Skip to main content

The Cave and the Mind: Towards a Sculptural and Experimental Approach to Upper Palaeolithic Art

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Art and Archaeology

Part of the book series: One World Archaeology ((WORLDARCH,volume 11))

  • 1735 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter is a direct response to the recent British Museum exhibition ‘Ice Age Art: arrival of the modern mind” which ran from 7 February–26 May 2013 (see Cook, Ice age art. Arrival of the modern mind, London, British Museum Press, 2013). The exhibition offered an unparalleled chance to see many pieces of Ice Age sculpture ‘in the flesh’; I found the experience both astonishing and thought-provoking and I want to communicate that experience here.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Alberti, B. (2007). Destabilising meaning in anthropomorphic vessels from northwest Argentina. Journal of Iberian Archaeology, 9/10, 209–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alberti, B. (In press). Archaeology and Ontologies of scale: the case of Miniaturisation in First Millennium Northwest Argentina. In B. Alberti, A.M. Jones, & J. Pollard (Eds.), Archaeology after Interpretation. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alberti, B., & Marshall, Y. (2009). Animating Archaeology: local theories and conceptually open-ended methodologies. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 19(3), 344–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Azéma, M., Clottes, J, & Tavernier, B. (2011). La Préhistoire du cinema. Origines paléolithiques de la narration graphique et du cinématographe. Paris: Editions Errance.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bailey, D. (2005). Prehistoric figurines. representation and corporeality in the Neolithic. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bourriaud, N. (2002). Relational aesthetics. Paris: Les Presses du Réel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Breuil, H. (1952). Four Hundred Centuries of Cave Art. Montignac: Centre d’Etudes et de Documentation Préhistoriques.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carlson, M. (1996). Performance. A critical introduction. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carpenter, E. (1973). Eskimo realities. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Wilson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clottes, J. (2008). Cave Art. London: Phaidon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clottes, J., & Lewis-Williams, D. (1998). The Shamans of prehistory. Trance and magic in the painted caves. New York: Harry Abrams.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cochrane, A., & Jones, A. M. (2012). Visualising the Neolithic: An introduction. In A. Cochrane & A. M. Jones (Eds.), Visualising the Neolithic (pp. 1–14). Oxford: Oxbow.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conkey, M. (2009). Materiality and meaning-making in the understanding of the Palaeolithic ‘arts’. In C. Renfrew & I. Morley (Eds.), Becoming Human. Innovation in Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Culture (pp. 179–194). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conkey, M. (2010). Images without words. The construction of prehistoric imaginaries for definitions of ‘us’, Journal of Visual Culture, 9(3), 272–283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Conneller, C. (2011). An Archaeology of Materials. Substantial transformations in Early prehistoric Europe. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cook, J. (2013). Ice age art. Arrival of the modern mind. London: British Museum Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawson, I. (2012). Making contemporary sculpture. Malborough: Crowood Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delannoy, J.-J., David, B., Geneste, J.-M., Katherine, M., Barker, B., Whear, R. L., & Gunn, R. G. (2013). The social construction of caves and rock shelters: Chauvet Cave (France) and Nawarla Gabarnmang (Australia). Antiquity, 87(2013), 12–29.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dezeuze, A. (2010). The ‘do-it-yourself’ artwork. Participation from Fluxus to new media. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the modern mind. Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dunbar, R. 1998. The social brain hypothesis. Evolutionary Anthropology, 6, 178–90.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elkins, J. 2000. What painting Is. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Farbstein, R. (2011). The significance of social gestures and technologies of embellishment in Palaeolithic portable art. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 18, 125–146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fell, M. (2013). Collateral damage. Wire, 348, 18–19.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gamble, C. (2007). Origins and revolutions. Human identity in Earliest Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gamble, C., Gowlett, J. & Dunbar, R. (2011). The Social brain and the shape of the Palaeolithic. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 21, 115–136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldberg, R. (1979). Performance art. From Futurism to the present. London: Thames and Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hodder, I. (2012). Entangled: An archaeology of the relationships between humans and things. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hodgson, D. (2008). The visual dynamics of Upper Palaeolithic cave art. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 18(3), 341–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hill, E. (2011). Animals as agents: Hunting ritual and relational ontologies in Prehistoric Alaska and Chukotka. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 21(3), 407–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ingold, T. (2000). ‘People like us’. The concept of the anatomically modern human. In T. Ingold (Ed.), The Perception of the Environment. Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill (pp. 373–391). London: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, A., & Bonaventura, P. (2011). Shaping the past: Sculpture and archaeology. In P. Bonaventura & A. Jones (Eds.), Sculpture and Archaeology (pp. 1–18). Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1967). Treasures of prehistoric art. New York: Harry Abrams.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1968). The art of Prehistoric man in Western Europe. London: Thames and Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lesure, R. (2011). Interpreting Ancient Figurines. Context, Comparison and Prehistoric Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis-Williams, D. (2002). The Mind in the Cave. Consciousness and the origins of art. London: Thames and Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lorblanchet, M. (1989). From man to animal and sign in Palaeolithic art. In H. Morphy (Ed.), Animals into Art (pp. 109–43). London: Unwin Hyman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Malafouris, L. 2007. Before and beyond representation: towards an enactive conception of the Palaeolithic Image. In C. Renfrew & I. Morley (Eds.), Image and imagination. A global prehistory of figurative representation (pp. 287–300) Cambridge: McDonald Institute Monographs.

    Google Scholar 

  • McDermott, L. (1996). Self-representation in Upper Palaeolithic female figurines. Current Anthropology, 37(2), 227–75.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mithen, S. (1996). The prehistory of the Mind. A search for the origins of art, religion and science. London: Phoenix.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell, W. J. T. (2005). What do pictures Want? Chicago: Chicago University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Onians, J. (2007). Neuroarchaeology and the origins of representation in the Grotte de Chauvet. In C. Renfrew & I. Morley (Eds.), Image and Imagination. A global prehistory of figurative representation (pp. 307–321). Cambridge: McDonald Institute Monographs.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pfeiffer, J. E. (1982). The Creative Explosion: an inquiry into the origins of art and religion. New York: Harper and Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pike, A. W. G., Hoffmann, D. L., Garcia-Diez, M., Pettitt, P. B., Alcolea, J., de Balbin, R., Gonzalez-Sainz, C., de las Heras, C., Lasheras, J.A., Montes, R., & Zilhao, J. (2012). U-series dating of Palaeolithic art in 11 caves in Spain. Science, 336(6087), 1409–1413.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Renfrew, C. (2007). Prehistory. The making of the human mind. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Renfrew, C., & Morley, I. (2009). Becoming human. Innovation in Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schechner, R. (1988). Performance theory. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Soffer, O., Vandiver, P., Oliva, M., & Svoboda, J. A. (1993). The pyrotechnology of performance art: Moravian venuses and wolverines. In H. Knecht, A. Pike-Tay, & R. White (Eds.), Before Lascaux: The complex record of the Early Upper Palaeolithic (pp. 259–75) Boca Ranton: CRC Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, T. (2010). The artificial Ape. How Technology changed the course of human evolution. London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • White, R. (1997). Substantial acts: from materials to meaning in Upper Palaeolithic representation. In M. W. Conkey, O. Soffer, D. Stratmann, & N. G. Jablonski (Eds.), Beyond Art: Pleistocene Image and Symbol (pp. 93–121) San Francisco: Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences, no. 23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wynn, T., Coolidge, F., & Bright, M. (2009). Hohlenstein-Stadel and the evolution of conceptual thought. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 19(1), 73–83.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This chapter owes its genesis to Jill Cook and Andrew Cochrane, Curator and Project Curator, of the ‘Ice Age Art’ exhibition at the British Museum. The ‘Ice Age Art’ exhibition has opened my eyes to the wonders of Upper Palaeolithic art, a formative experience for me. I would like to thank them both for this experience. I would also like to thank Ian Dawson and Louisa Minkin, Winchester School of Art for helpful discussion of some of the issues in this chapter.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew Meirion Jones .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Jones, A. (2014). The Cave and the Mind: Towards a Sculptural and Experimental Approach to Upper Palaeolithic Art. In: Russell, I., Cochrane, A. (eds) Art and Archaeology. One World Archaeology, vol 11. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8990-0_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics