THE ROC-AUX-SORCIERS FRIEZE:

A section of the carved frieze,

Roc-aux-Sorciers, France.

Although we often think of the cave paintings in Europe as a collection of individual images, there are instances of larger overall compositions. At Angles sur l'Anglin, in Vienne, France, is the remarkable art of Le Roc-aux-Sorciers. "The history of discoveries at Roc-aux-Sorciers begins in 1927, when Lucien Rousseau discovered the Paleolithic habitation and identified it as mid-Magdalenian in its culture. He began excavations in the Cave Taillebourg and recovered an engraved stone in which Henri Breuil detected the representation of a mammoth. Some years later, Suzanne de Saint-Mathurin became aware of Rousseau's article and decided to explore further, hoping to find some incised plaquettes like those from the cave at Lussac-les-Chateaus, also in Vienne. Assisted by her friend Dorothy Garrod, she carried out a decade of intensive campaigns between 1947 and 1957, and followed more sporadically until 1964." (Wikipedia)

Roc-aux-Sorciers frieze presented

as a single, unified composition.

Discoveries of relief carvings and paintings ensued and has now presented us with truly spectacular decoration. Archaeologists and prehistorians now tend to interpret the carvings in the two portions of Roc-aux-Sorciers as a single frieze, combining the various panels as if they are one composition.

Overlapping figures of woman

and bison, Roc-aux-Sorciers.

Many of these figures are carved in deep relief with considerable overlapping.

"Starting from the left, the first panel has a pair of bison looking in the same direction, the female behind the male. The second panel consists of two horses going in opposite directions, the left one with its head gracefully turned toward the other, which is grazing. Above them is a bison, lying down.

The third panel has the most extraordinary theme: a close group of three life-size women, side by side, represented from the armpit level down to their ankles. They form a magnificent trio, like the Three Graces." (Desdemaines-Hugon 2010:141)

Horse, Roc-aux-Sorciers, France.

Internet, Public Domain.

"The Roc-aux-Sorciers Frieze:

During their early excavations Saint Mathurin and Garrod found numerous fragments of stone decorated with rock engravings or carvings of animals - several of them painted - that had fallen from the ceiling and walls of the Taillebourg chamber. The discovery of these petroglyphs was followed in 1950 by another find, this time in the second niche known as Abri Bourdoin. Here, they uncovered the bas-relief of a horse still on a wall at the rear of the chamber. Further examination led to the discovery of a huge 18-metre (60 feet) frieze of relief sculptures, featuring bison, horses, ibexes, felines, as well as several carved reliefs of female nudes, in the style of venus figurines such as the Venus of Laussel (c. 23,000 BCE)." (www.visual-arts-cork.com)

Lion, Roc-aux-Sorciers, France,

Internet, Public Domain. 

"Combined with the fragments found at Cave Taillebourg, the discovery of the frieze led archeologists and prehistorians to see Cave Taillebourg and Abri Bourdoin as producing a single work of prehistoric art, divided into two sections. In total, they believe the frieze was about 30 metres in length: 18 metres (still almost intact) at Abri Bourdoin; about 12 metres (now collapsed and in fragments) in Cave Baillebourg. It contained a total of 34 figures, including: 7 horses, 8 ibexes, 6 bison, 1 reindeer, 4 felines, 1 unidentified animal, 4 anthropomorphic heads, and 5 stylized female figures." (www.visual-arts-cork.com)

Roc-aux-Sorciers,

the "Three Graces."
Internet.

Diagram of that panel, the

three female figures in red.

Internet.

The most famous portion of the composition is a grouping of three female figures familiarly known as the Three Graces. "The first woman to have been produced was probably the one in the middle, since its silhouette was designed in close correlation with the morphology of the rock. The artist first conceived the figure mentally by integrating the nature of the volumes of the wall before beginning the work. This is particularly visible in the use of a natural cavity to represent the very marked opening of the pubis. The legs are missing (they were found in Magdalenian levels during the excavation by S. de Saint-Mathurin). Her belly is round, the navel open, and one breast was lightly engraved and shown to the side. Her arms and hands and her face were not depicted. The second woman is located just to the left of the first. Being juxtposed, the two figures were probably made to be seen together. Her belly, which was made round by the subtle use of volume and by adding a curved line between the pubis and navel (possibly the pigmentation line that marks the bellies of pregnant women), means that this woman is probably pregnant. The hops are wide and the line of the buttocks and thighs also resemble those of a pregnant woman. Her face is not shown, and nor are the arms, hands or feet. Her body was thus depicted from the ankles to the upper body, and hence it is not only the trunk of a woman, but an incomplete figure. The third woman is slightly off to the right were the rock was visibly flat. This shape of rock was most probably sought to represent a flat body without a round belly. The nature of the wall gives the female body a flat volume that contrasts with the body volume of the other two women. The proposed reading of this figure is that it is a woman at a different stage of pregnancy, perhaps a woman depicted after childbirth. Her belly is flat, and she is represented from the front. She has no arms and no face." (Fuentes 2016:8-9)

Three Graces, from Piraeus,

by Sokrates the Boetian

sculptor, 470 BCE, ancient.eu.

, 

These remarkable sculptures actually remind me of the Greek carvings that they were named after, as well as the carvings from the triangular pediments under the gable of the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens, and nowadays known as the Elgin Marbles, a little in their style, and a great deal in the feeling they impart. The Elgin Marbles were installed on the Parthenon in 432 BCE (and carved over the few preceding years). Preceding the Elgin Marbles by a few years is the Three Graces by Sokrates the Boetian sculptor dated to ca. 470 BCE. Radiocarbon dating of sediments in Roc-aux-Sorciers has "narrowed the date to about 14,000 - 12,000 BCE." (www.visual-arts-cork.com) This gives the Roc-aux-Sorciers carvings considerable primacy in ranking of accomplishments in art.

Three Graces reproduction,

Imperial Roman, 1st - 4th cent.

Internet, Public domain.

I cannot quite agree with the interpretation that the Roc-aux-Sorciers carvings represent a single composition. With the number of overlapping images there is considerable carving of new lines through old images implying that this was done over a period of time. The amount of work suggested by its size and complexity suggests a considerable period of time - but it is wonderful whatever the truth behind it.

NOTE: An excellent web site with a lot of information and great illustrations from Roc-aux-Sorciers can be found at Don's Maps (see References below). Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Desdemaines-Hugon, Christine,

2010 Stepping-Stones: A Journey Through the Ice Age Caves of the Dordogne, Yale University Press, New Haven.

Fuentes, Oscar

2016 The Social Dimension of Human Depiction in Magdalenian Rock Art (16,500 BP - 12,000 cal BP): The Case of the Roc-aux-Sorciers Rock Shelter, Quaternary International, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.206.06.023.

https://www.donsmaps.com/rocauxsorciers.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roc-aux-Sorciers

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/roc-aux-sorciers.htm