduction to Paleolithic cave art and its modern interpretation since Leroi-Gourhan, concentrating on stylistic analysis for its chronological and societal implications
224 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1979
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September 11, 2017
Overall an interesting book, from which I learned many surprising things, but there was a great deal of geographical and chronological style discussion that was mostly lost on me. It was written decades ago and probably more caves have been discovered since then.
Takeaways:
Brueil did the most comprehensive overview of known cave art but his conclusions are often suspect
Leroi-Gourhan proposed the idea that cave paintings are made according to a schema with central and peripheral panels, but his classification of signs as gendered is weak
Frequency of animals in art has little to do with actual animal frequency: horses and bovids always predominate, followed by other herbivores, followed by predators/humans, then very small numbers of fish/birds
Humans are always very rudimentary and sex is only identifiable based on the presence of the penis
Abstracts signs like dots, lines and basket-like "tectiforms" are fairly common, their interpretation difficult
Hand prints are often missing fingers
Caves often see tens of thousands of years of use but seem to be actually used very rarely, based on their very good condition.
Evidence of fire is very rare in deep caves
Shallow cave/outdoor rock art more often has sculpted depictions of humans, such as a face or womens bodies
Eastern Spanish caves show many more and better formed humans than other caves
Overall, paleolithic cave art is very uniform over a huge area of both time and space, with little regional style and slow chronological change, and this suggests a lack of social upheaval over time, wide ranging travel and interaction among peoples, and a powerful social institution of painting caves
After the paleolithic, naturalistic animal painting seems to disappear, seemingly replaced by "Azilian" symbol drawing on rocks and Spanish Levant depictions of humans
Takeaways:
Brueil did the most comprehensive overview of known cave art but his conclusions are often suspect
Leroi-Gourhan proposed the idea that cave paintings are made according to a schema with central and peripheral panels, but his classification of signs as gendered is weak
Frequency of animals in art has little to do with actual animal frequency: horses and bovids always predominate, followed by other herbivores, followed by predators/humans, then very small numbers of fish/birds
Humans are always very rudimentary and sex is only identifiable based on the presence of the penis
Abstracts signs like dots, lines and basket-like "tectiforms" are fairly common, their interpretation difficult
Hand prints are often missing fingers
Caves often see tens of thousands of years of use but seem to be actually used very rarely, based on their very good condition.
Evidence of fire is very rare in deep caves
Shallow cave/outdoor rock art more often has sculpted depictions of humans, such as a face or womens bodies
Eastern Spanish caves show many more and better formed humans than other caves
Overall, paleolithic cave art is very uniform over a huge area of both time and space, with little regional style and slow chronological change, and this suggests a lack of social upheaval over time, wide ranging travel and interaction among peoples, and a powerful social institution of painting caves
After the paleolithic, naturalistic animal painting seems to disappear, seemingly replaced by "Azilian" symbol drawing on rocks and Spanish Levant depictions of humans
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review