Anthropogenic engravings were made within more than 2000 small natural cavities found in the sandstone boulder fields of the central Paris Basin, in an area of 1800 km² to west of the town of Fontainebleau. These engravings consist mainly of clustered rectilinear grooves arranged in vertical parallel series or organized in grids. These dominant classes of motifs form a unique type of rock art attributed to Early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (∼9500–6300 BCE in northern France) on a growing body of evidences. Here, we approach the social context in which these abundant symbolic manifestations were produced by developing an experimental study guided by two main questions: what efforts (i.e difficulty of work and working time) and know-how were required for these engravings? On what occasions were they made?

After quantifying the highly variable hardness of the Fontainebleau sandstone with a Schmidt Hammer, we selected natural blocks and blank cavities in recent quarries to conduct our experiments. These show that the engravable part of the sandstone corresponds to a friable cortex often less than 1 cm thick, which covers a core of hard sandstone that cannot be engraved. In the sandstone boulder fields, this friable cortex is only preserved on surfaces protected from weathering. Our experiments also reveal that curved grooves can be made without difficulty and that the omnipresence of rectilinear grooves is a cultural choice. Finally, our experiments show that these rectilinear grooves are very easy to engrave and make it possible to propose equations for estimating the time required to make archaeological motifs. The average engraving time of a groove has been estimated at less than one minute and less than 15 min for the most common grids.

These results, placed in their archaeological context, allow us to formulate the following proposals: (1) the engravings attributed to the Early Mesolithic period were technically easy and could be made in rather short periods of time; (2) the cramped configuration of the engraved places and the absence of apparent distribution pattern of motifs on the walls points to the hypothesis of an accumulation of individual engraving episodes, possibly by several engravers; (3) the engraved cavities are abundant, easily accessible and connected to daily-life territories. We can deduce that the Fontainebleau rock engraving phenomenon is the result of numerous small, ordinary and stereotyped engraving rites, likely carried out by a large number of engravers.

在枫丹白露镇以西1800 公里²的区域内，在巴黎盆地中部的砂岩巨石场发现的 2000 多个小型天然洞穴中进行了人为雕刻。这些雕刻品主要由排列成垂直平行系列或排列成网格的成簇直线凹槽组成。越来越多的证据表明，这些占主导地位的图案类别形成了一种独特的岩石艺术类型，归因于早期中石器时代的狩猎采集者（法国北部约 9500-6300 年）。在这里，我们通过开展一项以两个主要问题为指导的实验研究来接近产生这些丰富符号表现的社会背景：这些雕刻需要哪些努力（即工作难度和工作时间）和专业知识？它们是在什么场合制作的？

在用施密特锤量化枫丹白露砂岩的高度可变硬度后，我们选择了最近采石场的天然块和空白空腔进行实验。这些表明，砂岩的可雕刻部分对应于通常小于 1 厘米厚的易碎皮层，其覆盖了无法雕刻的硬砂岩核心。在砂岩巨石场中，这种易碎的皮质仅保存在不受风化的表面上。我们的实验还表明，可以毫无困难地制作弯曲凹槽，并且直线凹槽的无处不在是一种文化选择。最后，我们的实验表明，这些直线凹槽非常容易雕刻，并且可以提出方程来估计制作考古图案所需的时间。

这些结果，放在他们的考古背景下，使我们能够提出以下建议：（1）中石器时代早期的雕刻在技术上很容易，可以在相当短的时间内完成；(2) 雕刻位置狭窄，墙壁上没有明显的图案分布模式，这表明可能由多个雕刻师累积单个雕刻片段的假设；(3) 雕刻的空腔丰富，易于取用，并与日常生活领域相连。我们可以推断，枫丹白露岩刻现象是无数小而普通的刻板刻板仪式的结果，很可能是由大量的雕刻师进行的。