A distinctive archaeological feature of Palaeolithic sanctuaries is the scarcity of material found, both lithic and bone. Lascaux stands out due to the relatively large quantity of material found.
The site was used on three occasions between the Upper Palaeolithic and the early Holocene. The oldest archaeological evidence can be found in the Passage, the Nave and the Shaft. Only a few rare fragments of charcoal were found, testifying to a very brief stay.
The second occupation of the site was contemporary with the cave paintings. All the lithic and bone material found is attributed to this period. The function of only some of them is known: lighting, engraving or painting, pieces of jewellery, various tools and reindeer or deer bone remains. The last evidence of an ancient occupation appears only at the entrance to the cave (on the scree cone, in the Passage gours, and at the base of the Upside-Down Horse).
Drawing and painting material
Five crushers, three buckets and a larger number of limestone and schist plates, twenty-three in all, whose pigment-stained surfaces allow us to determine what they were used for, have been discovered.
Pieces of jewellery
The 16 shells collected are mostly fossilised. Three have perforations, meaning that they were intended for use as jewellery. They have been identified as coming from the west of France, thus providing evidence of exchanges or movements of human groups over several hundred kilometres.
Lithic material
While the traces found on several flint tools serve as evidence that they were used in activities linked to engraving, others may have a connection to woodworking. Backed flakes dominate, accounting for seventy of the one hundred and twelve tools identified. They are closely associated with assegais, especially in the Shaft. Morphological analysis shows that only one of the two edges was sharp. In some cases, the opposite edge, as well as the ventral face, were coated with a pinkish-coloured organic material, an exceptionally well-preserved mastic.
Bone artefacts
The bone artefacts include assegais, three pins, an eyed needle, an awl, a spall and a modified reindeer antler. The symbols that adorn some of them confirm their contemporaneity with the cave iconography. One of the fragments features a succession of interlocking angular motifs, similar to those engraved on the sides of the deer and horse in the Apse, where it intersects with the Passage. The same motif is carved into the handle of the red sandstone oil lamp discovered in the Shaft. Identical observations can be made for another complete assegai and two other fragments, whose characteristic cruciform symbols are repeated on the walls, particularly in the Axial Diverticulum, behind the Great Black Bull, and in the Passage, on the rump of the horse on the right-hand wall, near the Apse. On the same horse, a series of bracket-shaped lines is engraved, motifs that are reminiscent of those on the reindeer antler.
These visual similarities demonstrate the high level of consistency within the findings as a whole. These observations point to the unique nature of this sanctuary.
Find out all about archaeological research at the site of the Chauvet cave.
"LAsCO", a collective research project for a cultural recontextualisation of the occupations of the Lascaux cave.
Coordinated by Mathieu Langlais and Sylvain Ducasse (CNRS, PACEA laboratory), the project "LAsCO (LAscaux, sols, COntextualisation) – Lascaux reconnu? Contextualisation des sols paléolithiques de la cavité" (Lascaux, soils, contextualisation) – Lascaux revisited? Contextualisation of the cave’s Palaeolithic soils), brought together a multidisciplinary team of nearly thirty members from various institutions (CNRS, University, Nouvelle-Aquitaine Regional Directorate for Cultural Affairs, National Prehistory Museum, National Prehistory Centre) and consultancies between 2018 and 2021.
Funded by the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Regional Directorate for Cultural Affairs, the aim of the project was to provide a temporal and spatial context for the archaeological artefacts from the Lascaux cave that are now held at different places and institutions. Although publications on Lascaux (scientific or intended for the general public) are difficult to count today, no comprehensive study of the archaeological findings discovered in the cave had really been carried out since the 1970s and the first monograph ("Lascaux inconnu": 1979). The recent re-examination of the lithic equipment found at Lascaux by the project leads has facilitated their attribution to a specific chrono-cultural context, which had previously been uncertain.
Work carried out over the last decade on the material culture and technical productions of the Badegoulian and early Magdalenian periods has highlighted the existence of original industries at the interface between these two cultural traditions, characterised in particular by the production of very "typical" bladelets ("marginal right-side retouched bladelets"). These industries have now been documented in a limited area between the Pyrenees and Poitou. Conducted as part of the LabEx DEX_TER project ("Lascaux au cœur d’un réseau culturel inédit à la fin du Pléniglaciaire" [Lascaux at the heart of a unique cultural network in the late Pleniglacial period]), the revision and study of these industries has made it possible to observe the connection between this particular lithic production and shaped lamps with handles, usually in sandstone, sometimes decorated, and comparable to the famous Lascaux "oil lamp".
The LAsCO project has been developed in conjunction with the MicroPaGo project (Restitution Microclimatique et morphologique des conditions de réalisation des œuvres pariétales d'une Grotte Ornée de Dordogne – Lascaux), coordinated by Delphine Lacanette (Univ. Bordeaux, I2M laboratory) and was devoted to characterising the cave's soil levels with a view to conservation. The morphological and microclimatic reconstructions provide a basis for research into air flows, which are closely linked to issues of cave conservation. Work on reconstructing the morphology of soils as they were at the time of discovery, and also, in a more exploratory way, that of Palaeolithic soils, will enable clear interactions with archaeological data in the future.
This dual objective, archaeological and conservation-based, is also expressed through the creation of a virtual collection – "LAsCOtek" — which will feature the main objects found in the cave in the form of photogrammetric models (F.-L. Cuyaubère and X. Muth). This virtual collection will therefore go some way to compensating for the fact that the physical collections are so widely dispersed.
This project therefore serves as a genuine coordinated heritage initiative involving inventories, analyses and dating, combined with preventive conservation and restoration work to enhance the collections.
