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

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

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

engraved Engraving is the practice of incising a design on 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 inta ...

to decorate a fragment of

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

used as a lamp. The piece was excavated from Courbet Cave, Penne, Tarn, Midi-Pyrénées, France, on the northern bank of the river

Aveyron Aveyron (; ) is a Departments of France, department in the Regions of France, region of Occitania (administrative region), Occitania, Southern France. It was named after the river Aveyron (river), Aveyron. Its inhabitants are known as ''Aveyro ...

, a tributary of the Tarn. It is dated to around 11,000 BCE, locally the Late

Magdalenian Magdalenian cultures (also Madelenian; ) are later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic in western Europe. They date from around 17,000 to 12,000 years before present. It is named after the type site of Abri de la Madeleine, a ro ...

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 ...

, towards the end of the last Ice Age. It was excavated by Edouard Lartet and Henry Christy in 1863, and among other items bequeathed to Christie'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'' and Mammoth spear thrower 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

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