May 25, 1905] 



NA TURE 



THE EYOLVTION OF ENGRAVING IN THE 



STONE AGE. 

 "VXJEhave at various times directed the attention of 

 » • our readers to this interesting subject, but new 

 discoveries are continually being made. M. Ed. 

 Piette, whose name is so well known in connection 

 with his investigation of the famous cave of Mas- 

 d'Azil, has given in I'AnthropoJogie (xv., 1904, p. 129) 

 a classification of the deposits formed in caves during 

 the age of the reindeer ; starting as a geologist, he 

 was firmly impressed with the fact that stratigraphy 

 is at the root of fruitful advance in prehistory, and 

 this end he has kept steadily in view. He gives the 

 following table of relative chronology of the epochs 

 which form part of the age of the reindeer : — 



Epochs of Epochs of Epochs of 



Lartet and Christy G. de Mortillet E. P.etle 



Madelaine and \ Magdalenienne GourHanienne 



Liugerie-haule ( Solutreenne Papalienne 



Mouslier Mouslerienne Mosterienne 



The following is his cultural sequence, in which the 

 epoch of Moustier does not take part, "as at that 

 time the fine arts were not yet born " : — 



Ageor _ 



Layer 

 'Of engravings and harpoons of 



reindeer anller 

 ) Of engravings without haipoons 

 or with very few harpoons 

 Of engravings with cut-out con- 

 [ tours 



Glyptic 



Epo. 



Of engraving 

 (Gourdanienne) 



Of sculpture 

 (Papalienne) 



j Of sculptures in low relief 

 \ Of sculptures in the round 



The sculptors in the round used their flint tools for 

 many purposes, including carving, chiselling, scrap- 

 ing, engraving, and fjurnishing ; they certainly 

 sketched their statuettes before modelling them, and 

 they polished them. The sculptors in low relief 

 scraped and burnished. Their works were not child's 

 play, but the product of a real artistic sense. They 

 studied and drew heads, limbs, and feet (Fig. i). The 

 sculptors in the round figured the flayed animal and 

 even the skeleton. When mammoth ivory became 

 rare reindeer antlers were employed for carving, and 

 this appears to have led the way to the next artistic 

 developments. 



Many of the figures in this copiously illustrated 

 paper are from the layer of sculptures in low relief ; it 

 was in this layer that several pieces were found 

 decorated with circles and bold spirals (Fig. 2). At first 

 these designs were carved deeply, they gradually 

 became less deep, until in the Gourdanienne epoch 

 they were merely lines. M. Piette believes the spirals 

 were symbolic, and suggests that they had reference 

 to snakes. Plant forms were rarely drawn, and of 

 the very numerous animals engraved by far the most 

 frequent were those upon the flesh of which the men 

 fed. 



As the relief in the designs became less and less, 

 the artist had to employ the graver. .'\t the end of 

 the Papalienne epoch the artists undertook to execute 

 very low reliefs on plates of bone not more than two 

 millimetres in thickness. They made silhouettes, 

 modelling the contours on both sides ; but the great 

 difficulty of carving such thin objects soon led to its 

 abandonment. They replaced this style by cutting out 

 contours and engraving the surface. This technique 

 was common in the region of the Pyrenees, but rare 

 to the north of the Garonne ; being a transitional form 

 it did not last long, whereas sculptures in low relief 

 persisted into later layers. 



At first, following the traditions of the sculptor, the 

 engraver represented isolated animals, but the artists 

 of Laugerie-basse appear to have been the earliest to 



NO. 1856, VOL. 72I 



design groups (Fig. 3). In the upper layers signs are 

 engraved which M. Piette considers to be of the nature 

 of inscriptions. 



Thanks to the rigid stratigraphical method em- 

 ployed by M. Piette, "he has been enabled to upset the 



Fig. t. — Bone Throwin; 

 (Mas-rt'Azil). Layer of 

 tures in the round. Les 



-stick 

 sculp- 



\^'\ 

 M 





,FiG. -.—Portion of rein- 

 deer antler decorated 

 with circles and other 

 signs (Lourdes). Layer 

 of sculptures in low 

 relief. 



a priori argument that sculpture was a later form of 

 pictorial art than engraving, and has established that 

 the reverse is the case. 



In a subsequent paper, entitled " Les Ecritures de 



