1. (A History of Cave Painting)
Cave Art
(A History of Cave Painting)

2. What are we talking about?
Parietal Art
Mobiliary Art
Any prehistoric art found on cave walls or large rock slabs
Engraved and/or painted
Portable prehistoric art
Jewelry, statuettes, carved spear throwers
Bones, antlers, stones, seashells, eggshells
Hard to date

3. How old is this stuff? Is it art?
Bhimbetka petroglyphs
quartzite caves in India
context dating
>290,000 BCE
La Ferrassie Cave cupules
Neanderthal burial slab
60,000 BCE
El Castillo red ochre disk
Uranium / Thorium dating
>39,000 BCE
Sulawesi hand stencil
>37,900 BCE
Gibraltar’s tiny engravings
Neanderthal site
AMS dating
37,000 BCE

4. How old is this stuff? And where’s Waldo?
El Castillo hand stencils
Uranium / Thorium dating
>35,300 BCE
Fumane Cave paintings
figurative
carbon and stratigraphic dating
35,000 BCE
Abri Castanet (France) vulva petroglyphs
adjacent debris dating
Altamira Cave claviforms
>34,000 BCE
Sulawesi babirusa
>33,400 BCE

5. Chauvet Cave
30,000 BCE
over 300 paintings and engravings grouped in murals and panels
black or red monochrome
rhinos, mammoths, lions, horses, bison, reindeer, muskoxen, large cats, cave bears, an owl
geometric symbols, hand stencils, and handprints
cave was not used for regular habitation

6. Chauvet Cave

7. Lascaux Cave 17,000 BCE 240 meters in length
900 images of animals and over 1,000 geometric symbols
many polychromatic images
rare painting of a human
bulls, horses, bison, aurochs, rhino, birds, stags, lions
spray painting technique used throughout the cave
“sockets” for scaffolding that provided access to the ceiling

8. Lascaux Cave

10. Pigments
Minerals for pigments were mined from as far as 25 miles away.
Minerals were ground, then mixed with water or urine for fluidity and with vegetable oil, animal fat, blood, or bone marrow as a binding agent.
Less permanent pigments (from plant and animal sources) were used for cave and body painting.
Color
Source
White
calcite; kaolin
Yellow ochre
limonite; goethite
Red ochre
hematite
Umber
mixture of iron and manganese
Black
charred bones, burnt wood, manganese

11. Application
Spray paint. Artists spat paints either directly onto the surface or through hollow reeds or bones.
Crayons Pigments were formed into a thick paste and then molded into crayon shape.
Brushes, etc Artists applied paint using moss, wads of animal fur, and brushes made from horsehair.
Engravers Artists incised outlines and details using chiseled flints, often after the paint was applied to the cave wall.

12. Why? To kill time. To tell stories. To draw maps. To convey ownership.
For ritual and ceremonial use.

13. The End. Need more?