liitiilNews 



PvMished Monthly by Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago 



Vol.4 



NOVEMBER, 1933 



No. 11 



MAGDALENIAN SCULPTURE AND CAP-BLANC SKELETON IN THE STONE AGE HALL 



By Hbnby Field 

 Assistant Curator of Physical Anthropology 



The fifth* group in the Hall of the Stone 

 Age of the Old World (Hall C) shows a 

 reproduction of the most important sculp- 

 ture of the Magdalenian period — the frieze 

 of horses in the rock-shelter of Cap-Blanc 

 in the Dordogne region of France. 



In 1865 Lartet and Christy excavated 

 the great rock-shelter of La Madeleine, 

 Dordogne, where they found evidence of a 

 prehistoric culture, subsequently called the 

 Magdalenian. During 

 the period in which 

 that culture flourished 

 in Europe, some 

 20,000 years ago, the 

 climate was cold. The 

 mammoth, woolly 

 rhinoceros, reindeer, 

 musk-ox, bison, wild 

 horse and many other 

 animals wandered 

 across the meadows. 

 Cave-bears struggled 

 with the ancient 

 hunters for possession 

 of the caves. 



The Magdalenians, 

 who were members of 

 the Cro-Magnon race, 

 had long, narrow 

 heads with high cheek- 

 bones, a combination 

 which is known as the 

 "disharmonic" type. 

 The brow-ridges were 

 well developed above 

 large, rectangular eye 

 sockets. Medium in 

 stature, with well- 

 shaped heads and 

 pleasing features, they 

 must have been im- 

 posing. The Magdalenian artists produced 

 the finest naturalistic art of prehistoric 



♦The first four groups, Chellean, Neanderthal, 

 Aurignacian and Solutrean, have been pictured and 

 described in the July, August, September and October 

 issues of Field Museum News. 



times. The advanced flint-flaking technique 

 of their Solutrean predecessors disappeared, 

 but the working of bone became a highly 

 developed art and a strong influence in the 

 life of the people. Their weapons included 

 spear-throwers and harpoons of various 

 types, while bone needles and awls were 

 important articles of domestic equipment. 

 In order to light the caves in which they 

 lived and practiced their art, animal fat 

 was burned in crude stone lamps. 



In the Museum group an accurate 



Copyright Field Museum uf N;itural History 



Magdalenian Achievements in Sculpture 



The Cap-Blanc rock-shelter, with its famous frieze of horses carved in the limestone 

 some 20,000 years ago, as reproduced in the Hall of the Stone Age. In the foreground is ; 

 exactly in the position in which the original prehistoric one, shown in adjoining case, 



reproduction of the Cap-Blanc rock-shelter 

 shows part of the magnificent frieze of 

 Celtic horses cut in high relief on the wall. 

 This illustrates the remarkable sculptural 

 attainments of the Magdalenian artists. 

 The landscape painted by Staff Artist 



Charles A. Corwin shows the location of 

 this rock-shelter above the valley of the 

 meandering Beune River. 



In the foreground of the group a modern 

 skeleton has been placed in the position in 

 which the bones of a young Magdalenian 

 girl were found during excavations in 1911. 

 The original Cap-Blanc skeleton, purchased 

 in 1926 from M. Grimaud, is on exhibition 

 in an adjoining case. The skull and pelvis, 

 which had been crushed by overlying rocks, 

 have been restored by T. Ito under the direc- 

 tion of Dr. Gerhardt 

 von Bonin and the 

 writer. The bones 

 showed no signs of 

 disease. From the 

 condition of the teeth 

 and long bones, as 

 revealed by X-ray 

 photographs, it is 

 estimated that this 

 girl was about eighteen 

 years of age. An ivory 

 point, found over the 

 abdominal cavity, 

 may have been the 

 cause of death. 



The reproduction 

 of the rock-shelter is 

 the work of Frederick 

 Blaschke, who visited 

 Cap-Blanc in 1927 in 

 order to make an 

 accurate scale model 

 of the frieze. Henri 

 Barreyre took motion 

 and still pictures of 

 the site, and colored 

 sketches and paintings 

 were made by Charles 

 R. Knight and Pierre 

 Gatier. 



The group was 

 planned and directed by the writer with 

 the generous cooperation of Abbe Henri 

 Breuil, the leading authority on prehistoric 

 art, who is a professor at the College de 

 France and a Corresponding Member of 

 Field Museum. 



wall by prehistoric men 



a human skeleton placed 



was found on this site. 



Hall 24 Reinstallation Completed 



With the reinstallation recently of the 

 collection of rhinoceros horn cups, the 

 Chinese archaeological collections in George 

 T. and Frances Gaylord Smith Hall (Hall 

 24), which have been undergoing thorough 

 revision and improvement for more than a 

 year, are now completely reinstalled. The 

 new method of lighting the cases with con- 

 cealed illumination, and the new buff- 

 colored screens and labels, greatly enhance 

 the beauty of the exhibits and make them 

 much easier to study. 



Invertebrate Fossils Collected 



An important collection of invertebrate 

 fossils, ranging from the Cambrian to the 

 Cretaceous period, has been received at the 

 Museum as the result of a field collecting 

 trip in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and 



New York, recently completed by Sharat 

 K. Roy, Assistant Curator of Invertebrate 

 Paleontology. Mr. Roy was accompanied 

 by Floyd Markham of Chicago, who 

 rendered valuable assistance in assembling 

 the collection. Of special interest are com- 

 plete specimens, particularly from Cam- 

 brian localities, where hitherto only frag- 

 mentary fossils had been known to occur. 



New Bronzes Added to Keep Hall 



Three more bronzes of racial types, by 

 the sculptor Malvina Hoffman, have been 

 added recently to the seventy-four which 

 occupied Chauncey Keep Memorial Hall 

 (Hall 3) when it opened in June, bringing 

 the series a step nearer to completion. The 

 new types are a Yucatecan Maya of Mexico, 

 a Tehuelche of Patagonia, and a Georgian 

 of the Caucasus. 



Flora of Barro Colorado 



Based primarily upon collections in the 

 Herbarium of Field Museum, The Flora of 

 Barro Colorado Island, Panama has been 

 published as No. 5 of the Contributions from 

 the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard Uni- 

 versity. Paul C. Standley, Associate 

 Curator of the Herbarium of Field Museum, 

 is the author. The pamphlet contains 178 

 pages, a map, and twenty-one heliotype 

 plates, and it enumerates 1,259 species of 

 plants. This is a surprisingly large total, 

 even in the tropics, for an area as small as 

 Barro Colorado, an island of only some six 

 square miles. The island is in Gatun Lake 

 in the Panama Canal, and is the site of a 

 laboratory maintained by the Institute for 

 Tropical Research of the National Research 

 Council. Mr. Standley has made several 

 visits to Barro Colorado. 



