The Montastruc decorated stone (Palart 518) is an example of Ice Age art, now in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docu ...

. A human figure that appears to be female has been scratched or

engraved Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an in ...

to decorate a fragment of

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms wh ...

used as a lamp. The piece was excavated from Courbet Cave, Penne, Tarn,

Midi-Pyrénées Midi-Pyrénées (; oc, Miègjorn-Pirenèus or ; es, Mediodía-Pirineos) is a former administrative region of France. Since 1 January 2016, it has been part of the new region of Occitania. It was the largest region of Metropolitan France by ...

, France, on the northern bank of the river

Aveyron Aveyron (; oc, Avairon; ) is a department in the region of Occitania, Southern France. It was named after the river Aveyron. Its inhabitants are known as ''Aveyronnais'' (masculine) or ''Aveyronnaises'' (feminine) in French. The inhabitants ...

, a tributary of the

Tarn Tarn may refer to: Places * Tarn (lake), a mountain lake or pool formed in a cirque excavated by a glacier England * The Tarn, a park, nature reserve, and lake in Mottingham, Royal Borough of Greenwich. * Tarn or Barnsley, South Yorkshire, Eng ...

. It is dated to around 11,000 BCE, locally the Late

Magdalenian The Magdalenian cultures (also Madelenian; French: ''Magdalénien'') are later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic in western Europe. They date from around 17,000 to 12,000 years ago. It is named after the type site of La Madele ...

culture during the

Upper Palaeolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coi ...

, towards the end of the last Ice Age. It was excavated by Edouard Lartet and

Henry Christy Henry Christy (26 July 1810 – 4 May 1865) was an English banker and collector, who left his substantial collections to the British Museum. Early life Christy was born at Kingston upon Thames, the second son of William Miller Christy of Woodbi ...

in 1863, and among other items bequeathed to CChristie's museum. The dimensions of the object are: length , width , depth . It is not normally on display, but between 7 February and 26 May 2013 it was displayed in an exhibition at the British Museum, ''Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind'' The ''

Swimming Reindeer The ''Swimming Reindeer'' is a 13,000-year-old Magdalenian sculpture of two swimming reindeer conserved in the British Museum. The sculpture was made in what is now modern-day France by an unknown sculptor who carved the artwork from the tip of ...

'' and

Mammoth spear thrower The Mammoth spear thrower is a spear thrower in the form of a mammoth, discovered at the "Montastruc rock shelter" in Bruniquel, France. It is from the late Magdalenian period and around 12,500 years old. It now forms part of the Christy Collecti ...

were found at the same site. The other side of the slab of limestone has a natural depression in which fat was burnt, likely for lighting the rock shelter. The engraving seems to have been made after the stone lamp broke, as the figure is neatly centered on the fragment. The headless figure is shown from the side, bending to the right, with the large rounded buttocks and thigh carefully drawn. The thin torso features a small sharp triangle that may indicate the breasts, or perhaps arms held out. The two lines defining the front and rear of the profile are continuous and "confidently drawn", though they converge at knee level. Extra lines below the waist may represent an apron or skirt.British Museum, Jill Cook's description Similar characteristics can be found in engraved figures from Neuwied in Germany.

Notes

References

* Blurton, R. T. 1997. The enduring image: treasures from the British Museum. London: The British Council. * "British Museum
British Museum online collections
"lamp" {{Prehistoric technology, state=expanded Art of the Upper Paleolithic Prehistoric objects in the British Museum Engraving Individual lamps 1863 archaeological discoveries

See also

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References