Overview

Was it a trick of the light that drew our Stone Age ancestors into caves to paint in charcoal and red hematite, to watch the heads of lions, likenesses of bison, horses, and aurochs in the reliefs of the walls, as they flickered by firelight? Or was it something deeper—a creative impulse, a spiritual dawn, a shamanistic conception of the world efflorescing in the dark, dank spaces beneath the surface of the earth where the spirits were literally at hand? In this book, Jean Clottes, one of the most renowned figures in the study of cave paintings, pursues an answer to this “why” of Paleolithic art. While other books focus on particular sites and surveys, Clottes’s work is a contemplative journey across the world, a personal reflection on how we have viewed these paintings in the past, what we learn from looking at them across geographies, and what these paintings may have meant—what function they may have served—for their artists. Steeped in Clottes’s shamanistic theories of cave painting, What Is Paleolithic Art? travels from well-known Ice Age sites like Chauvet, Altamira, and Lascaux to visits with contemporary aboriginal artists, evoking a continuum between the cave paintings of our prehistoric past and the living rock art of today. Clottes’s work lifts us from the darkness of our Paleolithic origins to reveal, by firelight, how we think, why we create, why we believe, and who we are.

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Clottes has probably seen more rock art around the world than anyone else, and this gives him an unusually broad perspective on the questions raised by the prehistoric cave art of his native France. Not everyone agrees with the shamanistic interpretations toward which he leans, but this very accessible discussion of both French cave art specifically and of rock art in general is wide-ranging, and his is certainly a point of view which anyone interested in Paleolithic art should know about. --Ian Tattersall, author of The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack and Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution

Clottes explores why prehistoric people took to cave painting and speculates on what the art means. --Jeremy Mikula Chicago Tribune, Printers Row

The deep understanding, love, and empathy that Clottes has for the art, imagination, and spiritual world of our Ice Age ancestors is so great that this book is a must-read. --Lawrence Guy Strauss, University of New Mexico Journal of Anthropological Research, on the French edition

Clottes has been looking at and thinking about the cave paintings of ice age Europe for almost half a century. I can t imagine anyone has a greater knowledge about the paintings, carvings, sculptures, and their associated archaeology than this great prehistorian. It s not just greater knowledge, but an emotional response: I ve seen tears come into his eyes as he was describing a painting that he must have seen and talked about many times before, and that still tugged at his heart as much as his brain. Clottes s enormous depth of learning and affection emanate from every page of this book. --Steven Mithen, University of Reading New Scientist

Author Information

Jean Clottes is a prominent French archaeologist and former general inspector for archaeology and scientific advisor for prehistoric art at the French Ministry of Culture. He is the author of Cave Art, among other books. Oliver Y. Martin is a lecturer in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Robert D. Martin is curator emeritus in the Integrative Research Center at the Field Museum, Chicago.

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