Grotte du Visage
| Grotte du Visage
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| Location: | Charente department , France | |
| Height : | 125 m | |
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Geographic location: |
45 ° 41 '2 " N , 0 ° 25' 16" E | |
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| Geology: | Jurassic Limestone | |
| Type: | Karst cave | |
| Discovery: | 2005 | |
| Overall length: | 255 m | |
The Grotte du Visage (formerly also known as Grotte de Vilhonneur ) is a cave in the former French commune of Vilhonneur in the Charente department ( Nouvelle-Aquitaine region ). In it human remains, cave paintings and petroglyphs from Gravettia were found.
etymology
The French masculine noun visage means face, face . This refers to a cave painting found in the cave, which reproduces a human head and face using natural concretion . The figure's hair is represented by a stalactite that divides in an arc .
history
The Grotte du Visage has been known for a long time. Originally called Grotte de Vilhonneur after the place where it was found , it was renamed Grotte du Visage in order to avoid any confusion with the neighboring cave Grotte du Placard . The paleolithic works of art and human bones were discovered in December 2005 by speleologists from La Rochefoucauld under Gérard Jourdy over two years of research . Your research was focused on exploring the karst system of La Rochefoucauld . The results were announced to the public by the Ministry of Culture in 2006. The cave was privately owned at the time.
Geography and description
The Grotte du Visage is located not far north of the center of Vilhonneur (21 kilometers east of Angoulême ) in a wooded area belonging to the hamlet of Les Garennes , in the immediate vicinity of the Cro du Charnier . It is only 500 meters from the Grotte du Placard. The cave system, which is a maximum of 255 meters long, is very complex. Its deepest point is a good 30 meters below the surface. The different levels are connected to one another via three sinkholes. Access is via a sinkhole that leads to a 40 meter long hall with a small underground lake. From here a descent takes place through the sinkhole Puits du Vent into the rear, lower cave parts , in which the interesting finds were made.
Finds
In addition to the face, the Grotte du Visage also contains petroglyphs , including, for example, 10 red dots only a few square centimeters in size (6 of them were partially covered with calcite) and 8 black rod-shaped characters as well as the very beautiful negative of a left (?) Framed in black . Hand whose thumb is strangely doubled. The hand negative is at the entrance to the main hall, also known as the Salle des Peintures . In its stylistic design, it is very similar to the hand negatives by Pech Merle , which are regarded as early Gravettias.
The Upper Paleolithic artists always knew how to use natural unevenness in the wall for the positioning of their works and to emphasize certain characteristics of the depicted archaic animals - horses, big cats, bears and reindeer. Even if the images in the Grotte du Visage are not as spectacular as in other painted caves, they nevertheless help to enrich our knowledge of the Gravettian culture of that time.
Human bones (vertebrae, tibia and shoulder blade) were discovered under a heap of rubble in an adjoining room. Remnants of ungulates and a horse's bones also appeared nearby . A human skull was also revealed ( Vilhonneur I ). It was in perfect condition, only the lower jaw was missing. He was at the end of a narrow passage in a small sinus that was accessible from the main room. It is a juvenile Homo sapiens , recognizable by the details of the skull. Obviously the skull was deliberately deposited here, but it is not yet clear whether the bones and the skull actually belonged to the same individual. Five hyena skeletons were also discovered in the nearby 9-square-meter Salle des Hyènes , but they are probably older than the paintings.
geology
Present here are Jura sediments of the northern Aquitaine Basin - flat limestones of the lower and middle Bajocian . These form a steep face opposite the Holocene alluvium of the Tardoire, which meanders past a little further to the east . The Bajocium shows strong karstification phenomena with numerous cave formations in the area around Vilhonneur.
Dating
Based on stylistic comparisons, the works of art are assigned to the Upper Paleolithic , more precisely to the Gravettian era, which lasted from 28,000 to 22,000 years ago . They are therefore older than the pictures in Lascaux .
The human bones and the hyena bones could be dated using the radiocarbon method . The human bones yielded 27,000 years ago. The hyena bones were a bit older, dating 28,000 years ago. The latter are likely to be about the same age as the paintings. It is possible that the Grotte du Visage was the burial place of an important person who was buried according to a very specific rite.
meaning
The importance of the Grotte du Visage lies in the association of Gravettian cave paintings and human bones. In this respect, only the Cussac Cave comes close to it .
Protective measures
The Grotte du Visage is privately owned. Your access is limited to a few visits with very small groups per year. The visits are organized by the owner.
Individual evidence
- ↑ J. Airvaux, N. Aujoulat, J.-F. Baratin, C. Veauval and D. Henry-Gambier: Découverte d'un reseau karstique orné au lieu-dit Les Garennes, commune de Vilhonneur, Charente . In: Préhistoire du Sud-Ouest . tape 13 , 2006, p. 25-35 .
- ^ J. Clottes, L. Duport and V. Feruglio: Les Signes du Placard . In: Bull. Soc. Prehist. l'Arige . tape 45 , 1991, pp. 15-49 .
- ↑ M. Lorblanchet: Quercy, pigments des grottes ornées . Midi-Pyrenées region, Ministre de la Culture et de la Communication, Bilan scientifique 1995, 1996, p. 152-155 .
- ^ L. Scheuer and S. Black: Developmental Juvenile Osteology . Elsevier Academic Press, London 2000.
- ^ MH Wolpoff: Paleoanthropology, second ed. McGraw-Hill, San Francisco 1999.
- ↑ G. Le Pochat and others: Montbron . In: Carte géologique de la France at 1/50 000 . BRGM, 1986.
- ↑ D. Henry-Gambier, C. Beauval, J. Airvaux, N. Aujoulat, J.-F. Baratin and J. Buisson-Catil: New hominid remains associated with Gravettian parietal art (Les Garennes, Vilhonneur, France) . In: Journal of Human Evolution . tape 53 , 2007, p. 747-750 .