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PREHISTORIC ART
in IRELAND
For details of arts & culture
during the Pleistocene and
Holocene epochs, see:
Irish Stone
Age Art
Mainly megalithic architecture
Irish Bronze
Age Art
Celtic metalwork, tomb-building
Irish Iron Age
Art
La Tene Celtic culture, sculpture
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Archeology and Human Habitation
The gorges in Ardèche contain numerous
caverns, many of which possess archeological and geological significance.
But Chauvet Cave is unusually big and was inhabited by prehistoric humans
during two distinct periods: the Aurignacian (32,000-24,000 BCE) and the
Gravettian (26,000-20,000 BCE). Most of the artwork dates to the earlier,
Aurignacian, period (30,000 to 32,000 years ago), although humans returned
briefly during Gravettian times, since when the cave has remained undisturbed.
The Cave Art at Chauvet
Chauvet contains a total of over 300 paintings
and engravings. These were grouped in specific ways. In one of the two
major parts of the cave, most images are red, with a few black or engraved
ones. In the second part, the animals are mostly black, with far fewer
engravings and red figures. Also, there are groupings of specific animals:
for example, the Horse Panel and the Panel of Lions and Rhinoceroses.
Animal Figures
The most noticeable animals in the cave
(accounting for some 60 percent of all such images) are lions, mammoths,
and rhinoceroses, all of whom were rarely hunted, thus unlike most other
caves, Chauvet is not a pictorial showcase of daily Stone Age life. Other
rare animals include a panther, a spotted leopard and an owl. In addition,
the cave features the usual horses, bison, aurochs, ibex, reindeer, red
deer and musk-oxen.
Abstract Art
As well as figurative pictures, Chauvet
contains an abundance of abstract geometric symbols (though less than
other sites in the Cantabrian region of Spain), a number of indecipherable
marks, as well as a quantity of red-ochre hand stencils and handprints.
Painting Skills and Techniques
According to leading paleoanthropologists,
the workmanship of Chauvet's prehistoric artists is excellent. Shading,
perspective and relief are skillfully used, the body proportions of the
animals are natural, and species are clearly defined with numerous details
of anatomy shown: for example, mammoths are drawn with an arched belly,
bison are presented in frontal perspective with a bushy mane, horses too
have thick manes, while the rhinoceroses have very distinctive ears.
The Purpose of Chauvet
Paleolithic experts still don't understand
the purpose or functionality of prehistoric parietal art. One of the more
common theories - based on the subject matter of the murals, and the fact
that Chauvet, like many caves, was not used as a place of regular habitation
- is that it functioned as a centre of ritual or magical ceremony. Chauvet
doesn't contain the earliest art of
prehistory, but it does house the earliest cave murals and exemplifies
the rising cultural level of man during the last period of the Stone
Age.
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