Prehistoric pigment characterisation of the Abri Pataud rock-shelter (Dordogne, France)

Abstract

Iron oxide pigments found in archaeological context constitute an important source of information for the understanding of cultural and subsistence activities of ancient human cultures. In order to complete archaeological contextual information, many analytical methods have been applied to characterise pigments and to provide further information on this material (e.g. supplies, selections, mechanical or physical transformations of raw material, use and application processes). Several studies have demonstrated that the elemental composition of iron oxide pigments can be used to discriminate between several geological provenances. In this study, non-destructive micro-particle induced Xray emission analysis was applied in order to distinguish different kinds of reddish pigments from the prehistoric site of Abri Pataud, more especially from the Layer 2 attributed to Final Gravettian period (22,000 BP). By using an external beam, this technique required no sampling, and enabled us to perform localised analyses directly on raw material, on ochre residues applied on artefacts or on fragments of the wall of this rock-shelter. The results obtained by this technique demonstrate that the pigments covering the decorated fragments of the rock-shelter wall, found during the excavation of the Layer 2, have elemental compositions similar to the composition of a raw pigment found in the same layer. These results suggest that the shelter was decorated during the Final Gravettian period and thus provide new insights for the understanding of the archaeological context of this occupation layer.

Occupations and status of the Abri Pataud (Dordogne, France) during the Final Gravettian

“…A painted decor of the shelter wall and vault (Verez et al, 2013;Lebon et al, 2014) recalls recent discoveries that combine wall art and human remains in the same place. This refers to the same question of rock shelter function and the question of the relationship between rock art and burial practices (Henry-Gambier et al, 2007HenryGambier, 2008).…”

“…On the other hand, all level 3 pigments are different. This suggests that the decoration was accomplished by the Final Gravettians, excluding the hypothesis of an old residual decoration (for details of these analyzes, see Beck et al, 2011;Verez et al, 2013;Lebon et al, 2014).…”

Archaeological Ochres of the Rock Art Site of Leopard Cave (Erongo, Namibia): Looking for Later Stone Age Sociocultural Behaviors

“…The ongoing effort to correlate the chemical attributes of the pigments in the rock paintings and on the archaeological tools promises to shed more light on the processes for the creation of the paintings and their subsequent alterations. Indeed, if the coloring agents discovered in the archaeological layers and the rock paintings correlate in terms of chemical composition, this would provide strong evidence for indirect dating of the rock paintings (Beck et al 2012;Bednarik 2002;Lebon et al 2014Lebon et al , 2018Lebon et al , 2019. Research about this correlation is partly hardened by the semantic discrepancies of the term "ochre" for the different actors involved in this research.…”

Standardization procedure to provide a unified multi-method elemental compositional dataset, application to ferruginous colouring matters from Namibia

“…These advances implied the use of different elemental analytical techniques to characterize the materials and determine the provenance of the archaeological ferruginous colouring matters: X-Ray Fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) Lebon et al, 2019) , particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) (Erlandsen et al 1999;Bernatchez et al 2008 ;Nel et al, 2010 ;Beck et al, 2011Beck et al, . 2012Salomon et al, 2012 ;Mathis et al, 2014 ;Lebon et al, 2014) , instrumental neutron activation analysis (NAA) (Kiehn et al, 2007 ;Popelka-Filcoff et al, 2007, 2008Eiselt et al, 2011 ;MacDonald et al, 2013MacDonald et al, , 2018Velliky et al, 2021) , inductive coupled plasmaoptical emission spectrometry and mass spectrometry (ICP-OES and ICP-MS) coupled or not to laser ablation (Green an Watling, 2007 ;Iriarte et al, 2009 ;Dayet et al, 2013 ;Scadding et al, 2015 ;Moyo et al, 2016 ;Zipkin et al, 2017Zipkin et al, , 2020Eiselt et al, 2019 ;Pierce et al, 2020 ;Mauran et al, 2021a) . An extensive review of these studies has been recently published by Dayet (2021).…”