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Entanglements: the Role of Finger Flutings in the Study of the Lived Lives of Upper Paleolithic Peoples

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Abstract

During the Upper Paleolithic, Ice Age peoples in Europe and Australia used their fingers to trace figurative and non-figurative images in soft sediments that lined the walls and ceilings of the limestone caves they encountered. The resulting images, while fragile, are preserved in at least 70 caves with the oldest dating to approximately 36,000 years ago. During the first 100 years of the study of Paleolithic cave imagery, these finger flutings were largely ignored. Though they make up a larger percentage of cave art than any other form, they are enigmatic and not always visually appealing. In 1912, Henri Breuil famously referred to them as “traits parasites” (parasite lines) and deleted them from his re-drawings of cave images, believing they detracted from the figurative art. Flutings have been interpreted alternately as doodling, serpent or water images, the residue of surface preparation for making, and evidence of the moment when a shaman touches the “skin” of the otherworld. In this paper, we argue that there are three reasons why finger flutings have taken on greater significance in the study of Pleistocene visual cultures. First, theories concerning the meaning and relevance of finger flutings were developed without supporting evidence as no methodology existed by which to study flutings until the beginning of the twenty-first century. Second, there has been a broadening of the definition of “art” in a Paleolithic context to include categories of materials, including finger flutings, which would traditionally have been excluded from consideration. Third, there has been a concomitant shift from a focus on the final product—“the artwork” to an exploration of the embodied process of manufacturing the imagery—the “work” of art. Finger flutings carry with them physical evidence of this process. Finally, by presenting a detailed study of finger flutings at Gargas Cave (France), we consider what is gained by including finger flutings in the study of Paleolithic art and what this “archaeology of intimacy” can tell us about the lived lives of Ice Age peoples.

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Notes

  1. It should be noted that while Breuil did not include finger flutings in his re-drawings of Paleolithic art panels, he did argue (Breuil 1952:22) that two-dimensional representations developed from random marks made by fingers on clay surfaces and spent some time describing finger fluttings known from several French and Cantabrian caves (e.g., Rouffignac, Gargas, Hornos de la Peña).

  2. The systematic approach taken to Paleolithic art by Laming-Emperaire (e.g., 1968) and particularly Leroi-Gourhan (e.g., 1958, 1960, 1966, 1968) in the 1960s and 70s meant that individual images could be considered data rather than simply iconic representations of the world in which Ice Age peoples lived. Conkey (1989, 1999) has referred to this approach as the “structuralist breakout,” but Moro Abadía and Palacio-Peréz (2015) have argued against referring to their work as structuralist. Either way, the methods espoused by Leroi-Gourhan and Laming-Emperaire, including the use of statistics, allowed researchers to use the art to test hypotheses, look for patterns, and make predictions. While there have been significant and legitimate criticisms of Leroi-Gourhan’s underlying assumptions (Laming-Emperaire eventually moved on to other topics), Conkey (1989, 1999) and Bahn (2016; Bahn and Vertut 1997) have argued that their research represented a sea change in Paleolithic art studies that all subsequent scholars have had to either build on or reject but could not ignore. In much the same way, the systematic approach of Sharpe and Van Gelder and now Van Gelder and Nowell on finger flutings has transformed the explanatory potential of this medium.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Conservation Régionale de l’Archaéologie, Toulouse and the Mayor and Commune of Aventignan for permission to work in Gargas Cave; and to Marie-Paule Abadie and Nicolas Ferrer for the discussions and guiding LVG and KS in the cave. We thank Dr. Oscar Moro Abadía and Prof. Manuel R. González Morales for inviting us to participate in this special issue. We thank them, Gilles Tosello and three anonymous reviewers, for their thoughtful comments and suggestions.

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Funding was provided by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria, Cornett Building Room B228, 3800 Finnerty Road (Ring Road), Victoria, British Columbia, V8P 5C2, Canada

    April Nowell

  2. School of Education, Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership, Walden University, 100 Washington Avenue South, Suite 900, Minneapolis, MN, 55401, USA

    Leslie Van Gelder

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Nowell, A., Van Gelder, L. Entanglements: the Role of Finger Flutings in the Study of the Lived Lives of Upper Paleolithic Peoples. J Archaeol Method Theory 27, 585–606 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09468-5

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