Palaeolithic Art in Isolation: The Case of Sicily and Sardinia

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margherita Mussi
Keyword(s):  
Cervus Elaphus ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Middle Pleistocene ◽  
Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Oxygen Isotope Stage ◽  
Faunal Assemblages ◽  
Late Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Intermittent Connection ◽  
The Alps ◽  
Palaeolithic Art

The archaeological record of Italy is long and complex, suggesting continuous peopling since the Middle Pleistocene (Mussi 2001; Mussi et al. in press). The evidence of Palaeolithic art, however, is rather restricted: Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) art is close to nil, including just a few notched implements; the Middle Upper Palaeolithic (MUP), admittedly, is much richer, with some twenty Gravettian Wgurines, the largest such sample in Western Europe (Mussi et al. 2000; Mussi 2004); parietal art is also documented at Grotta Paglicci, where painted horses and positive handprints were discovered (Boscato and Palma di Cesnola 2000; Zorzi 1962); when Late Upper Palaeolithic (LUP) lithic industries were produced which belong to the Epigravettian, portable and parietal art is known at a number of sites. In the late 1980s, Zampetti (1987) reviewed twenty-one Epigravettian cave sites, and a single open-air site, all of them with zoomorphic art. Three more have been discovered since: Riparo Dalmeri, Riparo di Villabruna, and Grotta di Settecannelle. I will examine below the artistic record of Sicily and Sardinia, both of them at the periphery of Italy, which, in turn, is secluded from Europe by the Alps. My aim is to contrast the effects of geographic isolation, with the circulation of people and ideas, if any, as documented by portable and cave art. Sicily, currently an island of 25; 700km<sup>2</sup> and the largest in the Mediterranean, lies 140 km from Africa, and a few kilometres off southern Italy. The strait of Messina is 3 to 25 km wide, but is far from easy to cross, because of violent tidal currents, and whirlpool, also known as ‘Charybdis’ by Greeks and Romans. The depth is just 72 m at the Sill of Peloro. Because of intense neotectonic activity, however, any palaeogeographic reconstruction is highly speculative. Analysis of the faunal assemblages, which during oxygen isotope stage (OIS) 2 include a limited number of species, none of which is endemic, suggests that intermittent connection with the mainland possibly existed around the Last Glacial Maximum (Mussi et al. in press). The large mammals, found in varying percentages, are the deer, Cervus elaphus, the aurochs, Bos primigenius, the small steppe horse, Equus hydruntinus, and Sus scrofa, the wild boar.

The Palaeolithic of Klithi in its wider context

1992 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tool ◽  
Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
Faunal Assemblages ◽  
Late Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Village ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
Palaeolithic Archaeology

Klithi is a rockshelter in the lower reaches of the Voidomatis gorge, near the village of Klithonia in Epirus. Excavations in progress since 1983 have revealed evidence of a late Upper Palaeolithic occupation dated between 16,000 BP and 10,000 BP, with rich microlithic stone tool industries and faunal assemblages dominated by chamois and ibex. The excavations have been accompanied by wider investigations of the local and regional palaeoenvironment and reexamination of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic sites excavated by Eric Higgs in the 1960s, notably Kokkinopilos, Asprochaliko, and Kastritsa. This paper presents some of the detailed results of the Klithi excavations and sets the results within the wider context of the global issues which inform the study of Palaeolithic archaeology, the Palaeolithic of Greece as a whole, and the regional picture of Palaeolithic settlement in Epirus.

Wrestling with Analogy: A Methodological Dilemma in Upper Palaeolithic Art Research.

1991 ◽  
Vol 57 (01) ◽  
pp. 149-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. Lewis-Williams
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Prehistoric Art ◽  
Scientific Opinion ◽  
Art Research ◽  
Analogical Argument ◽  
Palaeolithic Art

In 1902 Emile Cartailhac published hisMea Culpa d'un Sceptique. His acceptance of the high antiquity of prehistoric art in western Europe followed Capitan and Breuil's convincing discoveries in Font de Gaume and Les Combarelles and reflected a widespread change of opinion. Despite previous scepticism, researchers were beginning to allow that the parietal as well as the mobile art did indeed date back to the Upper Palaeolithic. But this swing in scientific opinion opened up an even more baffling problem: why did Upper Palaeolithic people make these pictures? In the year following Cartailhac's turn-about Salomon Reinach tried to answer this question by developing an analogical argument based on ethnographic parallels. He could see no other way of approaching the problem: ‘Our only hope of finding outwhythe troglodytes painted and sculpted lies in asking the same question of present-day primitives with whom the ethnography reveals connections’ (Reinach 1903, 259; my translation, his emphasis).

Light, Human Evolution, and the Palaeolithic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Pettitt ◽  
Stefanie Leluschko ◽  
Takashi Sakamoto
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Evolutionary Significance ◽  
Middle Palaeolithic ◽  
Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Low Light ◽  
Light Production ◽  
Constituent Component ◽  
Palaeolithic Art ◽  
Cave Art

Human light-producing technology (i.e. the controlled use of fire) evolved during the Palaeolithic. Among its more obvious advantages to survival (heat, cooking, protection), fire-provided light in the form of hearths and lamps probably had considerable evolutionary significance. As human symbolic systems spread with the late Middle Palaeolithic and Upper Palaeolithic in Eurasia, it became a constituent component of European cave art. After reviewing the biological basis of human perception in low-light situations, we examine the existing evidence for the evolution of controlled use of fire (light production), and focus on its use in the performance of Upper Palaeolithic art and other activities in the deep caves of Western Europe.

The Lascaux Cave

1951 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 50-51
Author(s):  
Hallam L. Movius
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Forest Type ◽  
Phase 2 ◽  
Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Art Galleries ◽  
Upper Pleistocene ◽  
The One ◽  
Lascaux Cave ◽  
Palaeolithic Art

The Lascaux Cave, one of the most important single sites of upper Palaeolithic art ever discovered, is located near Montignac (Dordogne), 16 miles up the Vézère River from the famous town of Les Eyzies. It was found in September 1940 by two French schoolboys out rabbit hunting. Called the “Versailles of Prehistoric Man,” Lascaux ranks among the world's oldest and most remarkable art galleries. It has been completely sealed off from the outside world since late upper Pleistocene times, and it is now generally believed that the majority of the paintings are upper Perigordian (Gravettian) in date—Phase 2 in the upper Palaeolithic art sequence of western Europe. That they were produced during a time of climatic amelioration, possibly the one known as the Achen retreat, is borne out by the fact that the animals depicted belong much more to a steppe and forest type of fauna, than they do to a colder tundra group. For example, there are no mammoths and no reindeer shown, but there are many horses, a considerable quantity of cattle, bison and several ibexes.

scholarly journals Middle Pleistocene seismically induced clay diapirism in an intraplate zone, western Brittany, France

2018 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 301-324
Author(s):  
Brigitte van Vliet-Lanoë ◽  
Christine Authemayou ◽  
Stéphane Molliex ◽  
Michael Hugh Field ◽  
Manfred Frechen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Luminescence Dating ◽  
Middle Pleistocene ◽  
Tectonic Structures ◽  
Shallow Water Table ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Oxygen Isotope Stage ◽  
Plate Convergence ◽  
Infrared Stimulated Luminescence ◽  
Bay Of Brest

AbstractThe Brittany region of France is located in a low seismicity intraplate zone. Most of the instrumented earthquakes are limited to a shallow crustal depth without surface rupture. A paleoseismological analysis was performed on deposits on the Crozon Peninsula and in the Elorn estuary. We highlight hydroplastic deformations induced by liquefaction leading to clay diapirism, which were likely triggered by past earthquakes. This diapirism seems to be frequent in continental nonconsolidated sediments and to develop on the inherited tectonic structures, when a shallow water table and confining layers exist. Timing of deformation is dated using paleoenvironmental data, and electron spin resonance and infrared-stimulated luminescence dating methods. Two seismic periods were identified in western Europe during early Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MIS) 10 (~380 ka) and early MIS 8 (~280–265 ka). The lack of similar deformations affecting the Holocene tidal deposits in the Bay of Brest suggests that the magnitude of the triggering paleoearthquakes is probably higher (Mw~6) than the recent events (Mw5.4). These unusual intraplate major paleoearthquakes need specific factors affecting the far-field crustal stress loading to be triggered, such as a brief acceleration of the Africa-Eurasia lithospheric plate convergence, glacio-isostatic stress perturbations associated with the onset of major glaciations in northern Europe, or other processes induced by orbital forcing.

Art as information: Explaining Upper Palaeolithic art in western Europe

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Michael Barton ◽  
G. A. Clark ◽  
Allison E. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Palaeolithic Art

Gravettian Figurative Art in the Western Pyrenees: Stratigraphy, Cultural Context, and Chronology

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blanca Ochoa ◽  
Marcos García-Diez ◽  
José-Manuel Maíllo-Fernández ◽  
Álvaro Arrizabalaga ◽  
Paul Pettitt
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
The North ◽  
Figurative Art ◽  
Degree Of Confidence ◽  
North Of Spain ◽  
Palaeolithic Art ◽  
Cave Art ◽  
Portable Art

The timing and nature of the emergence of art in human evolution has been one of the more debated subjects in palaeoanthropology in the last few years, and one of the areas where archaeology has made impressive advances. Here, we discuss the first evidence of figurative art on portable materials in the north of Spain. After analysis of the stratigraphic contexts of all examples potentially of this age, which eliminated those of uncertain provenance, only three examples can be said to be Gravettian with a degree of confidence. We examine their stratigraphic provenance, the integrity of their archaeological contexts, and the absolute dates available for them. We then discuss their thematic and stylistic traits, comparing them to the wider database of material in the adjacent regions of the French Pyrenees and Mediterranean Iberia. We conclude that figurative depictions were scarce in the Gravettian of south-western Europe, in contrast to the relatively abundant examples of cave art assigned to this period in the region. If this is correct, we should nuance our discussions of ‘Palaeolithic art’ by considering that parietal and portable art had their own trajectories and functions, at least in the Early to mid-Upper Palaeolithic.

The Engravings of Gouy: France’s Northernmost Decorated Cave

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yves Martin
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Major Event ◽  
The West ◽  
Negative Argument ◽  
The North ◽  
Palaeolithic Art

For almost half a century the cave of Gouy, discovered in 1956, was the northernmost Palaeolithic decorated cave known in western Europe. Because of its originality and its geographical location, it overturned our knowledge, as has, today, in its turn, the magnificent discovery of the first British parietal Palaeolithic art which has at last been revealed in Church Hole, at Creswell Crags, in Nottinghamshire (Bahn et al. 2003). This revelation extends the distribution of Palaeolithic parietal art further to the north and the west. Following this major event, the possibilities of similar explorations have been reinforced. Even more than before, other discoveries can today be foreseen, not only in the neighbouring regions but very probably also some day soon in Belgium and Germany. Before the authenticity of its decoration was accepted unanimously, Gouy, like Church Hole, was not exempt from scepticism. This attitude inevitably accompanies discoveries which call into question our knowledge in all fields of research. However, doubt is necessary and, in some ways, it is obviously very useful. In particular, it incites one to gather together all the elements that support the accuracy of any new thing. Where Gouy is concerned, there were two principal objections which counted against it and perplexed researchers. The most frequently used negative argument from the very start was its geographical location. From 1946 to 1956 the Grotte du Cheval, at Arcysur- Cure in Bourgogne (Bailloud 1946), was the northernmost decorated cave. Even this cave appeared very eccentric at this latitude. Consequently, far away from the great regions of parietal art, Gouy could not be attributed to the Upper Palaeolithic. Moreover, the (recognized) open-air occupations of the Upper Palaeolithic and Final Upper Palaeolithic were thought to be virtually non-existent (in the regions close to Gouy). This view already ignored the proximity of the rockshelters of Métreville, near Saint-Pierre d’Autils, where there had been a ‘Magdalenian’ industry associated with mammoth bones (Poulain 1904, 1905). In reply to this opinion, which was still widespread in recent times, Gerhard Bosinski proclaimed in public, ‘it is . . . (the Final Upper Palaeolithic), look for it . . . in your region . . .

The zooarchaeology of complexity and specialization during the Upper Palaeolithic in Western Europe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Boyle
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Single Species ◽  
Late Glacial ◽  
Glacial Maximum ◽  
Upper Palaeolithic ◽  
Resource Base ◽  
Faunal Assemblages ◽  
Hunting Strategies ◽  
Structural Specialization ◽  
Reindeer Hunting

Over the last twenty years attempts have been made to determine the nature of Upper Palaeolithic hunting specialization. This chapter traces assemblage structural ‘specialization’, where faunal assemblages are dominated by a single species, vs ‘diversity’, in which all recorded species are well represented, between 45,000 and 10,000 bp (Châtelperronian to Azilian), and demonstrates regularity in the archaeozoological record. It moves away from the assumption that assemblages with at least 90% of bones attributable to a single species result from specialized hunting strategies, and seeks explanations for patterns of diversification. The study also deals with the Late Glacial Maximum with its narrowing resource base and the Magdalenian of southwest France, when specialized reindeer hunting is traditionally considered of paramount importance. The chapter uses measures of diversity and evenness to quantify variation observed through time, highlighting a peak in single-species exploitation during the Middle Upper Palaeolithic. Finally, interpretations are offered for future consideration.

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