Reconstructing Prehistoric Cave Paintings

Gregory Curtis in chapter 9 of his book The Cave Painters he talks about specifically some of the caves that a French archaeologist Jean Clottes worked on during the 90’s. One part of the chapter describes one of the projects that Clottes worked on was a cave found by three spelunkers, and was later named Chauvet. This cave held many prehistoric cave paintings that Clottes was in charge of studying. One of the most important points of non-invasive research on the site is to recreate the the paintings, or trace them. Curtis states that “the goal is not only to reproduce  the art but to analyze the component parts of the piece, to study the techniques of the artist, and to learn, when possible, how the painting or engraving was made stroke by stroke” (Curtis, 204).

 These techniques mentioned by Curtis are very important not only for paintings but also in archaeology in general. Many archaeologists will seek illustrators to either sketch or trace not only paintings but also artifacts like bifaces. For further study for artifacts like lithics, and cave paintings, photographs don’t capture everything. Recreating the object on paper not only gives the artist a better insight into how the artifact or painting was made, but also gives the viewer a much clearer image to look at and study from. Though these techniques may provide tons of data, excavation can provide more data and insight of the material culture in the area. Excavation can be invasive and has the potential to destroy any further attempts of study in a specific area because stratigrapghy, cultural artifacts, eco-facts have already been removed or out of context. Another problem that has plagued the use of reconstructing prehistoric paintings and artifacts is that it’s at the mercy of the artist’s interpretation and rendering, meaning that the artist performing the reconstruct it may see something differently than what it really was or maybe other artist or researchers object to the artist’s interpretation. So although it has its place in modern archaeology it’s not a perfect means of collecting data but these techniques were described by Curtis at the caves of Chauvet, and in many other projects not only in cave paintings but in archaeology in general.

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Curtis, Gregory. The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists. New York: Knopf, 2006. Print.