L’analyse de l’art préhistorique

Abstract

For a long time, the analysis of prehistoric art was based only on the stylistic study of the representations in caves or on mobiliary artefacts. Nevertheless, chemical analyses were undertaken early in the 20th Century at the invention of the prehistoric art: Henri Moissan, French chemist, Nobel prize in chemistry, for his fluorine discovery, analysed the paintings of Font-de-Gaume and la Mouthe (Périgord). The results were obvious: iron oxides for the red pigments, manganese oxides for the black, less often carbon (charcoal or mineral). So archaeologists proposed general conclusions for the painting composition, and André Leroi-Gourhan claimed with reason that stylistic analysis was the main issue to promote the knowledge of the prehistoric art, “the older one and the one which had the longer history”. After 1990, new physico-chemical characterisations were undertaken, and they gave significant results, which enabled us to describe the “chaîne opératoire” followed by the first artists. Through chemical analyses of pictorial matter, of tools, of colours, one wish to characterise precisely the pigments, their provenance, the way they have been worked (choosing, grinding, mixing…), the way the painting matter has been spread on the support, the different colour hues. The development of the methods of the chemical analysis has reinforced another possibility to understand the prehistoric artistic activity, with the final goal to bring to light the strategy, the intention of Upper Palaeolithic cultures.