Stepping-Stones by Christine Desdemaines-Hugon

Author:Christine Desdemaines-Hugon [Desdemaines-Hugon, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-300-15266-1
Publisher: Yale University Press (Ignition)
Published: 2010-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

The train moves back to the junction, taking the left fork this time, the one leading to the Great Ceiling. Just at the fork, on the ceiling above the protruding, pillarlike junction wall, is a large rhinoceros, magnificently engraved but inconveniently situated and therefore not shown to the public. But it is important to know that it’s there, in such an obviously strategic position in the cave. Another is next to it, crude and clumsy in comparison. Were these depicted by different artists or were they deliberately differentiated, like the mammoth “couples” seen so far?

As soon as we make our way along the main gallery again, we see that the compacted clay floor is riddled with large circular pits—up to 2 meters wide and 1 meter deep—that were dug out by a much older inhabitant of the cave: the ancient cave bear. These huge bears came in to hibernate, leaving their lairs by the hundreds — and leaving millions of claw marks throughout the cave—until their extinction about 23,000 years ago. For the Paleolithic artists, these pits made their venture even more difficult, as they do for those of us exploring areas off the beaten track today.

The ceiling is lower, the space becomes more confined, and very soon the artists would have had to crawl. A trench has been dug for the train to pass and to ensure the preservation of the drawings and engravings, now out of reach, which is why visitors are allowed to come this far. I’m particularly fond of a group of mammoths on the right, which I’ve secretly named the “family of five”: two adults on the right face two on the left, and in between is a young mammoth, perhaps a baby. In this group the left-hand figures are the most detailed, especially the one closest to the central “baby.” This adult is engraved with an elegant, flowing line for the back, tusks, and trunk, the tip of which is curled; the rest of the body is shaped by abundant hair lines. The wall surface is soft here. A continuous, meandering four-finger digital sign crosses this mammoth diagonally from the top of the head down to beyond the belly and is prolonged by another one flowing around the top of the head down to the curve of the tusks; it may be the same sign continued. The mammoth’s back line is crossed by more of these finger markings. The animal and the signs were probably accomplished simultaneously, as the latter are both on top of and underneath the animal. Furthermore, the mammoths on the left have several deeply gouged markings grouped in the centers of their bodies, just like those on the “patriarch.”

The mammoths on the right are badly damaged, but one can still see that they were initially less detailed. They even look more clumsily done than the others. I have no doubt, though, that they were engraved by the same artist, as the group forms a balanced composition of five figures. There

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