Re: Cave sculptures go on display for first time in 15,000 years

On Mar 21, 9:15 am, Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Cave sculptures go on display for first time in 15,000 years

By John Lichfield in Paris
Friday, 21 March 2008

Prehistoric cave sculptures never seen by the public will be revealed
today thanks to the most advanced, computerised techniques of laser-
copying and visual display.

A museum to open near Poitiers, in western France, will span one-a-
half millenniums of human image-making, from stone chisels to
computers. The star of the show, at Angles-sur-L'Anglin, in the
départementof Vienne, will be a 60ft-long frieze of bison, horses,
cats, goats and erotic female figures, carved into the limestone of
western France 15,000 years ago.

The caverns containing the frieze were discovered by French and
British archaeologists in 1950 but have never been opened to the
public. The Roc-aux-Sorciers (witches' rock) caves are the only site
of their kind in Europe: a two-dimensional, carved equivalent of the
celebrated cave paintings at Lascaux in Dordogne, 120 miles farther
south, which were created 1,000 years earlier.

From today, the public will be able to visit a EURO 2.7m (£2.1m) visitor
centre where the original sculptures, and the contours of the cavern
sides, have been precisely recreated to full size by computerised,
laser-copying techniques. At intervals a half-hour son-et-lumière
display will be projected on to the frieze, suggesting how the
carvings may have been created and how they were discovered 58 years
ago.

Oscar Fuentes, the director of the centre, says the intention is to go
beyond the full-size replica - Lascaux II - built in 1983 to preserve
the Lascaux caves from exposure to human breath and body heat.

"We want to make the frieze into a place of scientific discovery in
which the visitors are doing their own discovering," he said. "We want
them to reach their own conclusions and understand that their
interpretation is as good as that of anyone else."

The Roc-aux-Sorciers caves were first explored by a French
archaeologist, Suzanne de Saint-Mathurin, and her British assistant,
Dorothy Garrod. They found one cave in which the roof had collapsed,
dislodging the sculpted animals and human figures from the cavern
sides. Fifty of these images are now on display at the national
archaeology museum at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, west of Paris.

In another cave, thought to have been occupied in the Magdalene
period, 15,000 years ago, the archaeologists found a 20-metre frieze
of beautifully finished, bas-relief, wall sculptures. They include
human silhouettes, horses, bison, wild cats, goats and three explicit
images of the lower part of the female anatomy. The cave was never
opened to the public, to preserve the works of pre-historic art and to
allow exploration to continue.

The Lascaux caves, and other similar sites, are thought to have been
sanctuaries, visited only for religious purposes. The Roc-aux-Sorciers
cave seems to have been a dwelling place.

Geneviève Pinçon, the chief archaeologist at the site, points out that
the south-facing cavern was exposed to the sun for large parts of the
day in pre-historic times. France had a Siberian climate 15,000 years
ago. The cavern would have had a pleasant micro-climate, ideal to live
in.

"But what do all these carvings mean?" she asks. "What is the meaning
of the human profile which seems to smile down on us? What is the
symbolic significance of the three women, with realistically carved
sexual parts, beside a sitting bison? Do they represent life and
death?"

For more information seewww.roc-aux-sorciers.com

In answer to the ending questions of the article, some things
we will never know.

Thanks to Jack Linthicum for the article.
.

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