While I'm recovering, slowly and painfully, from an undiagnosed obsession with American presidential elections, I've returned to some basics. You can't get more basic archaeology than cave art, paintings, murals, drawings, etchings, carvings, and pecked artwork on the interior of rockshelters and caves, first made in the Upper Paleolithic period of our planet, about 25,000 years ago.
Kapova Cave (Russia). Photo by José-Manuel Benito
So--here you go, a Guide to the Prehistoric Art of Caves (aka 'parietal art'), and information on a handful of cave sites that you may or may not have heard of.
- Guide to Cave Art
- Lascaux Cave (France)
- Altamira Cave (Spain)
- Kapova Cave (Russia)
- Koonalda Cave (Australia)
- Uan Muhuggiag (Libya)
Comments
Rock paintings are truly fascinating! I have seen some really old ones in south Siberia, but I do not remember the exact period that they’re from. =)
I just finished reading “The Shamans of Prehistory”, a fascinating work on cave art filled with photos and illustrations by noted Archeologists Jean Clottes and David Lewis-Williams. This book met with the harshest criticism upon publication by fellow archeologists. It seems that to describe these caves is okay but any attempt to provide some baseline motivational context to cave paintings is a strict taboo in the archeologist community. I think applying this strict rule of “describe but do not extrapolate” is much like putting handcuffs on present and future archeologists. It is also hurtful to the layperson who would really like to know what it was the cave painters were trying to accomplish. I can understand reasonable, polite, critiques demonstrating weaknesses in a speculation but this practice of wanting to stone to death any archeologist who advances even the most tentative baseline motivational speculation should come to an end.
I love looking at photos of European cave paintings, And I enjoy being able to see the pictographs in my own area along the Ohio River.
Andy, you said:
“It seems that to describe these caves is okay but any attempt to provide some baseline motivational context to cave paintings is a strict taboo in the archeologist community. I think applying this strict rule of “describe but do not extrapolate” is much like putting handcuffs on present and future archeologists”
My question to you is; how does anyone thousands of years after the fact have ANY connection to “extrapolate” the motivation of the artist? Look at our own times (last 50~100 years) Can you REALLY extrapolate what Andy Wharhol was trying to say with his art? How about Salvador Dali? Does your interpretation of his work define his intentions??? I think not, hence an adverse response to anyone saying they know or pretend to know the motivations of Shamans 1,000, 5,000 or even 12,000 years ago.
Furthermore, as scientists, archeologists are suppose to report on data collected to support conclusions. That is the mandate of science.
Do you want your doctor saying ” a sneeze? hmmmm … God bless you because the devil just jumped your soul. I hope you dont go to hell!” OR do you want your doctor to look at your symptoms and say, here take these and call me in a week if you dont get better.
Archeology is supposed to be a science, and as a science the practitioners are to interpret data collected. Nothing more nothing less. To say one knows the motivation of any human without their direct input is not preforming in a scientific manner, and even with that input, people still LIE!
As far as I know, Securalist, extrapolation is a form of interpretation. It would not be such a huge questimate to see Warhol’s Campbell Soup cans and Marilyn Monroe repetitions as some form of artistic social commentary. Yes, the cave paintings of Europe are thousands of years old but among the cave paintings of the Shamanic practicing San People of South Africa of yesterday and today and the cave art of today’s and yesterday’s Native Australians, to name just a couple, there is a remarkable similarity with these ancient paintings. These include hand imprints, dots and lines, half animal half human figures and a select bestiary. As I see it, to do a very comprehensive study comparing the similarities of shamanic based cave paintings of recent time to those of the far past is a very valid ethnohistoric archeological study. I would like to see more of this. Actually, I would like to sit with a group of archeologists around a fire after a day’s dig and listen to their wildest speculations. Speculations which regrettably will never see publication because of the fear of ridicule from an overly stuffy archeological elite.
STARRPOINT, I LIVE ON THE LOWER OHIO AND WE HAVE SOME VERY GOOD WORK IN THE ROCK HOUSES, BUT THE ARKELOGOLIST DONT THIN THEY ARE REAL BUT WHAT SO THEY KNOW KKKRRISS DONT BELIEVE PEOPLE EVOLVED HERE JUST LIKE THE PRIMATES DID I HAVE ASK MS.KKRIST ABOUT THE PRYMATS EVOLVING ALL OVER THE WORLD AND WHY MAN DID NOT SHE WILL NOT ANS ME ON THAT, WELL IF THE MONKERYS EVOLVED ALL OVER THAN MAN WOULD OF DONE IT TOO, BUT YOU HAVE TO HAVE A OPEN MIND TO SEE THAT BUT THE TEACHERS TOLD HER THAT AND SHE WILL NOT EVEN LOOK AT THE POSSIABILITY THAT MAN AND MONKEYS DID EVOLVE ALL OVER TOGEATHER. BILL DAVIDSON