Vermiculations in painted caves: New inputs from laboratory experiments and field observations

Vermiculations are aggregates of small particles commonly found on cave walls. They are a major concern for the conservation of painted caves, as they can potentially alter valuable prehistoric cave paintings. A previous rheological study of fine sediment deposits on cave walls revealed that this material can undergo a solid-to-liquid transition triggered by variations in the chemical composition of the water film on the wall. Such a transition could occur at the origin of vermiculations by allowing the sediment to flow under low mechanical stress. In this work, we provide quantitative information on the conditions leading to this transition and show the importance of the chemical composition of the water film on the cave walls. A complete understanding of the phenomenon will, however, require more field information. This includes monitoring of the evolution of vermiculations, for which we have developed a dedicated observation protocol. Based on the combination of photogrammetry and a geographic information system we were able to precisely map the walls of the Hall of Bulls in Lascaux cave from past and future photographs. To better understand the vermiculation process, pictures need to be taken regularly, and the chemical composition of the thin water film covering cave walls needs to be analyzed with a similar time step. The correlation between the evolution of vermiculations, the humidification phases of the walls, temperature changes and the chemical monitoring of the water film should shed new light on conditions triggering vermiculations.

Analytical Pyrolysis of the Fungal Melanins from Ochroconis spp. Isolated from Lascaux Cave, France

Analytical pyrolysis is a tool widely used for investigating the nature of macromolecules. This technique has been applied with success for solving the chemical structure of geo- and biopolymers. However, with complex macromolecules, such as fungal melanins, analytical pyrolysis presents some drawbacks due to the fact that they rarely can be obtained in a pure grade and contains a mixture of polysaccharides, chitin, proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids, among other materials. Analytical pyrolysis permits the characterization of the compounds co-extracted or linked to the melanin. Nevertheless, our data revealed that under the conditions usually employed in the pyrolysis of melanins, the technique presented serious limitations due to the complex structure and diversity of components that suffer extensive thermal degradation through secondary reactions with the production of considerable number of artifacts. To the light of pyrolysis data, the melanin of Ochroconis spp. is not based on 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA) or 1,8-dihydroxynaphthalene (DHN), and it is suggested that it could be a type of pyomelanin, based on the polymerization of homogentisic acid and other phenolic compounds.

Deciphering Cave Painting Code and Ancient Celestial Map in South East Asia Paleolithic Cultures Dated to 40000 Years Old

Currently it was theoritized that cave paintings have meaning more than human and animal interactions. Based on an example from Lascaux cave, a figure of a bull is believed representing Taurus constellation together with the Pleiades. In here this study aims to assess the connections of paleolithic art works in the forms of cave paintings and zoomorphic figures resemble to bovid with possible ancient astronomy and constellation depictions in South East Asia. The study caves were Jeriji Saleh in Kalimantan and Leang Leang and Sumpang Bita caves in Sulawesi where ancient cave paintings and zoomorphic figures date to 40000 years old have been found. The results show that cave paintings in Jeriji Saleh, Leang Leang and Sumpang Bita caves were comparable to the current findings. Those paintings were having bovid like figures with Leang Leang has figure identified as extant Bubalus depressicornis. In Sumpang Bita, this species was depicted in pregnant condition similar to pregnant horse figure in Lascaux cave. Depiction of pregnant figures in cave paintings indicates the use of ancient calendar to determine season based on the animal mating season. Bovid figure in Jeriji Saleh was illustrated in the same posture like auroch bovid in Lascaux cave and this indicates that cave paintings in Jeriji Saleh have been used to visualize Taurus constellation. The postures of bovid paintings in Leang Leang were different and it is interpreted to visualize Capricorn constellation. Another significant similarity between Lascaux and Leang Leang caves can be seen in paintings depicting a shaft scene with the presences of 3 similar figures include dying man, speared bovid and small zoomorphic figures. This concludes that the caves with their wall painting were not merely functioned as media for ancient art works, whereas it has functioned as paleolithic planetarium and this knowledge was globally widespread.

CONCILIATE ROCK ART, ARCHAEOLOGY AND GEOLOGY IN THE STUDY OF DECORATED CAVES: THE CASE OF SAINT-FRONT CAVE (OR MAMMOTH’S CAVE, DOMME) AND FEW OTHER CAVERNS FROM DORDOGNE (FRANCE)

French South-West, especially the Dordogne region, is one of the richest European area of Palaeolithic sites, whether for human dwelling (including epony-mous and very famous sites like La Madeleine) as for Upper Palaeolithic rock art (of which Lascaux cave, Rouffignac cave, Font-de-Gaume cave, etc.). Those two categories are testimony of organization of daily life and livelihood strategies on one side, and the common system of values and meaning (culture) on the other side. Those two aspects are however very difficult to bring together. For adorned caves, it is often difficult to cross data coming from the walls and ground from a same decorated cave, data sometimes acquired separately. One way to deal with this problem is to develop a multi-disciplinary approach, which allows to combine rock art, archaeological and geological studies and which implies interactions and dialogs between many specialists. This goal, which goes be-yond simply providing archaeological and geological contexts for an image or a group of images, leads to the development of new approaches. Fig. 1. This paper proposes to present cases to the interdisciplinary study of the Great Saint-Front Cave (or Mammoths cave) and other adorned sites, studied within the frame of a collective research program, conducted from 2013 to 2016 and called Archologie des grottes ornes de Dordogne: cadre conceptuel, potentiel et ralit (Cave art archaeology: conceptual frame, potential and reality).