A high-precision chronological model for the decorated Upper Paleolithic cave of Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, Ardèche, France

Abstract

Radiocarbon dates for the ancient drawings in the Chauvet-Pont d'Arc Cave revealed ages much older than expected. These early ages and nature of this Paleolithic art make this United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) site indisputably unique. A large, multidisciplinary dating program has recently mapped the anthropological evolution associated with the cave. More than 350 dates (by 14 C, U-Th, TL and 36 Cl) were obtained over the last 15 y. They include 259 radiocarbon dates, mainly related to the rock art and human activity in the cave. We present here more than 80 previously unpublished dates. All of the dates were integrated into a high-precision Bayesian model based on archaeological evidence to securely reconstruct the complete history of the Chauvet-Pont d'Arc Cave on an absolute timescale. It shows that there were two distinct periods of human activity in the cave, one from 37 to 33,500 y ago, and the other from 31 to 28,000 y ago. Cave bears also took refuge in the cave until 33,000 y ago. . Based on stylistic considerations, this art was first attributed to the Solutrean period (∼22,000-18,000 B.P.). Surprisingly, however, the first 14 C dates of black drawings (the only depictions datable by this method) indicated a much older age (∼32,000-30,000 B.P.) (6-9). These dates had a significant impact on commonly accepted theories of the evolution of prehistoric art (10) and thus emphasized the need to obtain a thorough understanding of the occupation history of the cave. A clear chronological framework would reveal the age not only of the art, but also of the periods of human and animal occupation and their relationship to the geomorphological evolution of the cave.Chronologies can be relative or absolute. In this context, relative dating refers to the ordering of the art works and natural or animal related events within a relative temporal sequence, commonly based on patterns of superimposition of the different occurrences: for example, a painting that is overlain by another in a "stratigraphic sequence" is the oldest of the two, and a bear scratch on top of a drawing indicates that humans no longer occupied the cave when the scratch was made. Based on this information alone, however, we do not know how much older the underlying event is: thus the need to obtain absolute dates of parietal art works.In the chronology presented here, we use all of the absolute dates obtained from the art works, as well as other data associated with the parietal art, and animal and human occupations. Our earlier sampling methods and 14 C methodology were criticized (11-13). Before publishing further rock art dating results, we therefore initiated a broad, international intercomparison program of 14 C dating, followed by a holistic chronological model based on an extensive corpus of dates obtained by several different methods.A set of 259 radiocarbon dates is currently available (Fig. 1 and SI Appendix, Fig. S1 and Table S1). They were compiled over the last 15 y and include analyses performed ...

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