Geographic and Temporal Range of Cave Art

Geographic and Temporal Range of Cave Art

The people of the upper paleolithic unexpended foot many

clues to how they lived and what they did. But unlike anything

before them, they have left clues to why they did what they did.

The clues argon in the invention they left behind in caves.

Dates, Styles, and Geographic Range

Upper Paleolithic art is comprised of at least three

periods, the Aurignacian, the Solutrean, and the Magdalenian.

The dates for these are now estimated at: Aurignacian 35,000-

20,000 B.C. The Solutrean 20,000- 15,000 B.C. The Magdalenian

14,000- 8,000 B.C. The ranges of these dates change as new

material is uncovered. For modelling one book, Primitive Art, puts

these dates around 20,000 years earlier (Fagan, 1995:136),

(Christensen, 1955:314).

These periods are again separated into smaller periods.

The Aurignacian I and II, the Gravettian around 23,000 B.C. also

known as the Perigordian. The Proto-Magdalenian, the

Aurignacian, the Proto-Solutrean, the Solutrean, the Proto-

Magdalenian I and II, and the Middle and Upper Magdalenian

(Leroi-Gourhan, 1967:493).

See chart 1 (Leroi-Gourhan, 1967:493)

The art of the Aurignacian does not exist in caves, it is

found on small fig out fragments and stone slabs. They show early

attempts at representaion using simple lines and act upon (Leroi-

Gourhan, 1967:206). The representations shown are mostly

animals heads, forequarters, and dorsal lines.



The style

changed from a hard continuous profile showing only the

forequarters to a more free stand up pose showing most of the

body (Huyghe, 1957: 31). No action or foreshortening is shown in

the early art of the Aurignacian. This may indicate a want of

understanding of perspective (Huyghe, 1957:21).

The Gravettian is a period where eastern and western

Europe underwent a broad cultural exchange (Leroi-Gourhan,

1967:208). The Magdalenian period is where we find almost all

(80% jibe to Fagan, 1995:137)...

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