Their symbols appeared on both portable and immovable objects. Most sites had one or the other. Altamira, 20 miles west of Santander, was one of the few in Cantabria with both. It was also one of the few caves with both art and evidence of habitation.
Margaret Conkey noted 27 places in northern Iberia engraved bone or antler. Many adorned tools or points. Altamira was one of five where more than 10 artifacts have been found. Those five shared six design elements organized by one of three structural principles. Only two had unique motifs: Altamira and Cueto de la Mina. She believed that marked them as centers of innovation where groups may have gathered.
The earliest sign on a wall at Altamira was some black marks that have been dated to 16,480 years ago. A turtle-like profile or tectiform goes back 15,400 years. Both were found in a terminal gallery.
Another form of portable art was carved or painted limestone tablets or non-utilitarian bones. At Altamira and El Castillo left engraved heads of female red deer on both shoulder blades and walls. The shoulder blade at Altamira has been dated to 14,480 years ago. Paul Bahn and Jean Vetut believed the two incised bones were either the work of "the same person, or two who knew each other’s work." One had either seen the other’s work, or been trained by someone trained in much the way workshops or studios functioned in later European art.
The progression from artisans working independently within a shared tradition to artists working within a school is more obvious in the images left on cave walls. Early in the period, images were executed near the mouths of caves, sometimes just beyond the farthest point reached by daylight. At Altamira, the opening was the only area with hearths.
Jean Clotttes noted there came a time in the mid-Magdalenian period when people explored caves. They may have been aided by improvements in their stone lamps that burned animal fat. Art began appearing in large internal caverns and in remote passages assessable by few.
At Altamira an 60 by 30 foot ceiling was painted in stages on an area The height of the chamber varied from 3.8 to 8.7 feet. One large bison was added 14,820 years ago, another twenty years later. A small bison was painted 13,570 years ago. They first were engraved on the wall, then outlined in back. The bodies were colored in shades of red and brown. The same techniques appeared earlier at Lascaux, in the French Dordogne, and later at El Castillo.
Clottes noted, when archaeologists tried to replicate their techniques, they discovered it was difficult to find walls that met their requirements. They needed to be large and smooth and relatively unmarred by calcite dripping from the ceiling.
Artists incorporated irregularities in the walls into their art. Nodules and depressions were exploited to give dimension to animals. At Altamira, Bahn and Vetut noted, all the bison on the ceiling were on convex surfaces, while the horses and deer were on concave. Rough textures also were incorporated into the bison.
The sensitivity to the contours of walls may have been more than an aesthetic sensibility. It may have been a consequence of special attitudes towards rock that had manifested themselves in the Aurignacian with hand stencils. Such stencils continued to be made at Altamira, along with hand prints.
Most of the pigments were mineral based. Ochre was still the primary colorant, used for reds and browns. Chemists have determined artists experimented to discover the best source for black. At Altamira they used two types of manganese, pine or juniper charcoal, and charred remains of burned bone. Anthropologists found some white paste in a shell made from mica and illite.
Some pigments were used in sticks and some were powdered. The latter may have been turned into paste. André Leroi-Gourhan said, experiments showed water was the most effective binder, either in the pastes or in the dampness of the walls. Cave water would have been rich in calcium. At Altamira, powdered fossil amber was used.
Notes: For more on population numbers see post for 22 November 2015. All dates are given by scientists with ranges; I’ve simplified them here.
Bahn, Paul G. and Jean Vertut. Journey Through the Ice Age, 1997. He gives the following dates for the bison at El Castillo: 13,570, 13,060, and 12,910 years ago.
Clottes, Jen and David Lewis Williams. The Shamans of Prehistory, translated by Sophie Hawkes, 1998.
Conkey, Margaret W. "The Identification of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherer Aggregation Sites: The Case of Altamira [and Comments and Reply]," Current Anthropology 21:609-630:1980. The other Cantabrian sites she used were El Cierro, El Juyo, and La Paloma.
Leroi-Gourhan, André. The Dawn of European Art, translated by Sara Champion, 1982; quotation in the first paragraph.
Graphics: Rameessos, "Reproduction of a Bison of the Cave of Altamira," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, 25 December 2008.
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