ABSTRACT
Since its discovery in 1940, the painted cave of Lascaux in France has been developed as a tourist attraction. Following its closure in 1963 for conservation reasons, several replicas have been created to offer the public the experience of one of the largest Palaeolithic sites discovered to date. Each of these replicas invites us through their variations to question the relationship between the original and the copy and therefore what a simulation apparatus must integrate from the original to be credible. Based on an analysis of the first developments of the original cave and two facsimiles opened in 1983 (Lascaux II) and 2016 (Lascaux IV) the purpose of this chapter is three-fold: first to discuss how the success of a simulation apparatus depends as much on the political and ideological context as on the possibilities offered by the reproductive technologies on which it is based; second, to show how these different transformations inform us that a simulacrum is not a closed object, definitively detached from the original to which it refers, but that its status as a copy and its legitimacy are on the contrary constantly renegotiated; third, to contribute to the discussion on the importance, both conceptual and material, of simulacrum in the experience of modern tourism and post-tourism.
