Articles :
Esthétique et Préhistoire : pour une anthropologie du style
La grotte Chauvet : un art totalement homogène ?

The Grotte Chauvet : a completely homogeneous art?

As we already know, the wall paintings of the Chauvet cave are attributed to the Aurignacians; Twenty-two separate radiocarbonic datings carried out directly on the wall-paintings and the ground indicate that they were done between 32 000 and 30 000 years B.C. (Clottes 2001). According to J. Clottes, who directed the field work in the cave, the images are stylistically homogeneous, and all would seem to belong to the Aurignacian period. (Clottes, op. cit).
I would like to draw attention here to an image which, in my opinion, represents a different style from that of most other images present in the cave. This image could, I think, bear witness to a second phase of decoration in the Grotte Chauvet. probably posterior by five or six thousand years to those of the Aurignacian artists.

The engraved horse of The Skull Chamber

In the room known as the Skull Chamber there is a pendant of rock decorated on either side by an image of a cervid.

Fig. 1: The painted cervid on the rock pendant in the skull Chamber.

The style and technique of these images would seem to be conform with the other paintings in the cave. To be noted in particular is the use of the technique of stamp drawing considered by specialists as one of the characteristic traits of aurignacian art at Chauvet. On one side of the rock face, the reading of the image is hindered by a number of scratch marks that almost cover it in its entirety.

Fig. 2: Painted cervid overlain with scratch-marks.

Fig. 2: Painted cervid overlain with scratch-marks.

These marks are far from being disposed in an arbitrary fashion. Amongst them, one can distinguish two distinct representations: a right-hand profile of a mammoth, below which is a horse's head faced in the opposite direction.

Fig. 3: Mammoth and horse overlaying the image of the painted cervid.

The drawing of the mammoth is too succinct or undefined on the documents to which I have access for me to discuss it here. The horse's head, however, is interesting in so far as it would seem to bear witness to a very different style than that of the other paintings at Chauvet. It is rather an image that would seem to be in keeping with certain specific stylistic conventions that are usually associated with images of the gravettian and solutrean epochs.

Typically gravetto-solutrean conventions

In previous research, I have had the opportunity of pin-pointing certain formal stylistic choices that are characteristic of gravettian and solutrean art. The validity of these observations has been clearly shown within the framework of research undertaken on paleolithic engravings of the Côa valley (Zilhâo, 2003). I bring together here several examples of gravettian and solutrean engravings alongside the Chauvet engraving in order to demonstrate the similarity of treatment that would seem to unite them.

Fig. 4: Comparison between the Chauvet engraving and various gravettian and solutrean images.

A deliberate lack of interest for internal detail

A principal stylistic convention common to many gravetto-solutrean images and that is also flagrant in the Chauvet engraving is the absence of the principal internal anatomical details (eye, mouth, nose...) This absence could be interpreted as being due to a lack of skill, or a problem of observation. Such is not the case. In effect, one notes that the image conveys some very subtle information even by its outline. This is particularly the case of the sometimes very deliberate curve of the line of the lower jaw which is present in all the examples shown here, and which serves to translate the characteristic form of the horses jowl(Fig. 4: A, all images) One can deduce from this a deliberate decision to leave out, or volontarily neglect, the representation of details in a general sense, more or less systematically, in favour of other visual information such as the jowl, which serves more directly to characterise the animal represented.

The pre-established tracing of outlines

A second stylistic convention characteristic of the gravetto-solutrean period and that is very present in the Chauvet horse concerns the particular treatment of the drawing of the outline. In these images, it is obvious that very often the outline is not only determined as a result of naturalistic observation (whatever the degree of faithful likeness), but also by the use of pre-established geometric shapes : right-angles, regular curves, alternating and counter-curves, symmetrical effects...One of the reccurrent geometric shapes is the very sharp point formed at the junction of the outlines of neck and lower jaw(see Fig. 4a) A shape that specifically come across in the Chauvet horse, as we do in homologous images at Mayenne-Science, Pair-non-pair and other sites of gravettian art such as Cussac (Dordogne) or Gargas (Haute-Pyrenées).
Another trait that would seem very revealing of this rather unusual concept of the role of the outline, as a self-sufficient element, used as and for itself, is the way in which it is not systematically linked up to other outlines where they intersect. This is visible in most of the examples presented here, including Chauvet, with the almost systematic interruption of the lines at the interrsection of mane and forehead. This is no doubt a manner of reaffirming the self-sufficiency of these pre-established line drawings, but is also a means of better distinguishing the different anatomical parts that they express within a particularly economical system of representation (a simple outline).

Fortuitous convergence, or a stylistic family?

The hypothesis of a fortuitous stylistic convergence between, on the one hand, the Chauvet horse, and on the other, gravettian and solutrean images, seems to me to be highly unlikely. In effect, this similarity resides not only in the repetition of single isolated lines, but also in the association of several specific common caracteristics combined in the same manner. I deduce from this that it is highly probable that the engraved horse in the Skull Room belongs to the gravetto-solutrean family.
This eventuality seems even more plausible in view of the fact that we now know that that the cave was also frequently in use during the gravettian era. Another group of datings indicates, in effect, a later phase of occupation of the cave towards 27 000 to 25 000 B.C. (Clottes, op. cit).

Other probable images of the same style in the cave

On top of this, it is interesting to note that there are other images in the cave that present similar stylistic conventions to that of the scratched horse in the Skull Chamber. Unfortunately, I am unable to dress a precise inventory of these in view of the little documentation at my disposal ( publications). On the basis of these indirect sources, I would, however, cite: two small yellow horses (Brunel Chamber), one horse and two finger-engraved mammoths (Croisillon Gallery), one horse seemingly engraved by means of the point of a torch (Skull Chamber) cf Fig. 5, one horse's head painted at the base of the reindeer panel, and one engraved horse (Hillaire Chamber).

Fig. 5: Engraved horse in the Skull Chamber, stylistically similar to that on the rock pendant.

Fig. 5: Engraved horse in the Skull Chamber, stylistically similar to that on the rock pendant.

I would like to point out that this diagnostic is shared by Y. Le Gaillou, one of the researchers working on the grotte Chauvet. According to him, the style of these different images is not in accordance with the main works in the cave. They could, according to him, belong to the gravettian period of occupation of the cave (Le Guillou in Clottes, op.cit).

A possible confirmation of the great age of the paintings

For a majority of reseachers, the attribution of the Chauvet painting to the aurignacian period constitutes an established fact, however, some continue to have doubts (see the articles by CH. Zurcher and the recent questioning of dating of the cave by P. Bahn and P. Petitt, 2003). The covering up of the black figure by a gravettian or solutrean would bring a supplementary argument, if needed, in favour of the great age of the Chauvet paintings. It would imply that the painted reindeer? and also all the other black paintings? are prior to, or, at the very least contemporary to, the gravettian and solutrean.
As for the dating of the painted reindeer, no elements would seem to indicate a stylistic difference with the other paintings in the cave, which would therefore belong to the aurignacian period.As on the other side of the rock pendant, one finds the same characteristic use of stamp drawing, the same presence of certain particular details (cf. long shoulder line in an S-shape) and an identical rendering of the modelling.

The refusal of specific aurignacian symbols?

One last piece of information revealed by the superposition in the Skulls room is the deliberate destruction by gravettian or solutrean visiters of some aurignacian works. This is a rare phenomenon in paleolithic art. We are, of course, familier in paleolithic art with several cases of the overlaying of images of different eras. Here, the situation is somewhat differen. The author of the engraved horse and other scratchings hasn't contented himself with adding a new image. He first of all crossed out the painted cervid before then covering it up with the mammoth and the horse. This deliberate destruction or alteration is more flagrant still on the other face of the pendant, in so much as the second cervid is also scratched out, without, this time, any new images being added (cf Fig 1).
What remains to be known is whether the gravetto-solutrean "vandalism" was only aimed at the cervids, or if, for example, it was motivated by the presence of other images at this specific place in the cave.? According to recent litterature on the subject, these alterations could be linked to the representations of cervids. In effect, according to some, a number of the cervids of the Reindeer panel, in the Hillaire room, also show traces of rubbing or scratching out.(Clottes, op. cit.) There would thus have been a deliberate will of the later visitors to efface the cervids painted several thousand years before by the aurignacians.
This tangible manifestation of the denial by an individual or a group of a certain subject matter would confirm the idea according to which paleolithic representations had a symbolic meaning and were not just gratuitous naturalistic imitations.

Whether or not this be so , the replacement of the reindeer by the horse and the mammoth, whatever the precise motivations, confirms even more the feeling of heterogenity suggested by the stylistic differences between the works.

Conclusion

There is, from my viewpoint, at least one representation at Chauvet posterier to the main phase of pictural activity dating from the aurignacian.

This image presents several formal characteristics that place it unambiguously in a diifferent stylistic tradition, usually dated from the gravettian period, or solutrean in a few cases. Far from being due to a lack of skill, or technical difficulty, this image bears witness on the contrary to a deliberate desire for schematic.: the outlines rely on typical geometrical constructions, the materiality? and thus artificiality? of the lines is openly displayed through deliberate discontinuity, anatomical information of a general order is neglected in favour of details that serve only the characterisation of the species. Thus the lines on these elements are unabashedly exagerated, sometimes to the the point of caricature (cf. the 'duck-bill' profile that gives the horse a highly accentuated jowl).
This resolutely schematic style is in obvious contrast with the interest accorded to description and, more generally, representation by the aurignacians at Chauvet. Above and beyond the chronological difference between them, these images reflect two separate visions which almost certainly translate two very different concepts of the world.

Finally, and more generally, the dating of the Chauvet paintings reveals the existence of a first period of aurignacian art that is much more elaborate and accomplished than was previously believed. We now know that paleolithic art did not, as was long thought, evolve, with time and technical progress, towards an ever-increasing naturalism.
The overlaying of images on the rock pendant in the Skull Chamber is the material and objective proof of the invalidity of this evolutionist postulate. It shows, once and for all, that during the High Palaeolithic, the most realistic representations are not necessarily the most recent.

Paleoesthetic.com - february 2004.

Bibliographical references

Pictures : Chauvet (Fig. 1) ; Clottes (Fig. 5).

Articles :
Esthétique et Préhistoire : pour une anthropologie du style
La grotte Chauvet : un art totalement homogène ?