Archaeology Magazine - July/August 2020 - 53

A painting (right, top) of a human figure
with the head of a bird being gored by an
aurochs bull is located in a deep shaft in
the Upper Paleolithic cave of Lascaux (ca.
15,000 b.c.) in southwestern France. Other
paintings (right, below) at Lascaux depict
horses, aurochs, and deer.

these out-of-the-way spaces could have
been restricted to high-ranking members
of secret societies. Paintings on this scale
would have been executed by highly skilled
ritual artists and would have demanded
resources to which only elite members of
the community would have had access,
from the materials for scaffolding to
special pigments for paints. Most of the
imagery in these caves is of animals, such
as the horses, stags, and aurochs depicted
at Lascaux. Humans in the paintings often
have altered features including animal
heads, suggesting either ritual costumes
and masks or ceremonies where shamans
would have entered into a trance state and
transformed into powerful animals.
If the inner reaches of the caves were
likely the most sacred areas, open only
to small, exclusive groups, then the outer,
unpainted spaces may have functioned as
a kind of antechamber for those awaiting
permission to enter. At Lascaux, the walls
of these side chambers are covered with
small, roughly carved images and scribbles
that often overlap. A similar clutter of
engravings behind a human-stag hybrid
figure known as the Sorcerer is found at Les
Trois Freres. Hayden believes these may be
the prehistoric equivalent of doodles. Villeneuve's analysis of these panels showed
that many of the images are low on the walls, and Hayden
imagines their makers sitting or squatting, passing the time
sketching on the nearest available surface. "They were made
by individuals who were told to wait in given locations, probably because they weren't allowed to witness some things
that transpired in the central chambers,"
Hayden says. "Perhaps they were new initiates or actors in ritual dramas waiting to
make appearances in the main chambers."
Lascaux
Paintings aren't the only evidence of
Bernifal
secret societies in these caves, says Hayden. Font-de-Gaume
Many Upper Paleolithic caves, including
Lascaux and another called Bernifal, have
entrances that are oriented toward the rising or setting sun on the summer or winter
solstice. Astronomical knowledge would
Les Trois Freres
have been powerful in prehistoric times,
and was probably restricted to very few.
archaeology.org

Ethnographers have noted that such skills were developed and
kept from common knowledge by secret societies in groups
such as the Chumash. A number of secret societies are also
known to have partaken in human sacrifice and cannibalism,
and human remains with cut marks have been identified in at
least 15 Upper Paleolithic sites in France.
Hayden's suggestion that secret societFRANCE
ies controlled ritual power in the Upper
Paleolithic period challenges the traditional
SPAIN
notion that people of the time were egalitarian, with no class distinctions and equal
Chauvet
access to resources. Emmanuel Guy, a specialist in European Paleolithic art, thinks
Hayden makes a good case for the connection between cave art and ritual power. "It's
becoming increasingly clear that the social
0
25 50 miles
organization of nomadic Upper Paleolithic
populations, at least in some areas, was
53

http://www.archaeology.org

Archaeology Magazine - July/August 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - July/August 2020