Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind.

Bahn, Paul ; Pettitt, Paul

JILL COOK. Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind. 288 pages, numerous illustrations. 2013. London: British Museum Press; 978-0-7141-2333-2 hardback 25 [pounds sterling].

The British Museum recently hosted a major exhibition of European Upper Palaeolithic art, including over 100 items from various countries. The sub-text was the 'modern mind', the idea that the appearance of art in the European Upper Palaeolithic marks the emergence of cognitively modern humans. As so often, the curators chose to intersperse twentieth-century art among the prehistoric items, with the aim of making the latter more 'accessible' to the visiting public. This is but one feature, however, of what was widely regarded as a most successful exhibition. Here Paul Bahn and Paul Pettitt review both the exhibition itself and the lavishly illustrated catalogue that accompanied it.

In recent decades major exhibitions of Palaeolithic portable art have been held in France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Czech Republic and (at the instigation of the late Alexander Marshack) the USA. It is fitting that the British Museum should now host its own. Although art is rare in the British Upper Palaeolithic record, its first specimen (a horse head engraved on bone from Creswell Crags) was found as long ago as 1876--only a decade or so after the famous discoveries in the Dordogne. The British Museum houses an important collection of objects deriving from these early French excavations, which were the fruit of an Anglo-French collaboration between Henry Christy and Edouard Lartet. One cannot but congratulate the curator and trustees for the dazzling array that gathers together many of Palaeolithic portable art's iconic items from France, Russia and the Czech Republic. It includes some of the earliest discoveries--the Chaffaud deer, the La Madeleine mammoth, the Laugerie 'Venus impudique'--and some of the most recent, such as the stunning Zaraisk bison that alone is worth the entrance price. Objects are arranged chronologically, spanning the period from the Early Upper Palaeolithic (around 40 000 years ago) to the Final Upper Palaeolithic (around 12 000 years ago), and grouped thematically, from three-dimensional animal sculptures (Early Upper Palaeolithic) and female sculptures (Mid Upper Palaeolithic Venuses') to the post-Last Glacial Maximum 'renaissance' of naturalistic animal depictions (Late Upper Palaeolithic) and abstraction of the female human form (Final Upper Palaeolithic). In the limited exhibition space available, the objects are astutely presented and generally well lit, and in the catalogue they are exhaustively described, with an emphasis on where and when they were found, and on how their parent materials were worked.

Despite a world-class collection, the Palaeolithic is poorly represented in the British Museum's permanent galleries. It is therefore delightful that many objects from the Museum's own collections are included. The famous mammoth carving (Figure 1) and the 'swimming' reindeer (Figure 2) from a rock shelter at Montastruc, near Bruniquel, France, have previously been displayed as the single foci of temporary exhibitions, but this is the first display of a large selection of Continental objects together. The lavish exhibition catalogue provides colour photographs for the first time of some of the Museum's other objects, of which in the past only monochrome images were available (Sieveking 1987). Is it too much to hope that the Museum, having demonstrated to the public the antiquity, interest and importance of these objects, might endeavour to keep some of them on permanent display? Press reviews of the exhibition have been understandably ecstatic, although from their tone one might be forgiven for thinking that the press at large had never heard of Palaeolithic art beyond Lascaux. Where reviewers were more familiar with the material (e.g. Callaway 2013; MacClancy 2013) some reservations and disappointments were expressed--particularly that any aesthetic activity before 40 000 years ago was ignored (most notably in Africa or by Neanderthals), as if art suddenly began with our species in Europe 40 000 years ago. Many would now see this as an outdated view.

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The initial impression of the exhibition is deflating--an old copy of the sculpted clay bison from Le Tuc d'Audoubert borrowed from a museum in Toulouse and inaccurate in both colour and texture--bearing a label stating that they were discovered by 'Louis Begouen ... with his sons' (in fact they were found by Max and Louis Begouen, two of the three sons of Count Henri Begouen). Fortunately this is not representative of either exhibition or catalogue. A number of assumptions underlie the exhibition that may or may not be justified, however. Its subtitle--arrival of the modern mind--appears to imply that there were no 'modern minds' in Middle or Initial Upper Palaeolithic Europe, either Neanderthal or Homo sapiens, before art appears in the archaeological record. The curator still believes in apparently early dates for the art of Chauvet Cave (catalogue p. 41) despite the overwhelming accumulation of evidence that it is much younger (e.g. Combier & Jouve 2012); and she supports the claim made recently that the archaeological deposits at Arcy-sur-Cure were significantly disturbed (p. 110) despite strong arguments to the contrary (Zilhao et al. 2011; Hublin et al. 2012). The ivory 'lion-man from Hohlenstein-Stadel--sadly only present in cast form as the original is undergoing conservation--is stated to be 40 000 years old but the site was excavated long ago and with lesser standards than those of today, so that the date and stratigraphic position of this highly fragmented figure remain uncertain, which could also be said for the exquisite ivory sculptures from Vogelherd, here ascribed to 36-32 000 years ago.

There are a few minor factual inaccuracies. The Chaffaud deer, for example, were not found around 1840' as is wrongly claimed in the catalogue (p. 188) but in 1852 (de Saint Mathurin 1971). More could have been made of the difficulties of interpretation. The label for the Tuc d'Audoubert bison claims that heel prints on the cave's floor near the statues were 'made by people who once danced in their presence' (see also catalogue p. 25), and that the two bison are a 'male about to mount a female'. These interpretations have long been superseded; the two figures, even if correctly sexed, are quite separate, and not about to copulate, while the heel prints, made by children, are no longer linked with imaginary dances (Begouen et al. 2009: 291). A fragment of a spearthrower from Arudy, discussed briefly in the catalogue (p. 220), is a broken example of the famous 'bird-and-turd' theme, but this was not mentioned in the exhibition and the catalogue could have included a picture of one of the intact versions to explain the piece. Objects like the ivory heads from Dolni Vestonice (Figure 3) and Brassempouy are identified as female (catalogue pp. 70-72) without explanation why, yet conversely it is stated that 'the head from the cave of Bedeilhac is not demonstrably female' (p. 231). One is not told the grounds on which these conclusions have been drawn and we are curious to learn what makes some unsexed heads definitely female and others not. Small ivory pendants from Dolni Vestonice are described in the exhibition as 'breast beads' and 'depicting pairs of breasts' (catalogue p. 68) despite the fact that many specialists see these as depictions of male genitalia; Kehoe (1991) showed that the way they would hang when strung made this very clear. Frequent claims are made that the female figures are pregnant, or have had one or more children, although this is subjective speculation. Rice (1981) and Russell (1993) demonstrated most convincingly that one cannot distinguish mothers from non-mothers by shape, and that, if anything, these highly variable figurines--if they do represent real humans at all--celebrate a number of aspects of femaleness. The numerous engraved plaquettes of Gonnersdorf and La Marche are mentioned briefly in the catalogue, with no illustrations, but the exhibition would have greatly benefited by featuring just one of the detailed faces among the many human depictions from La Marche.

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The exhibition is thematically restricted to portable art and geographically in the main to France, Germany and the Czech Republic, although some omissions are surprising. Cave art is hardly mentioned--despite the background soundtrack of a dripping stalactite--although one's exit from the exhibition is spoiled by an unexplained projection of images from a handful of French caves onto a distorted surface, associated with strange motifs and a barrage of bizarre noises, which was described by Callaway (2013: 173) as a "context-less montage of images ... more like a modern-art installation". Altamira gets a brief mention but otherwise Spain is totally unrepresented in the exhibition, despite the fact that Iberia probably contains more than half of all known Palaeolithic art sites and a wealth of portable art including more than 5000 decorated plaquettes from Parpallo Cave alone. Italy is represented by a single figurine from Grimaldi, and no mention is made of the British cave art of Creswell Crags or its second example of portable art, the Pin Hole 'human' (see Bahn & Pettitt 2009; the famous horse engraving from Creswell is featured), despite the fact that the Creswell Museum and Education Centre is a sub-department of the British Museum. Another piece of portable art curated in Britain could have been included; this is the horse engraving from Neschers which--unlike the Chaffaud deer--was found in 1840. It is currently curated in London's Natural History Museum; it was published years ago by one of us (Bahn & Vertut 1997: 5), and an article was devoted to it in a recent issue of Antiquity, just as the exhibition opened (Bello et al. 2013). It is not only one of the very first pieces of Palaeolithic figurative art to have been discovered, but it lives a short distance away from the British Museum and its omission is a shame.

We groaned at the inclusion of works by 'modern' artists like Moore, Matisse and the ubiquitous (and by Palaeolithic standards, overrated) Picasso, the purpose of which is to show how the abstraction of the human form has preoccupied artists for millennia. In both exhibition and catalogue such juxtapositions of the Palaeolithic and modern worlds are erected to show that 'ideas of creativity and expression have remained remarkably similar across Thousands of years'. This may be so to the superficial eye, but one should not look to modern artists like Picasso or Grayson Perry to understand Palaeolithic art. Comparisons like these are perhaps inevitable when objects deriving from remote worlds are presented only as art--as the Museum's press release states--and not as archaeological finds that have context and require informed interpretation. A more appropriate inclusion would be a little more information on the lifestyles of these remote ancestors, rather than artistic parallels which are somewhat superficial and uninstructive, and which were done far better a long time ago (Giedion 1962).

Clearly an immense effort has gone into the organisation of this remarkable exhibition, and the British Museum should be proud of its achievement. The catalogue is a useful account of the history, technology and aesthetics of many fine objects and a good general introduction to Palaeolithic portable art. Perhaps as specialists we are unfairly sniffy but both could have presented a more balanced and problematised account of the art of these remote times, rather than a somewhat simplistic concern with making it relevant to the concerns of modern art consumers. Viewers will appreciate the exhibition's lesson that while we will presumably never understand the specific meaning or function of Palaeolithic art, the 'modern' cognition that unites us with its producers allows us to appreciate the striking aesthetic impact of these remarkable creations. True, but one feels that more of a message could be made about its creators and their alien world.

References

BAHN, P. & P. PETTITT. 2009. Britain's oldest art: the Ice Age cave art of Creswell Crags. London: English Heritage.

BAHN, P. & J. VERTUT. 1997. Journey through the Ice Age. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

BEGOUEN, R., C. FRITZ, G. TOSELLO, J. CLOTTES, A. PASTOORS & F. FAIST. 2009. Le sanctuaire secret des bisons. Il y a 14 000 ans dans la caverne du Tuc d'Audoubert. Paris: Somogy editions d'art.

BELLO, S.M., G. DELBARRE, S.A. PARFITT, A.P. CURRANT, R. KRUSZYNSKI & C.B. STRINGER. 2013. Lost and found: the remarkable curatorial history of one of the earliest discoveries of Palaeolithic portable aft. Antiquity 87: 237-44.

CALLAWAY, E. 2013. A distant mirror. Nature 495: 173.

COMBIER, J. & G. JOUVE. 2012. Chauvet Cave's art is not Aurignacian: a new examination of the archaeological evidence and dating procedures. Quartar 59: 131-52.

GIEDION, S. 1962. The eternal present. The beginnings of art. New York: Pantheon.

HUBLIN, J.-J., S. TALAMO, M. JULIEN, F. DAVID, N. CONNET, P. BODU, B. VANDERMEERSGH & M.P. RICHARDS. 2012. Radiocarbon dates from the Grotte du Renne and Saint-Cesaire support a Neanderthal origin for the Chatelperronian. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 109: 18743-48.

KEHOE, A.B. 1991. No possible, probable shadow of doubt. Antiquity 65: 129-31.

MACCLANCY, J. 2013. Ancestral voices prophesying not war but art. Times Higher Education Supplement, 7 February 2013, pp. 44-45.

RICE, P. 1981. Prehistoric venuses: symbols of motherhood or womanhood? Journal of Anthropological Research 37: 402-14.

RUSSELL, P.M. 1993. Forme er imagination: l'image feminine dans l'Europe paleolithique. Paleo 5: 375-88.

DE SAINT MATHURIN, S. 1971. Les biches du Chaffaud (Vienne). Vicissitudes d'une decouverte. Antiquites Nationales 3: 22-28.

SIEVEKING, A. 1987. A catalogue of Palaeolithic art in the British Museum. London: British Museum Press.

ZILHAO, J., F. D'ERRICO, M. JULIEN & F. DAVID. 2011. Chronology of the site of Grotte du Renne, Arcy-sur-Cure, France: implications for radiocarbon dating. Before Farming 2011 (3): 1-14.

Paul Bahn (1) & Paul Pettitt (2)

(1) 428 Anlaby Road, Hull HU3 6QP, UK

(2) Department of Archaeology, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK