Magdalenian art in Ariège
Michel Begon - October 1995
Caves Ariège are universally known for the splendor their Paleolithic paintings and sculptures. Yet this artistic flowering was shorter in the geological scale, having lasted only a few thousand years, between 12,800 and 10,000 BC, is just the terminal phases of the Magdalenian era (so called from the cave adorned with the Madeleine in the Dordogne). As we shall see, the period known Azilian (based on deposits from the bed of Arize in the cave of Mas d'Azil) does not even belong in this short peak. Why was this beautiful luster that also short-lived between two long shadows?
must imagine that this high time men had not yet either farming techniques, seed or grain, or bow and arrows, or the homes of wood that characterize the Neolithic period and that their language, if there really could not exceed a few hundred words. So they were very dependent on the local ecosystem, indoor climate and wildlife or the natural flora. Certainly, homo sapiens sapiens had conquered Europe from 100,000 years before our era, had shown, from 50,000, with carved stones, figurines, perhaps beads and had even to 35,000, physically removed the Neanderthal man. Yet, this man already modern in anatomy, physiology and intelligence knew that still practice hunting and gathering. It is estimated that with its technology comprising only cut stones, spears fitted with thrusters and nets, so we had 5,000 hectares of hunting to feed one person. Any concentration of people was not beyond the migrant herd. It was much later that the population density increasing, the engine will be the division of labor, professional specialization and intensification of trade, then settle.
Moreover, this primitive economy of hunter-gatherers was well adapted to climatic and ecological conditions then prevailing in the south of France. Würm glaciation prevailed globally since the 80,000, with intervals of warming to the point of perpetual ice cover north of the continent, to the Rhone Alps and the Pyrenees to the foothills of the Béarn, the Lannemezan Couserans or Pamiers. She maintained in the valley of the Garonne steppe vegetation, made of grass without forest supports the multiplication of large migratory herds mammoths, aurochs and deer, that the growth of tall trees to the north would be rejected. Presumably, according to the North American example, that hunter-gatherer clothes clung to these migratory herds, living at their expense and as a symbiotic relationship with them, like the Redskins before Europeans do not remove this natural balance to make way for agriculture.
Probably because glaciers covered all landforms, from the Paleolithic men seem to have long avoided the mountains of Ariege. Moreover, the brief phases of warming appear to have been use by a human settlement is denser and more volatile. Thus, in the southeastern French, already enjoying a more favorable microclimate, the painted caves Chauvet (Ardèche) and Cosquer (Var), dated respectively to 30,000 and 27,000 years before our era, would be the oldest in world in the present state of our knowledge. For the great Southwest, the caves of parietal Châtelperronian of Perigordian Solutrean and are only found south of the Seine, at low altitude and away from mountains. No prehistoric site is known around this time east of the Rhone. Among the most ancient relics in the time honored the Pyrenean area, however we must mention the cave of Gargas and the 231 hand painted, Haute-Garonne near Montrejeau, and especially that of Aurignac, Haute-Garonne also, at the discretion of Martres-Tolosane which gave its name to the Paleolithic period of the Aurignacian period, about 20,000 years before our era. Linked to the famous Venus of steatopygous Lespugue, discovered in 1922 in the cave curtains, Haute-Garonne ever. The period known Magdalenian begins with 15,000 beautiful cave of Lascaux in the Dordogne.
Now, about 12,000, there is a sharp but temporary warming, causing not only the retreat of glaciers in southern Plantaurel or Sabarthes, but still a strong population growth throughout the southwest, which causes human penetration of the valleys of Ariege, the Arize or Volp. Then the hunter-gatherer clothes back torrents, invest the massive limestone rock shelters and caves and decorate so numerous that the karst is dug.
These caves have remained in such a state of preservation that they inform us precisely about the daily life of the Magdalenian. Hunter-gatherers did not stop in the natural shelter only for brief forays in search of game mountain during the summer, including lighting of homes, including abandoning the bones of the game and some weapons waste, leaving footprints in the clay, including children, and he drew on the walls, presumably to amuse themselves when the rain or snow raged outside. Fontanet Cave (near Ussat-les-Bains) retains the oldest shoe print in the world! If human settlements were permanent or frequent, such remains have been destroyed by trampling.
known in Ariège some 75 prehistoric sites, especially temporary shelters. A dozen caves have been discovered adorned in the region of small Pyrenees Ariege and are frequently cited by prehistorians: Niaux, arguably the most precisely known, but the network Clastres, Cow, Bedeilhac, Fontanet Sabarthes in the Portel and Mas d'Azil on Plantaurel, Enlène, the Three Brothers, Tuc Audoubert in Couserans, not far from Montesquieu-before, etc. ... At the outset, wall art and sculpture is revealed lecture, reaching the initial aesthetic perfection no guesswork, because he probably inherited some 15 or 20 thousand years of craft tradition, trained in all the great southwest.
Must include senior masterpieces that are otherwise in our memories, at least in all of prehistory textbooks? The Salon Black Niaux, with its beautiful horses and aurochs, the "Horned God" of the Three Brothers, bison clay Audoubert Tuc, the brothers Begouen considered "the oldest sculptures in the world," the horse snorting and the propellant at the Mas d'Azil Fawn, the thrusters to ibex Bedeilhac, Arudy and Mas d'Azil etc. ... It is true that few people could watch the original. The paintings of the Mas d'Azil are no longer visible for tens of years and those Niaux do not visit more, having been the subject of systematic reproduction prehistoric center of Tarascon-sur-Ariege. The sculptures and sculptures, they are deposited in the safes of the National Museum of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The Prehistoric Museum of Mas d'Azil do this as copies, which does not diminish its interest, as these are faithful replicas.
is believed today that the Magdalenian period, population density had reached a level sufficient to locally as trade UNDERWAY Long distance and sometimes specialize few artists whose talent was recognized far and wide. Regarding the expansion of trade, does one have not found in the cave of Mas d'Azil, 200 kilometers from the Mediterranean, carved sperm whale tooth? Regarding the hearing artists, propellants carved wooden reindeer that has emerged from the cave of Mas d'Azil and Bedeilhac so much alike, both sites being distant about thirty miles attributing them to the same hand.
This perfection of Magdalenian art based on a technical background and on compilation methods we know today reconstruct, not without some surprise indeed. Black Student Salon Niaux, Research Laboratory of the Museums of France was able to establish that the authors of the paintings had stayed long to reflect on their compositions and sketch with charcoal, before applying the dyes themselves sophisticated, they had. Outside the Black Salon in the galleries open, if they are the same artists who worked, they went faster, without drawing a sketch first and only reached less than success. As for the palette used, the art painting mixed mineral pigments such as hematite, coal, manganese oxides, biotite and potassium feldspar in natural or organic binders. In the network Clastres, the binder seems to be only water, but at Fontanet, or to Enlène Three Brothers, it would be binding animal or plant, so we are in presence already have an oil painting. Perhaps there is some great technological innovation?
But this spring art ended suddenly and never returned. From 10,800 years before our era, an ultimate climax the Würm glaciation drove the hunter-gatherers of the Ariège Pyrenees. To 9000 when the ice age finally ended, it was by a sudden, strong and definitive warming made up of one hundred meters in sea level and away from Europe's steppe vegetation in favor of hardwood forest. Herds of migratory animals sailed northward, likely resulting in hunter-gatherers in their wake. With this softening, asylums they were against frost and wind, the caves became cold and damp caves, we rather avoided. The cave art disappeared. Without doubt, in the 9th and 8th millennia men they again occupied the vast cave of Mas d'Azil, but without penetrating the upper galleries, keeping the edges of Arize. This was not the same civilization: the Magdalenian killed the bear, those feasted hazelnuts and snails, whose shells are found, their predecessors had paid the ultimate wall art with these mediocre successors n ' have left a poor tool and as works of art, the painted pebbles of Mas d'Azil. At least the name of the period Azilian she immortalized! The prehistorian Piette had even suggested the name "arizien" (after the river Arize) layer underlying sedimentary and Paleolithic culture prior to the 8th millennium, but that name was not retained, the period of the 9th millennium proving elusive. Much later, the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, the megalithic civilization prevail, based on agriculture and we leave the dolmens Plantaurel.
We would like to know what is the significance of cave art and if we left a message. But prehistory in this regard have become increasingly cautious, less and less certain. They do not believe in a prehistoric religion, which no sign appears among the thousands of wild animals decorating the caves. Their tendency is to date the religiosity of the first major human settlements, resulting from the spread of cereal. Both the symbolic interpretation, as Leroi-Gourhan wanted to give the rock art, giving meaning to the couple major determinant of horses and bison, it is now being undermined, even abandoned, as and when the discoveries new caves do not support his explanation system. Observing that the two galleries of the cave of Portel (near Montegut) was one decorated many bison and three horses but one of many horses and three buffaloes, the eminent theorist was a little quickly concluded that the buffalo was the male symbol, the horse and the female symbol that the couple was organizing all the art landmark parietal.
In truth, the observation suggests that the more backward in the past, most men seem to obey materialistic, which is justified by their direct confrontation with local constraints, on the contrary, the more one goes towards modern times, more men are engaged in spirituality, because their life in societies more numerous and more dense, more at home seeking behavior and symbolic exchanges of ideas and information.
materialism Magdalenian evidence abounds, even though there is usually little emphasis. No burial ritual has been discovered in the caves, just the skeletons of people killed by a fall or collapse. It certainly has much been said about the female skull from the Mas d'Azil, in orbits which were inserted two plates of bone, but it is now believed this arrangement due to the hazards of river erosion. Not impregnate any spirituality more works of art. If scenes are shown, they are trivial, such as the Portel cave on the theme: a female bison sniffs are small, however, that the old male, driven by her moves. Scatology is not absent. The beautiful birds of fawns Mas d'Azil and Bedeilhac have exact subject: a young goat turns to contemplate his anus, from which springs a coil of excrement, that two birds are pecking. Eroticism is not left out: an engraved plaque from the cave Enlène represents a human couple making love in a ticklish position. Not content to have (maybe) invented the sculpture, the oil painting and the shoe, these old Ariégeois would they also discovered pornography?
Our understanding of prehistoric art is evolving more quickly than the discovery of novel sites is accelerating and our investigation techniques are refined. Of a total of 150 decorated caves in France you know, 22 they have not been revealed in the last ten years, including caves and Chauvet Cosquer that disrupted the building of theories premature? So expect to ariégeois cavers explore and enrich our karst parietal heritage of our department?
0 comments:
Post a Comment