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Mas d'Azil Cave

Type-site of Azilian Culture
Links Magdalenian to Mesolithic

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Entrance to Mas-d'Azil Cave
Entrance to Mas-d'Azil in the Ariège, type site of Azilian culture. Image by Traumrune. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

'Azilian Points' and Pebbles

In Stone Age culture, the Grotte du Mas d'Azil is one of several famous caves in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. Others include Trois Freres Cave and the more southerly Niaux Cave.

Mas d'Azil cave was occupied by modern humans from the Aurignacian era onwards, but its importance stems from the fact it was the first site to yield diagnostic tools and other artifacts of the Azilian culture.

These included: 'Azilian points' (projectile points with rounded retouched backs), as well as a type of flat harpoon made out of antler or animal bone.

In addition, the cave yielded numerous 'Azilian pebbles' - flat stones decorated with a series of abstract markings - the key prehistoric art of the period.

Azilian culture ran from about 10,500 to 8,000 BC and acted as an overlapping link between the Magdalenian culture and the early Mesolithic (Epipaleolithic).

It coincides broadly with other Epipaleolithic tool industries like: the Tardenoisian (northern France), Maglemosian (denmark), Ertebølle (Denmark), and Asturian (Spain).

Location and Excavation

The Mas d'Azil Cave is a large tunnel-shaped cave complex excavated by the Arize river, out of the limestone Massif du Plantaurel in the Ariège department of the French Pyrenees.

It sits in the centre of the region of Franco-Cantabrian art, an area of great cultural activity during the Upper Paleolithic.

The cave itself measures 420 metres in length and 50 metres in height, and serves as a natural tunnel for the D119 road, which runs right through it.

The size of the cave - especially its 'Hall of the Temple' - is not typical of Azilian sites, many of which are no more than shallow rock shelters at the bottom of a cliff face.

The cave was first excavated by Edouard Piette (1827-1906) between 1887 and 1894, and later by Henri Breuil (1901-02), Joseph Mandement (1936-58), and by Marthe and Saint-Just Péquart between 1937 and 1943.

The cave's main chambers include: the Hall of the Temple, the gallery of Flint, the Bear Gallery and the Piette room.

Azilian Culture

Although the Pyrenees lay to the south of the ice sheets, the area was impoverished when the ice melted, because warmer temperatures led to the replacement of the area's savannah grasslands by a forested environment, which in turn led to the disappearance of the reindeer herds - the mainstay of Magdalenian prosperity.

This impoverishment is reflected in the characteristics of the Azilian toolkit.

Tools are smaller, less substantial and less durable than those of the earlier Upper Paleolithic.

This reflected the huge change in hunting strategy necessitated by the new environment. Previously, during the Magdalenian, hunters went on regular seasonal hunting trips in pursuit of a single large animal species (reindeer, horses, bison).

During the Azilian, these were replaced by shorter forays into the forest, in search of several smaller species (wild pigs, rabbits, pine martens).

These shorter but more numerous hunting trips, which also targeted fish (pike, tench, perch, bream, eels, mollusks) and other aquatic resources, required a lighter, less substantial and more diverse toolkit.

Note also, that the population in southern France fell as people left to return to their (now habitable) ancestral lands in the north, or left to follow the reindeer.

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Artifacts at Mas d'Azil

Stone tools recovered from Mas d'Azil included microliths, hafted onto a handle of bone or antler; Azilian-style projectile points; barbed harpoon heads; numerous drills, burins, claw shaped scrapers (grattoirs), and several decorated spearthrowers (atlatls).

In addition, archaeologists found a number of lissoirs - a leather-softening tool which was extremely valuable in the processing of animal hides into leather. For more, see: History of Stone Tools.

Prehistoric Art at Mas d'Azil

The parietal art at Mas d'Azil includes a small quantity of cave painting and rather more rock engravings, mostly bison and horses, but also a few engraved drawings of birds, deer and fish.

Abstract symbols are also present, mostly dots and lines, but also including circles and penniforms.

The mobiliary art is more exciting. To begin with, about 1,600 thin, flat pebbles were discovered, decorated with red or black geometric markings (dots, stripes, zigzags and crosshatch patterns) in red or black.

These so-called 'Azilian pebbles', first identified at Mas d'Azil, occur in around 40 caves - mainly in France but also in a few sites in Spain, Italy and Switzerland.

Were they used in rituals or shamanic ceremonies? Did they communicate some kind of message?

Piette, the archaeologist who found them, believed they served as a primitive writing system, presumably along the lines of the 'Inscription' at La Pasiega Cave in Spain. But further evidence is lacking.

Contour Découpé

Mas d'Azil is also noted for a particular style of portable prehistoric art, namely the 'contour découpé' or outline cut out.

This is typically an animal, animal head or fish carved from a fragment of bone often taken from a hyoid or scapula and perforated for use as a personal ornament.

Two-thirds of all these decorative works come from three caves in the French Pyrenees - Le Maz d'Azil, Labastide and Isturlitz.

Spearthrowers and Bone Disks

Also found in the Pyrenees are a number of wonderfully artistic spearthrowers (atlals), such as the intact specimen carved from antler, found at Mas d'Azil.

Embellished with an image of a young chamois it is almost identical to another at Bédeilhac Cave a few miles away. Fragments of ten other similar specimens have been found, which suggests that a great many more must have been carved originally.

Another type of portable art found at Mas d'Azil is the engraved bone disk or rondelle, which archaeologists believe may have served as weights for drop spindles for spinning yarn.

Sculpture

Another beautiful artifact at Mas d'Azil is a sculpture in the round of a fish, which was discovered during an excavation by Péquart.

The carved fish head - a detached piece of the original complete fish - is noted in particular for its inlaid eyes filled with a reddish substance, probably a type of resin.

Similar eyes appear on numerous other sculptures in the cave.

Other discoveries of prehistoric sculpture including a female figurine carved from the tooth of a horse, and two ibex carved on both sides of a lower tooth of a sperm whale. Both date to the Middle Magdalenian, around 13,000 BC.

Portable Engravings

These include one lissoir decorated with an engraved drawing of a salmon and a trout, and another engraved with aurochs and chevrons - both dated to around 12,000 BC.

Many of the Stone Age artifacts recovered from the cave, now reside in the Musée d'Archeologie Nationale et Domaine, St-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris.

Caves in Southwestern France

Other famous paleolithic caves in SW France, include:

References

(1) "Journey Through the Ice Age." Paul G. Bahn; Jean Vertut (1997). p. 96. ISBN 9780520213067.
(2) "Sur un buste de femme du Mas d'Azil." Piette, E., 1888. Matériaux pour l'histoire de l'homme, 3e série, 5, p. 378-379.
(3) "Gravure du Mas d'Azil et statuettes humaines de la période glyptique." (Engraving of the Mas d'Azil and human statuettes from the Stone Age) Piette, E., 1902: Bulletin de la Societé d'Anthropologie de Paris, séance du 5 novembre.
(4) "Grotte du Mas d’Azil" (Mas d'Azil Cave) in "L’art des cavernes, Atlas des grottes ornées paléolithiques françaises." Alteirac A., Vialou D, 1984: Imprimerie Nationale, Paris. p. 389-394.
(5) "Azilian" and "Azilian pebbles". In Shaw, Ian; Jameson, Robert (eds.) A Dictionary of Archaeology. Jameson, Robert (1999). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 978-0-470-75344-6.

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