ABSTRACT
Art makes a dramatic appearance in the archaeological record. For over 2.5 million years after the first stone tools appear, the closest we get to art are a few scratches on unshaped pieces of bone and stone (Bednarik 1992, 1995). It is possible that these scratches have symbolic significance-but this is highly unlikely (Chase and Dibble 1987, 1992; Davidson 1992; Mithen 1996a). They may not even be intentionally made. And then, a mere 30,000 years ago, at least 70,000 years after the appearance of anatomically modern humans, we find cave paintings in southwest France-paintings that are technically masterful and full of emotive power. Their appearance is one of the changes in the archaeological record that mark the start of the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe. The apparent sudden appearance of art may be no more than an artefact of the processes of preservation and discovery (Bednarik 1994). It is possible that images were being created in non-durable media for many thousands of years prior to the painting of these French caves. It is also possible that works of art await to be discovered in the archaeological record from much earlier times. Indeed, artefacts from the Early Palaeolithic (c.2.5 mya to 50,000/30,000 years ago) that are claimed to have symbolic significance, or even to have representational status, are occasionally published within the archaeological literature-such as the highly ambiguous Berekhat Ram ‘figurine’ (Marshack 1997; GorenInbar 1986; Pelcin 1994). The status of claimed ‘art’ in Australia at Jinmium dating to c.75,000 BP (Fullagger et al. 1996) remains unclear with regard to both the reliability and significance of the dates associated with the images, and the character of the art itself.
