Cap Blanc Frieze

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CONTENTS

• Cap Blanc Rock Shelter
• Location and Discovery
• Locality Rich in Stone Age Art
• Excavation
• Cap Blanc Frieze
• References

Cap Blanc Rock Shelter

Cap Blanc rock shelter is a Cro-Magnon site in the French Dordogne, best-known for its frieze of prehistoric sculpture, dating to the last phase of Upper Paleolithic art, about 13,000 BC.

Sadly, the frieze - consisting of animals carved in bas-relief and haut-relief - was in a damaged condition when it was originally found.

Even so, it presents a dramatic spectacle of Magdalenian life, reflecting a world dominated by herds of reindeer, wild horses, and bison.

Cap Blanc's celebrity also stems from the discovery in 1911, of a well-preserved human skeleton lying at the bottom of the archaeological deposit, about half a metre below the hooves of the central horse in the frieze.

Known as the "Magdalenian Girl", a replica of her can be seen at the on-site museographical interpretive centre.

The Cap Blanc cave was registered as a French historical monument in 1910, and designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979, as one of the key paleolithic caves of the Vézère Valley.

It was purchased by the French government in April 2006.

Other Relief Sculpture

Other masterpieces of Stone Age rock art include:

• Roc de Sers frieze (17,200 BC)
• Abri Reverdit (14,000 BC)
• Roc-aux-Sorciers frieze (13,000 BC)
• Tuc d'Audoubert bison reliefs (13,000 BC)
• Abri du Poisson salmon carving (23,000 BC)

In addition, Cap Blanc is only a few hundred metres from the home of the Venus of Laussel (23,000 BC), the only known relief carving of a venus figurine.

Location and Discovery

Cap Blanc rock shelter (L'Abri du Cap Blanc) is set in a steep wooded escarpment, some 9 kilometres east of Les Eyzies, in the valley of the Grand Beune, a tributary of the Vézère.

The shelter was first discovered in 1908 by Raymond Peyrille who was working on the site entrance for Dr Jean-Gaston Lalanne of Bordeaux.

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Locality Rich in Stone Age Art

The area around Les Eyzies, is rich in paleolithic art of all types. Decorated sites near Cap Blanc, in the valley of the Beune and Petit Beune, southeast of the Vézère, include:

• Roc de Cazelle
  Gravettian shelter, home of the Venus de Sireuil, which dates to 23,000 BC.
• Grotte de Commarque
  Magdalenian cave with two decorated galleries, dating to 11,000 BC.
• Grotte de Bernifal
  Magdalenian cave decorated with over 100 engravings and paintings of horses, bison, mammoths and ibex as well as abstract signs such as tectiform (roof shaped) symbols.
• Grotte de la Grèze
  Magdalenian cave in the Grande Beune valley, best-known for the engraved drawing of a bison.
• Font de Gaume
  Magdalenian cave with the best polychrome painting after Lascaux.
• Les Combarelles Cave
  Magdalenian cave containing hundreds of engravings.

Excavation

The first excavations were crudely done with pickaxes and shovels, and the frieze on the rear wall was not noticed until significant damage had been done to the sculpted figures.

In 1911, a more professional examination was launched by the eminent archaeologist Denis Peyrony (1869-1954), chiefly to preserve the structure of the shelter and protect its cave art from further deterioration.

During his excavation, Peyrony unearthed an almost complete human skeleton of a Cro-Magnon female buried near the frieze. In 1926, the skeleton was purchased by the Field Museum in Chicago.

In 1992, a more focused dig was conducted by Alain Roussot and Jacques Tixier. This involved a search of the debris accumulated during the original excavations, in order to recover small fragments of the frieze which may have gone unnoticed.

In the process, a quantity of artifacts and other archaeological material was recovered, dating to the preceding period of Solutrean art, which suggests the frieze may be older than supposed.

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Cap Blanc Frieze

• Cap Blanc's frieze of relief sculpture was carved directly onto the shelter's rear wall. Despite the erosion of some of its figures, it is still considered to be a touchstone of Magdalenian art created during the final phase of the European Ice Age.
• The frieze is 13 metres in length (in its original form) and occupies almost threequarters of the entire back wall. It contains 14 horses (or parts thereof), 13 bison and 2 reindeer, plus about a dozen unidentified animals. A few of the figures are extremely large, with the central horse measuring about 2 metres in length.
• Like many Paleolithic friezes, the Cap Blanc carvings were originally embellished with ochre pigment (red), traces of which were found by Peyrony in 1911.
• The first two animals on the left (west) of the frieze are large horses, facing right.
• To the right, is the largest and most imposing figure of the frieze: a magnificent horse over 2 metres long, which faces left. Two small reindeer heads are visible above it.
• To the right, we see a barely discernible human hand, two more equines - noticeably damaged and facing right - and two bison facing left.
• In both pairs of horses, the head of the first obscures the rump of the second.
• Scientists are unsure over what period the frieze was sculpted, but there seems to have been some revision of the composition, with alterations to some of the carved figures, and even some changes of animal.
• Note: two figures from the frieze, a bison and a horse's head are now housed in Bordeaux's Musee d'Aquitaine, and have been replaced in the on-site frieze by plaster casts.

See the World's Oldest Art (from 540,000 BC).

Comparison with La Chaire-à-Calvin

Roughly 120 kilometres to the northwest, is the Abri de la Chaire-à-Calvin (Calvin's Pulpit), a rock shelter near the village of Mouthiers-sur-Boëme in the Charente.

The shelter has similar parietal art to Cap Blanc, namely a sculpted frieze which also dates to the Magdalenian period, about 13,000 BC.

It features a headless ox, a mating scene of horses, and a pregnant horse. Traces of red and orange ochre paint were found on the frieze when it was first discovered.

Arguably, the more complex iconography at Chaire-à-Calvin suggests Cap Blanc is older.

Artifacts and Tools

Most of the artifacts recovered from the Cap Blanc shelter, including both Solutrean and Magdalenian tools used in the sculpting of the frieze, are now on display at the Musee d'Aquitaine, in Bordeaux. A few exhibits are kept in the Musée National de Préhistoire aux Eyzies and the Musée de l'Homme in Paris.

To see how the reliefs at Cap Blanc fit into the chronology of Stone Age carvings, see: Prehistoric Art Timeline.

References

(1) "Journey Through the Ice Age." Paul G. Bahn, Jean Vertut, (1997). University of California Press. p. 112. ISBN: 9780520229006.
(2) "Stories of Bisons and Horses: A look at the evolution of the parietal frieze of Cap-Blanc (Marquay, Dordogne) through the analysis of the alcove panel." (Histoires de Bisons et de Chevaux: Regard sur l'évolution de la frise pariétale de Cap-Blanc) Bourdier C., Abgrall A., Huard O., Le Brun E., Peyroux M., Pinçon G. , 2010: Paleo No 21 2009 - 2010 pp. 17-38.
(3) "Cap Blanc (Marquay, Dordogne), The contribution of the 1992 excavation to the knowledge of human activities and the cultural attribution of the sculptures." (L'apport de la fouille de 1992 à la connaissance des activités humaines et à l'attribution culturelle des sculptures) Castel, J., Chadelle J., 1992:, Paléo. No 12, 2000. pp. 61-75.