Archaeologists Uncover 38,000-Year-Old Pointillist Engravings

Pointillism — a painting technique in which dots are used to create the illusion of a larger image — was developed in the 1880s by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. However, a team of archaeologists led by New York University Anthropology Professor Randall White has now found evidence of this technique thousands of years earlier — dating back about 38,000 years. The discovery is detailed online in the journal Quaternary International.

Three blocks from Abri Cellier with identifiable representations: mammoths (A and B) and a horse (C). Image credit: Randall White et al, doi: 10.1016/j.quaint.2017.02.001.

Major finds by Prof. White and his colleagues from France, Canada, the United States and the UK — which include images of mammoths and horses — confirm that a form of pointillism was used by the Aurignacian, the earliest modern human culture in Europe.

These add weight to previous isolated discoveries, such as a rhinoceros — from the Grotte Chauvet in France — formed by the application of dozens of dots, first painted on the palm of the hand, and then transferred to the cave wall.

Earlier this year, Prof. White’s team reported the uncovering of a 38,000-year-old pointillist image of an aurochs, a finding that marks some of the earliest known graphic imagery found in Western Eurasia and offers insights into the nature of modern humans during this period.

Now, the archaeologists have found another pointillist image — this time of a woolly mammoth – in a rock shelter of the same period known as Abri Cellier (commune de Tursac, Dordogne).

“On the upper part of the modified surface is a series of parallel alignments of cupules ranging from 0.5 to 1 cm in diameter,” the archaeologists wrote in the paper.

“We count 12 vertical lines with roughly 5 cupules per line. To the right the cupules are less regularly aligned and the arrangement is more oblique. The grouping of cupules is bounded by the smooth (purposely smoothed?) contour of the block’s edge, which resembles a cervicodorsal line with pronounced withers.”

“Two elongate cupules were strategically placed to deepen a natural hollow on the upper edge of the block, which had the effect of deepening the hollow of the neck. Another cupule defines a relief that gives the impression of an animal head.”

“Other cupules are more difficult to read given poor preservation of part of the surface below the head but with only a little imagination one can read a trunk and/or tusks of a pointillist mammoth.”

“Smoothing by fine abrasion on either side of a zone of vertically aligned cupules suggests the outline of the front leg and chest.”

Abri Cellier has long been on archaeologists’ short-list of major art-bearing sites attributed to the Aurignacian culture.

Excavations in 1927 yielded 15 engraved and/or pierced limestone blocks that have served as a key point of reference for the study of Aurignacian art in the region.

In 2014, Prof. White and co-authors returned to Abri Cellier, seeking intact deposits that would allow a better understanding of the archaeological sequence at the site and its relationship to other Aurignacian sites.

The researchers had their fingers crossed that the new excavation might yield new engraved images in context, but nothing prepared them for the discovery of 16 stone blocks.

“The 2014 season allowed the addition of 16 new engraved, painted or pierced blocks to the 15 already known from the 1927 excavations,” they said.

One of the newly discovered blocks, broken in half prehistorically, was found in place with a radiocarbon date of 38,000 years ago.

Remarkably, the remaining 15 blocks — including the pointillist mammoth, one of three mammoth figures recognized during the new work at Abri Cellier — had been left on-site by the 1927 excavators.

As many of the engraved traces are rudimentary and thus difficult to interpret, the original excavators set them aside just in case they might have something inscribed on them.

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Randall White et al. Newly discovered Aurignacian engraved blocks from Abri Cellier: History, context and dating. Quaternary International, published online February 24, 2017; doi: 10.1016/j.quaint.2017.02.001