images from la marche cave : palaeolithic art or recent fakes?

Images from La Marche cave : palaeolithic art or recent fakes? Sandström, Svenhttp://kulturarvsdata.se/raa/fornvannen/html/2015_001Fornvännen 2015(110):1 s. 1-9Ingår i samla.raa.se

Caves are common around the small village ofLussac-les-Chateaux (Vienne) in southernFrance.In one of them, Cave of the Goblins (Grotte desFadets), had been found numerous stone slabswith incised Palaeolithic drawings, but apparentlynothing judged to have been of any great impor-tance. In November 1937, however, a villagerfound some flint and bone objects in the nearbysmall cavern of La Marche. He brought them tohisneighbor, themillerLéonPéricard,who recog-nised them as prehistoric tools. Péricard beganexcavations in the cavern and found among otherthings some slabs or flagstones with incised orengraveddrawings.He in turn entrusted theman-agement of the investigation to Stéphane Lwoff,head of the region’s telephone and telegraphservices and once a student at the School of theLouvre. Together they foundother objects of flintandbone,butalso reportednumerous further lime-stone slabs with drawings.

In addition to quite a number of horses andother animals, these slabs mainly presented anextraordinary variety of human motifs, severalshowing people wearing various clothing articles

– things otherwise unknown within the overallPalaeolithic tradition.

Already in the following year the abbé HenriBreuil, at that time the by farmost respected spe-cialist in the field, was invited to the site andspent some time there. Later Breuil wrote a shortpresentation (1942) of the site and the finds.Péricard also arranged for some of the objects,including several with drawings, to be brought tothe Musée de la Préhistoire in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. In 1939 he andLwoff were joined for a shorttime by Léon Pales, a collector who later under-took an extensive publication of the items (Pales1969; 1989). The following year Lwoff showedPales an extensive collection of incised slabs thathe had recently brought together – mainly frag-mented but most apparently still complete asdrawings.

Lwoff presented his own depictions of a fewslabs with commentary to the local archeologicalassociation of Ariège and the Société Françaised’Archéologie (Lwoff 1957; 1962). His presenta-tions caused some excitement, but they were notgiven universal credence. Count Henri Bégouin,

Fornvännen 110 (2015)

Images from La Marche cave.Palaeolithic art or recent fakes?By Sven Sandström

Sandström, S., 2014. Images from the La Marche cave. Palaeolithic art or recentfakes? Fornvännen 109. Stockholm.

In 1937 various Palaeolithic finds were made in the cave of La Marche in south-western France. Two years later numerous incised drawings, allegedly of the sameorigin, appeared and were shown to a collector, Léon Pale, who published them.Many of these images are very different from other Palaeolithic drawings, showinghuman figures, not least women, with clothing and vivid facial expressions, as wellas an elephant. This paper argues that the drawings from La Marche, which aresometimes cited in current literature on cave art, are fakes.

Sven Sandström, Blåbärsvägen 18, SE–263 62 [email protected]

Art. Sandstro?m 1-9:Layout 1 15-02-16 14.01 Sida 1

who taught archeology at the university of Tou-louse and was responsible for several investiga-tions of cave art, reacted strongly and labeled theimagery a scandal and a mystification. In the fol-lowing discussion, however, he apparently accept-ed the authenticity of the drawings themselves –Breuil had so far accepted them–while still oppos-ing Lwoff ’s interpretations of their meanings. Inany case it was evident that the excavations hadbeen carried out in an unprofessional manner.There was no documentation whatsoever for theoriginal positions of the objects. In spite of thetroubled ground conditions, it had seemed possi-ble to date them to the Magdalénian – slightlylater than the celebrated cave paintings of Las-caux, but earlier than those of Altamira and actu-ally earlier than most art in and from caves insouthwestern Europe.

Approaching La MarcheWhen first confronted with depictions of theseimages in various brochures I was intrigued andwondered about the possibilities of really reach-ing the truth in the matter. The only way to dealwith it appeared to be through the intermediaryof not very satisfactory depictions. As an art his-torian I am engaged in an independent study ofpictorial art from the Late Palaeolithic, and Iapproach the images primarily from the perspec-tive of the thorough formalism in their shapes,not their style or type categorization. Yet someofthe subjectmatter in theLaMarche imagery seem-ed almost revolutionary, and Breuil (1979, p.336) gave it a very positive mention in his majorsurvey. Thus I devoted some time to Léon Pales’volumes, and later studied the depictions inStéphane Lwoff ’s reports.

The onlyway to account for the original formsof the incised pictures has been in a painstakinglabor to separate, by sight, the lines of each onefromthe superimposed lines of other drawings orother irrelevant forms, and then to depict theresult by hand. Objectivity must thus be soughtin relation to the motifs, while anyone involvedin these matters will be aware that the quality ofthe depictions rarely approaches that of the origi-nals. Lwoff was an acceptable draughtsman, buthis drawings are far too summary and moreoverquite personal in style, while Pales’ drawings are

throughout quite unsatisfactory, to say the least –but that is not to say that they would be untruth-ful to their motifs.

The publications contain many photographsof the incised slabs, but few of them offer anypossibility of verifying the drawings. All are verydark, and almost all the relevant drawn lines aredoubled and crossed over with a mass of unrelat-ed lines. Only in two or three cases could I keepthem together in one single undisturbed glance,sufficient for really judging the real shapes in acontinuous interrelation.

However, in this case I would not really havepreferred todealwithmore skilful depictions.Thatwould justhaveaddedto theuncertaintyabout theoriginal engravings. Todrawbyhand is never sim-ply to reproduce something; drawing entails ab-straction, and the more qualified it is the moreprobably the result will have a lot to say about thedraughtsman rather than about the original.

The overall Palaeolithic pictorial tradition aswe know it is not very rich in pictures of humans– but there are enough of them for us tomake outa rather firm tradition with some variations. TheLa Marche imagery numbers quite a few humanrepresentations, so there is an evident interest inscrutinising these in relation to the otherwiserecurrent features of such pictures.

Heads and physiognomyIn the picture of two males (fig. 1) the heads andfaces are slightly grotesque, not naturalistic at all,and the outlines of the bodies are simple andcasual. There are however plausible parallels indrawings from other caves, though not with gri-maces as evident as those from La Marche. Butone to my knowledge rare feature here is the re-presentation of two individuals together. And un-like other pictures of humans from the same era,these heads have physiognomies, though not real-ly expressive ones, just twowry faces. All throughthe La Marche repertoire the faces are strikinglystereotyped, yet otherwise stereotypy is almostnever possible to establish in unchallenged cavedrawings.

There are apparent similarities between thesefigures and the single head fig. 2. This one, with-out being more of a portrait, is designed in moredetail, with an ear like a small sausage and a nose

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that is clearly distorted by theway the nostrils areaccounted for. And it is difficult to find featuresin cave drawings that are not in a general accor-dance with nature. In this context there is a longseries of similar heads, some of which have beenfrequently reproduced.

The drawings in figs 1–2 deviate entirely fromthedominant naturalistic tradition. Someof thesedepictions are verified in Pales’ book by photosof original slabs; no doubt these depictions be-long together with them. A few of these depic-tions of heads are drawn with a firmer hand –such as the one in fig. 3. Fig. 4 belongs to the ma-jority and seems fairly true to the correspondingslab. The same goes for most of the other itemsthat I have been able to check directly againstreproductions on the pages. Thus we must con-clude that they all relate directly to the supposedoriginals. Below I will show that the distinctionbetween these two aspects is important.

Judging fromPales’ depictions, three individ-ual artists can thus be identified in theLaMarcheimagery. And in his volumes Pales reproducedmost or all of the known depictions in question.His own drawings are too vague to allow us tojudge anymore precise qualities in their originals– and so there is no reason to believe that Pales’drawings depict images that he had himself in-cised on the slabs (fig. 4).

Note that within the overall Palaeolithic tra-dition, men’s heads are very rare motifs. Whenthey appear at all, drawings of male figures tendtowear animal heads ormasks. Tomyknowledgeit is only towards the end of this epoch – laterthan thedate suggested for theLaMarche imagery– that any distinctly human heads whatsoeverappear.And even these have quite schematic facialfeatures and not even attempts at physiognomies.

3Images from La Marche cave


Fig. 1. Drawing signed L. Pales of a slab with twoincised men. Pales 1969–89, pl. 156.

Fig. 2. Photograph of the slab in fig. 1, detail of aman's head. Pales 1969–89.


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Fig. 3. Drawings signed S. Lwoff of two slabs, one with a sitting man and one with an anachronistic elephant.Lwoff 1957 figs 2 and 4.

Fig. 4. Photograph of a slab with an incised man and drawing of the same signed L. Pales. Pales 1969–89.


Rotund women and the body outlineDrawings and paintings of women are somewhatmore common, but above all there are the famousfemale figurines. These aremostly conspicuouslyfat and have not the slightest suspicion of facialfeatures. (Bar one or two rather inarticulate andgeographically dispersed exceptions.) Some femalefigurines have no heads at all despite seeming tobe complete. When something like an articulat-ed head can be seen – as with most “Venus” typefigurines – it may seem to be neatly hair-dressedor perhaps just crownedwith a dense pattern, butthe little surface left for the face is always blank.

A few pictures of females among the manyfrom La Marche follow the same rule. But mostbreak it: they have articulate faces, even expres-sions or at least grimaces, and moreover they aredepicted with loose hair under bonnets or broadhair ribbons (figs 5–6). This contrasts complete-ly against the overall Palaeolithic iconographictradition. And bonnets are far from the only ele-ments of clothing depicted.

Most women from La Marche are markedlyobese as with most cases in the older and overall

Palaeolithic tradition. But not all of them: someare just not very slim. Almost all of these figureshave quite a loose body shape, obese or not. Thereis an overall generosity in the lineament amongthe depictions that allows us to understand thebeings as well fed. This comes forth clearly inLwoff ’s depictions and it tallies with Pales’ pre-sentations where photographs of the originalslabs verify it. These features must have beenmanifest on the original slabs.

In contrast, in the absolutemajority of Palaeo-lithic depictions of any other being these appearslim and firm, normallywithin a continuous out-line. Thismight seemnatural in view of the over-riding naturalistic direction within Palaeolithicart, and given the often harsh conditions of a lifefor people and animals in an Ice Age wilderness.

In the scholarly literature the samegeneral rea-soning concerning life conditionshaswidelybeenused in interpretations of the recurrent obesity ofthe“Venuses”andother female figurinesanddraw-ings fromtheepoch.According to theseviews, theobese body form was not a simple report on fac-tual conditions, nor an indication that all women



Fig. 5. Drawing signed L. Pales of a slab with an obesewoman. Pales 1969–89, pl. 97.

Fig. 6. Drawing signed L.P. of a slab with an obesewoman and a bald bearded man. Pales 1969–89, pl.108.


at the time were obese. Obesity would not havebeen seen as a burden – it may have been consid-ered an important and imposing quality, and rareat a time when starvation was a common experi-ence (fig. 7).

In this particular aspect the women from LaMarche do not deviate from the tradition. Butthere is at least one feature in which some of themdiffer. In the general tradition the bellies of theobese women are carried high, expanding thewaistline – as expected in a culture where cloth-ing did not support the body. But some of theobese women from La Marche (e.g. fig. 7) havebellies that hang loose towards the knees, whichwas probablymore typical for obese sisters of e.g.the 1930s and 40s, when many women wore cor-sets.

That same picture also illustrates anotherinteresting deviation from a Palaeolithic mannerof drawing. The guiding principle within thatentire tradition was a continuous, absolute pro-file or silhouette for the represented being, ani-mal or human. This trait is structural, and in myopinion not even the slight modifications thatresearchers have pointed out in certain late draw-ings ever really deviate from that principle – eventhough in late productions you can see two back-bones in an animal and occasionally even all fourlegs. The woman in fig. 7 is seen in a broad andopen ¾-profile which offers a structural differ-

ence, in that some of the major lines indicate themerevolumeof thebody.Acontinuous line sweep-ingly joins the contour at the right with the bellyand the opposite thigh.

European artists make many approaches in asimilar direction shortly after 1400, but hardlyever before. Only with Raphael’s mature draw-ings do we see such a way of accounting for bodyvolumedeveloped fully, as is seen in fig. 8. It is notleast in this development due toRaphael that ourrealistic tradition of shaping an illusion of threedimensions in images starts.

Mammoth vs. elephantThere are quite a few images of mammoths fromLaMarche, all fittingperfectly intoa long traditionofmostlyrelatively simpledrawingsof thesameani-mal. A curious trait is that tusks are never shown –and this goes also for the La Marche items.

But finding at least two pictures of elephantsfrom La Marche (fig. 3) is something entirely ofits own.Here alsowe see the tusk, and this in per-fect fitting with that species. No elephants livedin Europe during the Magdalénian, and no otherPalaeolithic site has yielded any images of ele-phants (Delporte 1909, pp. 205–206). The singlespecies of the kind that had once lived here – thestraight-tusked elephant, Palaeoloxodonantiquus–disappeared far earlier in the history of theworld.

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Fig. 7. Seated woman, engraveddrawing on stone slab, La Marche.Musée Nationale des AntiquitésNationales, Saint-Germain-en-Laye.


Modern fakesThere seems to be something fishy with this sto-ry. Therewas never any ancient reality behind themany sensational features of a relatively advancedculture suggested by theLaMarche imagery. Sim-ply because of the elephants that conclusion is in-escapable to me. But there is much more to sup-port it. There is an impressive number of dis-agreements between La Marche and the overallPalaeolithic tradition, concerning formation aswell as iconography, as discussed above. Most ofthe pictures on the slabs seem to have been madeby two different people. I am convinced that one

of themwas theLouvre-trainedLéonLwoff,whilethe other had less formal training as a draughts-man. The second person relied instead on a tradi-tion of humorous caricatures in local newspapers,where a certain comical style, easy for anyone tocopy, was spread all over Europe long before the30s and 40s.

In the scholarly literature about prehistoricculture and art I have found reproductions andquite a lot of rather blank comments on the draw-ings from La Marche, but almost no traces of anyprevailin influence from them. It seems that schol-ars have avoided exploring or using them in any



Fig. 8. Raphael, Study for the AlbaMadonna, 1510. Sanguine, pen andink. Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille.


depth – even though half a century ago they seem-ed to enjoy general acceptance as genuinePalaeo-lithic art. But certainly, more than one seriousstudentmusthave started to investigateanddevel-op ideason thebasis of this source, probably rathersoon to become quite bewildered and then even-tually dropping the project – if not before, thenwhen they came across the elephants.

But, as mentioned, a few of the depictions ap-pear rather often as illustrations of scholarly texts,nottomentioninpopularpublications.Therefore itcannot be considered sufficient that the learnedworldhas seemingly turned its backquietly on thematter. There is a need for a more emphatic ter-mination of the case. That is what I hope to offerwith the present piece.

Real archaeology from La MarcheI do not call all finds from La Marche into ques-tion. Certainly the flint tools etc. may have beenauthentic, and the same is possibly the case for anumber of the incised slabs, especially those ac-counted for directly by Pales in his publications.Firstly,manyof his depictions, althoughweak,arein accordance with known types of Palaeolithic art.Secondly, given Pales’ poor draughtsmanship, hecould not have incised the slabs that he struggledso to depict. When it is possible to identify thoseknown iconographic types among his depictions,it must be because he worked with somethingclearer and more consistent than the resultingpictures before his eyes.

All of Pales’ depictions relate to elements ofthe collection of incised slabs. None are likely tohave been pure inventions. Though not estab-lished in detail, this view is made probable by theconsiderable number of photos of the originalsthatwere published togetherwith the depictions.So from a scientific point of view it is more im-portant to acquit Pales from suspicions of fraudthan divide the responsibility between the twoother men. When we try to find out what contri-bution La Marche can really make to the under-standing of Palaeolithic art, it does not really

matter if the fakes were made by one or two peo-ple.

Leaving theseweightier considerations aside,we can conclude by pondering the picaresquehoax in itself. Pales came into the picture too lateto have made anything beyond depictions ofslabs. Also, in his publications a lot of the draw-ings are signed by Lwoff. His style is very muchthe same in published photographs of incisedslabs and in his signed drawings of slabs, such asthe one in fig. 4. This is a farmore advanceddraw-ing than the one in fig. 2, themanner ofwhich is ascharacteristic as it is poorly articulated. There arepublished photos of incised slabs done in thesamemanner. Thus itmust be concluded that themaker of the drawing in fig. 2 had also incised itsmodel, and the same would then also go for theentire group with the same characteristics.

We know that Léon Péricard and StephaneLwoff worked together on the La Marche matterover several years, and it is evident that the draw-ings of type fig. 4 cannot have been done by themaker of fig. 2. In signing his drawings, Lwoffactually declared himself guilty of fraud. Butthere is no such proof against the other maker ofdrawings and corresponding slabs, nothing thatwould hold up in court.

ReferencesBreuil, H., 1942. A propos des gravures de la Marche.

Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique de l’Ariège 39. Tara-scon-sur-Ariege.

– 1979. FourHundredCenturies ofCaveArt.NewYork.Lwoff, S., 1957. Iconographie humaine et animale du

Magdalénien III Grotte de La Marche. CommunedeLussac-les-Châteaux(Vienne).BulletindelaSociétépréhistorique de France 54:10. Nanterre. www. persee.fr

– 1962. Industrie de l'os. Iconographie humaine etanimale du Magdalénien III, 7e publication. Grottede La Marche, commune de Lussac-les-Châteaux(Vienne). Bulletin de la Société préhistorique de France59:1–2. Nanterre. www.persee.fr

Pales, L., 1969. Les gravures de La Marche, part I. Bor-deaux.

– 1989. Les gravures de La Marche, part II—IV. Paris

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Images from La Marche cave

Summary

In November 1937, a villager in Lussac-les-Cha-teaux (Vienne) in southern France found foundPalaeolithic objects in the cave of La Marche. Heshowed them to his neighbour, Léon Péricard,who began excavations there and soon announcedthat he had found slabs with incised or engraveddrawings. Péricard then entrusted the manage-mentof the investigationtoStéphaneLwoff, aone-time student at the School of the Louvre. Togeth-er they reported numerous further limestoneslabs with drawings.

In addition to quite a number of horses andother animals, the slabs mainly depicted an extra-ordinary variety of human motifs, several show-ing people wearing various articles of clothing –things otherwise unknown within the Palaeo-lithic tradition.

Some of the objects with drawings werebrought to the Musée de la Préhistoire in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Lwoff presented a few depic-tions of these slabs of his own with his commen-tary to the local archaeological association. In1939 the collectorLéonPales learned about these

drawings and began copying them, personallyand not very well, finally publishing them in sev-eral volumes. Judging from Pales’ depictions,three individual artists can be identified behind ithe La Marche imagery.

Many of the incised drawings have a generalsimilarity to well-known cave art, but there isalso an unexpected number of images of people,including obese women like Venus of Willen-dorf, but with facial expressions and elements ofclothing, otherwise unknown in the Palaeolithicrecord. There are also a lot of animals, includingan elephant, a species that had gone extinct inEurope several tens of thousand years before theMagdalenian.

Though the poor artistic quality of the pub-lished drawings make for some difficulty in judg-ing the style, there are many individual featuresin these drawings that suggest amodern original.Together with the presence of the elephant theyconfirm long-held suspicions – most of the LaMarche drawings are modern fakes.


images from la marche cave : palaeolithic art or recent fakes?

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