Art by firelight? Using experimental and digital techniques to explore Magdalenian engraved plaquette use at Montastruc (France)

Abstract

Palaeolithic stone plaquettes are a type of mobiliary art featuring engravings and recovered primarily from Magdalenian sites, where they can number from single finds to several thousand examples. Where context is available, they demonstrate complex traces of use, including surface refreshing, heating, and fragmentation. However, for plaquettes with limited or no archaeological context, research tends to gravitate toward their engraved surfaces. This paper focuses on 50 limestone plaquettes excavated by Peccadeau de l’Isle from Montastruc, a Magdalenian rockshelter site in southern France with limited archaeological context; a feature common to many art bearing sites excavated across the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Plaquette use at Montastruc was explored via a programme of microscopy, 3D modelling, colour enhancement using DStretch©, virtual reality (VR) modelling, and experimental archaeology, the latter focusing on limestone heating related to different functional and non-functional uses. While the limited archaeological context available ensures the results remain only indicative, the data generated suggests plaquettes from Montastruc were likely positioned in proximity to hearths during low ambient light conditions. The interaction of engraved stone and roving fire light made engraved forms appear dynamic and alive, suggesting this may have been important in their use. Human neurology is particularly attuned to interpreting shifting light and shadow as movement and identifying visually familiar forms in such varying light conditions through mechanisms such as pareidolic experience. This interpretation encourages a consideration of the possible conceptual connections between art made and experienced in similar circumstances, such as parietal art in dark cave environments. The toolset used to investigate the Montastruc assemblage may have application to other collections of plaquettes, particularly those with limited associated context.

Nocturnal selective pressures on the evolution of human musicality as a missing piece of the adaptationist puzzle

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The deep past in the virtual present: developing an interdisciplinary approach towards understanding the psychological foundations of palaeolithic cave art

“…Whilst our results demonstrate that immersive cave-like conditions elicit pareidolic responses to topographic features in modern participants, pareidolia may have influenced the production of other art forms. Upper Palaeolithic portable art also integrates natural features of bones and stones and this may also reflect pareidolic responses, whether or not under evocative lighting conditions 56 . VR experimental approaches to portable art objects should be critical to developing deeper insights into the extent and nature of pareidolic stimulation of the emergence and dominance of animal representations in the Upper Palaeolithic.…”

“…In archaeology, its use has primarily been restricted to museum contexts, for example immersive visitor VR experiences of reconstructed historic buildings or landscapes 52 – 54 . Only now is VR being deployed as an interpretive tool in archaeological research to facilitate the examination of fragile archaeological sites 55 , simulate lighting conditions for Palaeolithic art 56 , 57 , or evaluate areas of visual interest within historical buildings 58 . VR can thus integrate both psychological research methods and contextual information from the archaeological record to generate meaningful, and testable, insights into aspects of the earliest artistic behaviours.…”

Humans Making History through Continuities and Discontinuities in Art

“…The art was material-now its own evidence-but it was not writing, and much of the scholarship of people who study such art is devoted to ways of understanding how to recover what would once have been conveyed in oral song and storytelling (e.g. Conkey & Fisher 2020;Díaz-Andreu & García Benito 2012;Fritz et al 2016;Needham et al 2022;Nowell 2015). Visual conventions arose from early art, and they were essential, later, to writing, but the mere presence of material evidence did not constitute a record independent of oral tradition.…”

“…2016; Needham et al . 2022; Nowell 2015). Visual conventions arose from early art, and they were essential, later, to writing, but the mere presence of material evidence did not constitute a record independent of oral tradition.…”