The masters of the past: A case study on the attribution of Upper Palaeolithic cave art and its implications for the study of art instruction and non-utilitarian skills transmission in prehistory

The main research question of this thesis has been: can we assign prehistoric artworks to their authors? Throughout the history of the studies on prehistoric (and in particular Upper Palaeolithic) art, authors have struggled to find space against their work; even when scholars have started exploring the people behind the masterpieces, a persistent scepticism has permeated the possibility of a truly art historical attribution process, despite the lack of any real obstacle to such an endeavour. Minoritarian voices within the scholarly community have set the theoretical foundations and the technical processes to attempt the task of attribution via a three-stage method comprising macroscopic observation, microscopic analysis and experimental confirmation. This method is put to the test on a peculiar case study within the panorama of prehistoric portable art: the cave of La Marche (Lussac-Les-Châteaux, Vienne), a Middle Magdalenian site that has returned an impressive collection of human-themed engravings on plaquettes. After providing a broader regional context for Poitou-Charentes and a local context for the locality of the site, the plaquettes are examined in their tracings for macroscopic observation, thus extrapolating a first series of “Groups” and “Hands” based on their rendition of the human head; a sample of the plaquettes subsequently undergoes microscopic observation via the RTI technique to confirm the first attributions; finally, an experimental protocol is carried out with volunteers with varying artistic skills, to confirm the macroscopic and microscopic evidence. The conclusion is therefore drawn that not only La Marche represent an example of “art workshop” in prehistoric Europe, but also that attribution of prehistoric artiworks is indeed possible and necessary to understand how non-utilitarian skills
are transmitted in Magdalenian communities.