Reassessing Abri Castanet

An article in PNAS published on May 14, 2012, describes a fundamental reassessment of the Upper Paleolithic Aurignacian site of Abri Castanet, in the Dordogne region of France, which pushes the date of its artwork back to among the earliest known in the world, about 37,000 years ago.

Abri Castanet was first excavated by pioneer French archaeologist Denis Peyrony in the early decades of the 20th century, and then reopened in the 1990s by Jean Pelegrin and Randall White. Peyrony was convinced that he had identified two separate occupations--an Early Aurignacian one and a Middle Aurignacian one--and in the Middle Aurignacian level he discovered evidence of cave art, specifically animal and abstract vulvar (female sexual organs) representations carved into fragments of the ceiling.

What White's latest research has shown, at least according to the excavators, is that the site has no Middle Aurignacian component to it: all of the artifacts and art date instead to the Early Aurignacian. Abri Castanet's art work is thus similarly dated to that of the marvelous paintings of Chauvet Cave, also in the Dordogne in the Ardache Ardèche valley of France, and, if White and his team are correct, Abri Castanet's art is among the earliest known cave art in the world.

• Abri Castanet, summary of the recent and previous findings
• Chauvet Cave
• Guide to the Upper Paleolithic