Les Combarelles
Les Combarelles is a karst cave located about three kilometers from Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil in the French Dordogne department , in which numerous rock carvings from the Upper Paleolithic were discovered. The cave is part of the Franco-Cantabrian cave art .
Geographical location and description of the cave
The cave is located at the far right end of Les Combarelles , a small left side valley of the Grande Beune , about two kilometers before its left-hand confluence with the Vézère . The entrance to the cave is in the immediate vicinity of a homestead. Les Combarelles still belongs to the municipality of Les Eyzies . The cave was formed in a morphologically receding marl bank within flat-lying limestone of the Upper Cretaceous ( Coniacium ).
The cave can be reached via the D 48 from Les Eyzies to Saint-Geniès , or via the D 47 from Sarlat to Les Eyzies.
Behind its entrance, the cave is divided into two corridors. The left main corridor, Les Combarelles I, is around 300 meters long and mostly only one meter wide. This narrow, in places quite low corridor has 11 bends at which it can widen. Its floor was later lowered to make it easier to move forward. Most of the scratch drawings focus on the last 120 meters. The right, much shorter side aisle is called Les Combarelles II.
Research history
The first excavations were carried out in 1891/1894 by Emile Rivière in the entrance area of the right cave passage (Les Combarelles II). On September 8, 1901, Francois Berniche discovered the first engravings (Les Combarelles I) and immediately notified Henri Breuil and other experts. In 1924 Les Combarelles I became state property. In 1934 Armand Pomarel, Berniche's son-in-law, discovered the engravings in Les Combarelles II. These were published in 1952 by Breuil. In 1968 Jean-Philippe Rigaud undertook an emergency excavation in the entrance area of the cave, as it was to be rebuilt. He unearthed a stone inventory that confirmed the use of the cave in the Middle Magdalenian . From 1978 Claude Barrière examined the engravings. In 1987 Monique Archambeau published two 14C dates that confirmed the previous dating of the find inventory based on the lithic material and the fauna shown . Claude Barrière's 1997 monograph contains some newly discovered engravings.
Illustrations
The pictures attached to the walls ( French art pariétal ) are mainly made as scratch drawings. Black outline drawings are rare. Combarelles I contains around 800 incised drawings, mostly depictions of animals, but some human images can also be seen (48 in total). The animal drawings represent reindeer , ibex , mammoths , woolly rhinos , bears , big cats and wolves . The most common are the wild horses , of which there are around 140 illustrations, followed by bison , aurochs , bears, reindeer, mammoths and cervids . Representations of people are mostly stylized and similar to images from the Upper Magdalenian by Lalinde and Couze . Worth mentioning are the so-called tektiforms (from Latin tēctum = roof) or roof-shaped symbols, which also appear in the nearby Magdalenian caves of Bernifal , Font-de-Gaume and Rouffignac .
In Combarelles II there are around 30 scratched drawings.
Tools
Stone artifacts have been found just beyond the entrance to the cave.
age
According to André Leroi-Gourhan , most of the illustrations can be classified stylistically in the Middle Magdalenian. A few may belong to the Upper Magdalenian (Magdalenian V and VI) and are comparable to engravings in Teyjat and Limeuil .
There are two C 14 dates of a section at the entrance of Combarelles I examined in 1973 as absolute ages, which gave the following ages: 11,730 BP and 9430 BP, i.e. H. Upper Magdalenian.
Rey cave
At the entrance to the Les Combarelles valley is the Rey cave . Stone artifacts from the Moustérien , the Solutréen and the Magdalenian were discovered here. According to Henri Breuil, it contained very indistinct engravings.
UNESCO world heritage
Les Combarelles has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, along with other important sites in the Vézère Valley .
literature
- Monique Archambeau, C. Archambeau: Les figurations humaines pariétales de la grotte des Combarelles . In: Gallia préhistoire 33, 1991, ISSN 0016-4127 , pp. 53-81.
- Monique Archambeau, C. Archambeau: Informatien chronologique nouvelle aux Combarelles . In: Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 84, 1997, ISSN 0037-9514 , pp. 45-46.
- Aujoulat, N .: Grotto des Combarelles II . In: L'art des cavernes. Atlas des grottes ornées paleolithiques françaises . Ministére de la Culture and others ( Atlas archéologiques de la France ) . Paris 1984, ISBN 2-11-080817-9 , pp. 114-118 .
- Barrière, Claude: L'art pariétal des grottes des Combarelles . In: Samra / Paleo ( Paleo hors-série mai 1997) . Sèvres 1984.
- Barrière, Claude: Grotto of Combarelles I . In: L'art des cavernes. Atlas des grottes ornées paleolithiques françaises . Ministére de la Culture et al. ( Atlas archéologiques de la France ) . Paris 1984, ISBN 2-11-080817-9 , pp. 109-113 .
- Louis Capitan , Henri Breuil , Denis Peyrony : Les Combarelles aux Eyzies (Dordogne) ( Peintures et gravures murales des cavernes paleolithiques ) . Masson, Paris 1924.
- Delluc, B. & G., Roussot, A. & Roussot-Larroque, J .: Connaître la préhistoire en Périgord . Editions SUD-OUEST, 1990, ISBN 2-87901-048-9 .
Web links
Coordinates: 44 ° 56 ′ 37 ″ N , 1 ° 2 ′ 32 ″ E