This volume contains papers from twelve authors who were invited to speak at the Prehistoric Society's conference on Palaeolithic Art held at the Oxford University Department for External Studies in November 1989. Such conferences are a regular feature of the Society's activities and are organized to review and debate important themes in prehistory. In this instance interest in Palaeolithic art had already been heightened through the Society's study tours to the Dordogne (in 1980) and Northern Spain (in 1987). Despite this interest, no major conference on the theme had been organized in Britain since the Society's London Conference of April 1967 on ‘Prehistoric Art in the Western Mediterranean to the Second Millennium BC’. Unfortunately, the papers of that conference were not published and it is difficult now to assess their contribution to the subject. By contrast, some of the Society's subsequent conferences have been published by commercial houses (for example, Mellars 1978; Chapman, Kinnes and Randsborg 1981; Champion and Megaw 1985; Coles and Lawson 1987). This volume marks a different approach, namely for the Society to publish the proceedings of its own conference. Hopefully, this will enable members who were unable to participate in the conference to benefit from the expertise of the authors, and encourage others with an interest in prehistory to join the Society.

My aim in this paper is to put the question, ‘Where was the centre of the Upper Palaeolithic world?’. I promise no answers and I will confine the discussion to Europe.

The purpose behind raising such a seemingly irrelevant problem is that its investigation leads us directly into issues of palaeolithic society, the interpretation of art in such contexts and the often opposed views of how art contributed to adaptation and change.

At the outset let me declare that I am not dealing with the origins of art and its association, or not, with language. Art for me is, however, a system of communication and includes a wide range of mediums and messages. As an act of social communication it is defined by style which, as Wiessner (1984, 191) argues, has its behavioural basis in a fundamental human cognitive process; personal and social identification through comparison. Consequently style is not just a means of transmitting information about identity but is an active tool used in building social strategies (ibid. 194). It has a role in negotiation which, as I shall argue below, is the basis for defining palaeolithic society.

The ‘art’ of the early Upper Palaeolithic refers to the images and symbols of the hunters of horse, bison and mammoth during the last European Ice Age that began more than 32,000 years ago. It is therefore interesting that it is not the image of the animal that develops in complexity and variability across Ice Age Europe for the next 20,000 or so years, but the image of the female. The image and the concept of the Ice Age female has perhaps been the subject of more intense emotional debate in the last century than the image of the animal (Ucko 1962; 1969; Clottes and Cerou 1970; LeroiGourhan 1965; Ucko and Rosenfeld 1972; Stoliar 1977–78). The debate continues, both with new finds and new ideas (Rosenfeld 1977; Delporte 1979; Rice 1981; Gamble 1982; Cerda 1983; Guthrie 1984; Praslov 1985; Sonneville-Bordes 1986; Lorblanchet and Welte 1987; Gvozdover 1989; Duhard 1989).

Art is unique amongst the categories of evidence which survive from the Palaeolithic period in that it was originally structured to communicate. It is true that style is an aspect of tool-making, and the particular forms adopted in the manufacture of tools may be intended as practical innovations or as recognizable types that define distinct social groups (Wiessner 1983) but art is only communication; it has no practical use. Its purpose is to convey a message, simple perhaps, as with ornamentation, or more complex as is suggested by the repertoire of painting and engraving in caves. In a culture without a literate tradition music, mime, recital and art are the vehicles of information. Only one of these remains from the Palaeolithic and, in isolation, the visual evidence is to a certain degree illuminating and to a certain degree frustrating in that certain deductions can be made from its intrinsic features, but not an explanation of its meaning.

The Magdalenian sites of Andernach and Gönnersdorf are located in the central Rhineland at the northwestern end of the Neuwied Basin (fig. 1). The first investigation of the Andernach-Martinsberg site was carried out in 1883 by H. Schaaffhausen (1888); between 1979 and 1983 a new campaign of excavations took place at the same site (Veil 1982a). The site of Gönnersdorf was investigated between 1968 and 1976 (Bosinski 1979). The two sites are located directly facing each other above the Rhine, which at the time of the occupation was much wider than at the present day; Andernach is sited on a Middle Pleistocene lava flow, while Gönnersdorf is on the Middle Terrace of the Rhine. Both sites are assigned by pollen analysis to the end of the Bølling interstadial; the great similarities in their archaeological material, down to individual details, suggest that the two sites were contemporary.

The complex system of subterranean passages at Montesquieu-Avantès in the foothills of the central French Pyrenees through which the River Volp flows is conventionally divided into three caves, Le Tuc d'Audoubert to the west, Les Trois-Frères in the centre and Enlène to the east. While the east two are connected by a narrow corridor, no usable passage connects Tuc d'Audoubert with Trois-Frères and the only current means of access is by boat. At Tuc d'Audoubert the galleries lie on three levels, the lowest carrying the River Volp, the ‘median’ with decorated galleries (La Salle Nuptiale, La Galerie des Gravures) and the upper with further decoration (La Chatière, Salle des Talons) terminating in the Salle des Bisons containing the celebrated modelled clay bison (Bégouën and Clottes 1984b). The position of Trois-Frères and Enlène approximates to the upper level of Tuc d'Audoubert. Trois-Frères has numerous galleries with several possible original entrances, although the only certain Magdalenian access was through Enlène. Whereas Trois-Frères contains one of the most prolific arrays of wall art (Galerie des Mains, Chapelle de la Lionne, Galerie des Points, Salle du Grand-Eboulis, Sanctuaire, Galerie des Chouettes, Galerie de l'Hémione), Enlène has none. However excavations at Enlène have revealed a considerable range of engraved bones and stone plaquettes from occupation deposits (Bégouën and Clottes 1984a).

Discovery of the cave of Altamira in 1879 introduced a new aspect to ideas on human evolution, requiring a fresh approach to previous notions of life and customs among prehistoric groups. In the final years of the 19th century the prevailing view of prehistoric life was still coloured by the prejudice and concepts which had marked early discussion on the origin of man. From what was known of their tools and art forms, early men were presented as living in simple communities which were considered equivalent to the ‘primitive peoples’ being described, often with a Euro-centric superiority, by contemporary ethnographers. The already classical volumes of the period, such as the Reliquiae Aquitanicae recording Lartet and Christy's discoveries, were full of interesting parallels to Eskimos and Bushmen. Up to this time, known Palaeolithic art was confined to engraved bone, some of it of high technical competence as at Chaffaud and La Madeleine. Consequently when the discovery of Altamira was presented at the Lisbon Congress it was received with some degree of caution.

At first sight it may seem a pointless exercise to produce a survey of late Pleistocene ‘artistic activity’ around the world, but there are two specific aims involved here: first, to show that human beings in different parts of the world were producing ‘art’ at roughly the same time, i.e. from about 40,000 BC onward, and particularly at the end of the Pleistocene, from about 12,0000 BC, and second, to show that the well known Ice Age art of Europe is no longer unique, but part of a far more widespread phenomenon (Bahn 1987; Bahn and Vertut 1988, 26–32). The European art remains supreme in its quantity and its ‘quality’ (i.e. its realism and its wide range of techniques), but that situation may well alter in the next decade or two as new discoveries are made elsewhere and new dating methods are refined and extended.

Ironically, the first clue to Pleistocene art outside Europe was found as long ago as 1870, only a few years after Edouard Lartet's and Henry Christy's discoveries in southern France were authenticated. Unfortunately, the object in question was badly published, and dis-appeared from 1895 until its rediscovery in 1956, and consequently very few works on Pleistocene art mention it. This mineralized sacrum of an extinct fossil camelid was found at Tequixquiac in the northern part of the central basin of Mexico. The bone is carved and engraved (two nostrils have been cut into the end) so as to represent the head of a pig-like or dog-like animal (pl. 18a). The circumstances of its discovery are unclear, but it is thought to be from a late Pleistocene bone bed, and to be at least 11,000 or 12,000 years old (Aveleyra 1965; Messmacher 1981,94). At present it is on exhibit in Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology.

To describe, let alone explain, the paintings, engravings and sculpture of the Upper Palaeolithic as ‘adaptations’ may sound absurd. These are products of the human mind — a world of symbols and dreams, myths and fantasies. So to suggest that this art can be understood in an ecological framework may strike one as facile. Upper Palaeolithic art is one of the great cultural achievements of human kind. It testifies not only to an immense technical skill but to the human capacity for expressing emotion through the use of line, form and colour. Although we cannot know the meaning of the art, through it we can begin to share the sensitivities of the Palaeolithic hunters to their natural world and the animals of the chase. Like all great art, it transcends the boundaries of time and space to say something fundamental about the human condition — though that ‘something’ is forever elusive. The paintings, engravings and sculpture of the Upper Palaeolithic are indeed the epitome of human creativity. So when faced with either the great bulls of Lascaux or just a scratch upon a broken pebble, surely it must be trivial to invoke notions of adaptation and ecology. After all, is not adaptation solely about the more basic features of human life — the selfish struggle to survive and reproduce — hardly the basis for the fine arts.

Our purpose is to examine the hypothesis that Palaeolithic parietal image sites in south-west Europe model or map a specific area of the terrain around them in so far as that terrain was useful to the people who made the images. So far as we are aware the hypothesis has not received wide attention (Eastham 1979; Kehoe 1990). Maps were made by some hunter-gatherer peoples. There are Amerindian maps (Brody 1981; Leacock 1969), and maps have been used as an explanation of some Australian parietal figures (Mountford 1956; 1961). There has been, however, little systematic application of the hypothesis to Palaeolithic images.

The images under discussion are the recognizable representations of animals painted, engraved or carved on the walls, floors and roofs of caves and rock shelters during the last glaciation. They are recognizable because the marks of which they are composed make redundant reference to known species. They may be accompanied by others which can be interpreted as representations of human beings and ambiguous configurations of animals.

The northern world, from the wide expanses of North America across the even wider spread of Asia and Europe, was subjected to the effects of the Pleistoceneice for centuries after areas to the south had been released from nature's grip. But as conditions eased the north, and open landscapes were newly created, plants and animals began to colonize and humans were not far behind. Across enormous territories of the Old and New Worlds, hunters, gatherers and fishers began to explore the resources of the virgin lands, and from before 8000 BP for at least five millennia their societies were seemingly in balance with nature's gifts. Settlements from all around the vast northern latitudes demonstrate a reliance upon wild resources that were abundant, varied and easily exploited. In such circumstances, the opportunities existed for the development and elaboration of systems of belief concerned with the principles of existence. Such systems in all likelihood took many forms of expression, only a few of which have survived today. Burials, tools and weapons, settlement organization and territorial exploitation are capable of demonstrating the systems for survivaldeveloped by these communities of people, and rock carvings and paintings add other possibilities for those who seek to understand the social scenes of the past.

In 1902 Emile Cartailhac published his Mea Culpa d'un Sceptique. His acceptance of the high antiquity of prehistoric art in western Europe followed Capitan and Breuil's convincing discoveries in Font de Gaume and Les Combarelles and reflected a widespread change of opinion. Despite previous scepticism, researchers were beginning to allow that the parietal as well as the mobile art did indeed date back to the Upper Palaeolithic. But this swing in scientific opinion opened up an even more baffling problem: why did Upper Palaeolithic people make these pictures? In the year following Cartailhac's turn-about Salomon Reinach tried to answer this question by developing an analogical argument based on ethnographic parallels. He could see no other way of approaching the problem: ‘Our only hope of finding out why the troglodytes painted and sculpted lies in asking the same question of present-day primitives with whom the ethnography reveals connections’ (Reinach 1903, 259; my translation, his emphasis).

Rock art associated with modern human populations has a comparable antiquity in Western Europe and Australia (table 1). In Western Europe personal adornment, human and animal statuettes and some carved stone blocks date from the early Aurignacian. In Australia a date of 30,000 BP has been claimed for the origin of the geometric art tradition of the Olary Province of Southern Australia, a date which would make it contemporary with the modern human community at Lake Mungo 150 miles to the east, who were practising deliberate burial (Bowler and Thome 1976, 129,138). This date, however, depends on the cation ratio method, whose calibration is still open to question (Nobbs and Dorn 1988; Clarke 1989; Watchman 1989).

Secure dates based on C14 measurements show that both geometric motifs and engraved animal silhouettes in northern Australia are contemporary with the flowering of European Palaeolithic art during the Magdalenian (for Dampier, see Lorblanchet 1988, 286; for Laura, see Rosenfeld 1981, 12, 53).