Doubt Cast on Age of Oldest Human Art
Abstracted from New Scientist by Ros Strong
Original article by Jenny Hogan
New England Antiquities Research Association
Doubt Cast on Age of Oldest Human Art
Abstracted from New Scientist by Ros Strong
Original article by Jenny Hogan
April 18, 2003
This article was based on a longer article in Antiquity Vol. 77 #295, March 2003 by Paul Pettitt and Paul Bahn. (see comments below)
"If the rock art in the Chauvet cave is 30,000 years old, it is the most ancient example of human art in existence and the implications for the evolution of culture are immense. This date is accepted and celebrated by archaeologists. But could it be wrong?" The Chauvet cave was discovered in the Ardeche region of France and the spectacular paintings of wild animals "are so sophisticated that specialists in ice-age art first assumed they must be relatively recent..But a few months later, tiny samples of black charcoal were scraped from some of the paintings and sent away for radiocarbon dating." The 30,000 year old date that came back from the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Science (LSCE) in Gif-sur-Yvette, France shocked everyone.
"People are generally wary of stylistic dating, explains Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford. So once the more 'scientific' radiocarbon results were available, most researchers dismissed the more recent date suggested by the paintings themselves. Instead, the carbon data was used to support the revolutionary theory that sophisticated art developed extremely rapidly once modern humans arrived in Europe, and archaeologists who thought culture evolved over millennia were sidelined."
Pettitt and Bahn argue that archaeologists must be wary of radiocarbon dates. "Bahn's suspicions were aroused when he translated the latest coffee-table book on the Chauvet cave into English. Around 30 radiocarbon ages area presented.but the measurements were all made at the same French laboratory. Using results from only one team, however skilled, just is not scientific, says Bahn..Worse, the same laboratory is currently embroiled in an argument over the age of the artwork in another cave, Candamo in Spain. They dated black dots on its walls to 30,0000 years ago, but Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts estimated the age of a second sample to be just half that. The point is that carbon dating rock art is difficult.the samples tend to be incredibly tiny."
"Everybody agrees there are problems,' says Marvin Rowe, who heads the radiocarbon-dating lab at Texas A&M University in College Station. Contamination from groundwater or rock scrapings may further confuse the results..Jean Clottes, the archaeologist at the French ministry of Culture who led the team exploring the cave, stands by his Chauvet results. But he has agreed to send Rowe a sample of charcoal from the cave floor, so that they can compare their results."
Comments by Roslyn Strong on:
Current Problems in Dating Paleolithic Cave Art: Candamo and Chauvet
by Paul Pettitt and Paul Bahn
Antiquity, Volume 77 #295, March 2003, p.134-141
Roslyn Strong:
The subject of dating, is of great interest to NEARA. Especially in the area of inscriptions, petroglyphs and petrographs (painted rock art), where tests are performed on minute quantities of material: such as charcoal, pigment and "desert varnish," results depend on complicated laboratory preparation. The chemicals used to separate organic material and to eliminate contamination can themselves be a problem.
In a separate article, p. 142-145, Style, Chauvet and Radiocarbon, Jean Clottes and Hélène Valladas of the LSCE defend their position with several arguments. The charcoal dated in one lab might come from a 15,000 year old tree, but another sample might be from a tree felled 15,000 years earlier. Pollution might have affected some samples more than others; samples were collected at different times; Candamo cave has long been open to visitors and prehistoric peoples who may have added to the paintings. Chauvet was closed by a rock fall and has been closed to visitors. "Torch marks superimposed on a film of calcite covering earlier animal images were dated to around 26,000 BP." They say "It is not valid to use the Candamo age as a litmus test for the reliability of radiocarbon dating of prehistoric cave paintings in general. The results obtained by either LSCE or Geochron from Candamo may prove to be anomalous, but that has no bearing on Chauvet."
The question of stylistic dating of rock art caused widespread dissension several years ago when the incredible rock paintings on a cliff at Coa, Portugal were discovered. The insistence of the Portuguese archaeologist Zilhao that the style was much older than the quite recent carbon dates eventually proved to be correct. There was a lot at stake, and the government's interest in building a dam played a large part in the controversy.
The importance of dating is illustrated by another article in the same issue of Antiquity p 146-154, How Reliable are Radiocarbon Laboratories? A report on the Fourth International Radiocarbon Inter-comparison.
With a discrepancy of roughly 15,000 years between laboratories, the controversies swirling among professionals has led to bitter divisions that spill over into the two camps involved in the interpretation of rock art. That debate? is touched on in another article in the same issue of Antiquity, p. 165-170. Putting the Record Straight: Rock Art and Shamanism by J.D. Lewis-Williams. "Is the term shamanism being applied uncritically and subjectively to rock art? J.D. Lewis-Williams responds to criticism from Alice B. Kehoe and Mairi Ross featured in earlier numbers"
Williams begins "Alice Kehoe (2002:p384-5) proposes divided camps in the study of rock art and contrasts a 'popular interpretation, which ascribes rock art to shamanism, with an; 'emerging trend' which is more circumspect and reflexive. Such dichotomy is both unfair and unhelpful. In the 'popular' category she makes free with my name and ascribes views to me, but interestingly does not cite any of my publications. She is prodigal with emotive words like 'primitivist' and 'racism',"
This is what I reported in NEARA Transit, Autumn Equinox 2002: Antiquity, Vol. 76 No.292 June 2002; Emerging Trends Versus the Popular Paradigm in Rock-Art Research, by Alice Beck Kehoe. "This is in response to an article in the September 2001 Antiquity. Kehoe begins 'Mairi Ross' well-written article nicely describes the current popular interpretation of rock art attributed to hunting-gathering societies; it does not describe an emerging trend. That trend, I believe, marshals critiques of Lewis-Williams' one-size-fits-all assertion that hunter-gatherer shamans created rock art to record their trance visions..So far as I have been able to discover, there is no published record of a shaman making rock art..Lewis-Williams and his followers fell into the trap of primitivism..As Ross notes, anthropologists have been recognizing hunter-gatherers' complex knowledge systems..Still to emerge is recognition that, on the one hand, the label 'shaman' negates the diversity of religious practitioners among colonized indigenous nations, and, on the other hand, obscures common practices, based upon human cognitive structures and physiology .' Ross commented that she 'became critically aware of how loosely I and other scholars were using those terms. I believe she is correct."
New England Antiquities Research Association