Deciphering Cave Paintings

  I've had a hard time trying the "choose" what school I would place myself into. I like the idea of creating a story from the painting, because that's what a part of art is, interpreting a story or meaning, that arises in you when viewing it. But with this prehistoric art, that can be inapplicable because they're viewed more as artifacts rather than what we today think of normally as art, like a Monet painting. To really understand and have a more accurate interpretation of prehistoric art, I think the first school is the one I would have to choose.


  "One consisted in gathering artifacts and then dividing and subdividing them in rigorously exact and objective enumeration of places, dates, sizes, and shapes.This work would establish a template of places where future artifacts could be arranged in order. For some, the field of prehistory stopped here” -Annette Laming-Emperaire (pg.141,The Cave Painters).


  To even begin understanding cave art, specifically paintings, it is necessary to, as Laming-Emperaire stated above, dividing and subdividing them into categorized lists of places, dates, sizes, and shapes. Only after doing this, can one begin to hypothesize about what the paintings actually mean. Too pass over the archaeology of these paintings and jumping straight to ethnographic research is, according to Laming-Emperaire, not the best path to understanding the paintings. The example given in The Cave Painters is the archeological study of a flint blade. Three characteristics are focused on during the study: the way it was made, the signs of use it exhibits, and the location in which it was found. Looking at this method, Laming-Emperaire suggests cave painting show be looked at in the same way, since they are, themselves, prehistoric artifacts, as important as tools and such.


  Even though these three characteristics can help one understand the paintings as they would to understand tools, Laming-Emperaire views the location as the most important aspect of the method. The location of the painting is the only solid fact that can be determined, the paintings not being able to be moved by natural causes or people taking it with them. From location itself, one can compare differences and similarities with others in that location or others 200 miles away. The patterns of animals and shapes, placement and size of paintings, and other factors can lead towards a better understanding of the paintings.


-Holly

Picture Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Lascaux_painting.jpg


Book Source: 
Curtis, Gregory. The Cave Painters. 2006. Print.