Zinken

Encounter With Prehistory in Spain

...There is an Altamira clone.
With my husband, Richard, and two traveling companions from New York, I spent a morning in Neo Cave, the museum and reproduction cave that opened in July 2001...Link

'Oldest sculpture' found in Morocco

A 400,000-year-old stone object unearthed in Morocco could be the world's oldest attempt at sculpture... Link

Ancient carved 'faces' found

A keen-eyed Italian archaeologist claims to have found some of the oldest artwork ever - carved faces 200,000 years old... Link

The Cosquer Cave

The Cosquer Cave is located at Cape Morgiou, in the Calanques, near Marseilles. It can be accessed through a tunnel 175 metres in length, which is 37 metres under the sea level. The unique feature of this cave is that it contains several dozen works painted and engraved between 27,000 and 19,000 years ago...Link

Dating ancient paintings in the caves of Borneo

The matchstick figures and images of hands lining the Gua Saleh Cave in southeast Borneo were made at least 9,900 years ago, a team of French archaeologists has determined. That date suggests that people inhabited the Asian island, the third largest in the world, some 4,000 to 5,000 years earlier than scientists had previously believed... Link

Upper Palaeolithic figures

Duhard, Jean-Pierre: Upper Palaeolithic figures as a reflection of human morphology and social organization...Link

Britain and France in dispute over cave art

The age of the cave paintings at Chauvet, the Sistine Chapel of palaeolithic art in south eastern France, has become the subject of a war of words between British and French archaeologists...Link

The Cave of Cussac

The prehistoric cave of Cussac was discovered by Marc Delluc in September 2000 in the Dordogne Valley. With hundreds of Palaeolithic engravings dating to over 22,000 years ago, it can be considered as the "Lascaux of engraving", in reference to the most famous decorated cave in France...Link

30,000-year-old carving

Intricate ivory carvings said to be the oldest known examples of figurative art have been uncovered in a cave in southwestern Germany...
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Ancient Righties

Article in the New York Times (registration) reports on arguments from the University of Montpellier on the handedness of ancient cave painters... Link (via ABOUT Archaeology)

Museum planned for prehistoric cave art

The earliest-known example of prehistoric cave art in Britain could get a new £4.5m museum.

A lottery bid is being prepared to allow the cave art to go on public view, although the exact details have yet to be worked out.

The art - first revealed in June - consists of 12,000-year-old engravings of birds and an ibex carved into the stone walls at Creswell Crags, on the border of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire... Link

Weird rock carvings puzzle archaeologists

Mysterious rock carvings engraved into strange shapes are baffling UK archaeologists. One resembles a heart, another a human footprint...Link

Blombos Cave: 77,000 years old

Small and portable, this red ochre stone is engraved with what must be "tally" marks. It is one of two such stones recently found in the Blombos Cave in South Africa and have been dated as being 77,000 years old, making them the oldest form of recorded counting ever found.

The stone is worn which probably indicated that it was constantly handled over a period of time, how long is impossible to tell. It looks as though the stone has been reused at least once before as the lighter marks appear to have been erased rather than worn away naturally...Link

Palaeolithic art in France

The Bradshaw Foundation presents the recently published paper by Dr. Jean Clottes, French Ministry of Culture.

The paper provides a definitive and comprehensive analysis of the Palaeolithic rock art discoveries so far made in France. Given Jean Clottes' understanding of the complexities of the subject and his experience and knowledge gained from visiting numerous sites around the world, the analysis, interpretation and conclusions drawn have anthropological, sociological and artistic applications to all forms of ancient rock art...Link

Return to Chauvet Cave

A wonderful new book by Dr Jean Clottes on the Chauvet Cave, has been published in English...

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Dokumentation av hällmålningarna viktigt arbete

Jämtlands läns museum dokumenterar just nu länets hällmålningar och hällristningar. Dokumentationen är viktig för det är inte alls säkert att de nu tusenåriga bilderna, på lång sikt, fortsätter att vara synliga.
Det är problem med vittring och miljöförstöring som på sikt kan göra att hällristningarna och hällmålningarna försvinner...

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Nye fangstristninger i Ramsele, Sverige

Flera nya fynd från forntiden har gjorts i byn Stenvikstrand, Ramsele. Ett stenkast från den första nybyggaren i byn på 1800-talet har en stor hyddgrund hittats.
Vid Lillklippen bara några hundra meter därifrån har två nya hällmålningar upptäckts.
De nya fynden ligger nära de tidigare kända fornlämningsrika områdena Bastuloken och Sörånäset.
- Det här området har "Bastulokenstuk", säger arkeolog Bernt Ove Viklund, Härnösand, som hittat hyddgrunden och hällmålningarna.
De två hällmålningarna som föreställer två älgar...

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Songlines across the Wollemi

A treasure trove of Aboriginal art and culture has been discovered right on Sydney's doorstep...

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Rock paintings in Finland

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