Gorge d'Enfer

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Coordinates: 44 ° 56 ′ 37.8 ″  N , 0 ° 59 ′ 56.7 ″  O Gorge d'Enfer is a Upper Paleolithic site in the French Dordogne department . It belongs to the municipality of Les Eyzies and consists of several individual sites. In the various deposits there are remains from the cultural stages of the Aurignaciens up to the Upper Magdalenian ; they cover roughly the period 34,000 to 12,000 years BP .

location

The Gorge d'Enfer, sometimes also in the plural Gorges d'Enfer , ( German  "Höllen- oder Teufelsschlucht" ) (from French gorge - gorge, gorge ), forms a small right side valley of the Vézère not far upstream from Les Eyzies . The gorge has cut between the escarpment, formed from Laugerie-Haute , Laugerie-Basse and Grand Roc , and the ridge of the Roc de Tayac that follows downstream . The rocks consist of flat layers of the coniacium . The following sites can be found in the gorge:

  • Grand Abri
  • Abri Lartet
  • Abri Pasquet
  • Le Poisson (Abri)
  • Oreille d'Enfer (cave)

Sites

Grand Abri

As the name suggests, the Grand Abri ( Great Abri ) is a huge abri 40 meters long. The depth of this abyss is an astonishing 40 meters. It is more likely to be the exit of a former cave , which was subsequently expanded thermo-erosively (by frost blasting and by the different thermal expansion of the rock). The abri was inhabited during the Magdalenian era. The entire sediment filling was removed during the French Revolution as part of the saltpetre mining at that time .

Abri Lartet

The Abri Lartet , named after its discoverer Édouard Lartet , is located on a lower level than the Grand Abri, is opposite and a bit down the valley. Lartet and Henry Christy carried out excavations here for the first time in 1863, followed by Denis Peyrony in 1918. The latter was able to identify locations of Lower Périgordien (with arrowheads of Châtelperroniens ) and Lower Aurignacia . Painted stone fragments from the Aurignacia represent a specialty .

Abri Pasquet

In the Abri Pasquet there are signs of outgoing aurignacia.

Le Poisson (Abri)

Salmon relief from the Abri du Poisson

The Abri du Poisson ( Fish Abri ) is located in the immediate vicinity of the two aforementioned abrises. It was only discovered and examined in 1892. The famous salmon relief in the roof was not recognized until 1912. The relatively flat relief depicts a 1 meter tall male salmon. It was originally colored red, as confirmed by remains of paint in the depressions. Immediately after the relief was discovered, JM Marsan made an offer to Carl Schuchhardt , the director of the Berlin Ethnographic Museum , to acquire the fish relief in hand. Schuchhardt then traveled to France and, after viewing the relief, consented to the trade. Shortly afterwards, work began to detach the relief from the ceiling. Drilling and chisel traces are still clearly visible today. On November 11, 1912, the operation was stopped in time by the French Ministry. For a long time Otto Hauser was mistakenly associated with this sale, who as an art dealer was otherwise the most important wholesaler of paleolithic artifacts in the Dordogne.

A rectangular motif with seven incisions is attached above the salmon. Below the animal there is another, poorly recognizable relief. A little further forward in the canopy, a rather indistinct, black hand negative was made out in the 1980s .

The excavation work by Denis Peyrony in the years 1917-1918 showed that the abri was inhabited both in the Aurignacien (at the same time as the Abri Lartet) and in the Gravettien (Upper Périgordien ). The salmon relief and the hand negative probably come from the latter period.

Oreille d'Enfer

Oreille d'Enfer , in German Höllenohr (French oreille - ear ), is a small cave a little up the valley from the Grand Abri and on the same side of the valley. Around 1900 the digging was quite chaotic and 300 kilograms of flint and various bone material were cleared away.

Nevertheless, two epochs of settlement can be distinguished in this cave - one in the Upper Périgordien (Gravettien), recognizable by the Noailles burin , followed by the Solutréen .

Four animal reliefs were discovered to the right of the entrance, which were then removed from the wall and taken to the Musée national de la Préhistoire in Les Eyzies. These are obviously deer . An age of the outgoing Périgordia can be assigned to the reliefs. To the right of the newly created recess, six groups of motifs can be seen that are very likely to represent predatory animal prints ( bear ?).

meaning

The importance of Gorge d'Enfer lies in the unique relief depiction of a fish, which was quite unusual for the Paleolithic .

literature

  • Henri Breul, R. de Saint-Périer: Les poissons, Les batraciens et les reptiles dans l'art quaternaire. (= Archives de l'institut de paleontologie humaine. Mémoire. 2). Paris 1927.
  • F. Carré: Nouvelle recherches à Gorge d'Enfer, Les Eyzies (Dordogne). Abri Pasquet, Oreille d'Enfer. In: Congrès Préhistorique de France. XXIe Session Quercy, 3-9 September 1979. Tome 2, Paris 198, pp. 76-89.
  • P. Citerne: Présence de l'esturgeon dans le bestiaire figuré paleolithique: conditions et limites de l'analyses morphologiques. In: Société Préhistorique Ariège-Pyrénées: Préhistoire. (= Art et Sociétés. Tome LIX ). 2004, pp. 71-92.
  • J.-J. Cleyet-Merle: Les figurations de poissons dans l'art paleolithique. In: BSPF. 84, 1987, pp. 394-402.
  • B. Delluc, G. Delluc, A. Roussot and others: Connaître la préhistoire en Périgord . Éditions SUD-OUEST, 1990, ISBN 2-87901-048-9 .
  • B. Delluc, G. Delluc: L'art pariétal archaïque en Aquitaine. (= supplément à “Gallia Préhistoire”. XXVIII). Paris 1991, ISBN 2-222-04600-9 .
  • P. Graziosi: The Art of the Paleolithic. Florence 1956, DNB 451648633 .
  • M. Lorblanchet: Les Poissons. In: Groupe de réflexion de l'art parietal paléolithique: Techniques et methodes d'études. Paris 1993, pp. 181-188.
  • M. Lorblanchet: cave painting. A manual. Sigmaringen 1997, ISBN 3-7995-9025-0 .
  • A. Marshack: Les racines de la civilization. Paris 1972, OCLC 25620959 .
  • D. Peyrony: Les Abris Lartet et du Poisson à Gorge d'Enfer (Dordogne). In: L'Anthropologie. 42, 1932, pp. 241-268.
  • A. Roussot: Abri du Poisson. In: L'art des cavernes. Atlas archéologique de la France. Atlas des grottes ornées paléolithiques françaises. Paris 1984, ISBN 2-11-080817-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c R. White: L'Affaire de l'Abri du Poisson. Patrie et Préhistoire. Fanlac, Périgueux 2006, ISBN 2-86577-253-5 .