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Montespan Cave

Famous for sculpture of bear
Used in Sympathetic Magic

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Horse engraving in Montespan Cave, sketched by Abbé Breuil
Horse engraving carved in clay, Montespan Cave. (Sketch by Henri 'Abbé' Breuil). Image from the Wellcome Collection. (CC BY 4.0)

Summary

The Montespan cave (or Ganties-Montespan cave) is one of several famous paleolithic caves in the central Pyrenees.

Noted for its rock engravings and clay reliefs, its most famous piece of cave art is a modeled clay sculpture of a headless bear, riddled with spear marks.

All these works date to the Magdalenian culture, the final phase of the old Stone Age.

The cave has been listed as a historic monument since 1924.

Location

The cave (also known as Grotte de Montespan, or Souterrain de Houantaou) is located in the communes of Montespan and Ganties of the Haute-Garonne, in south-west France.

Other famous decorated caves in the central Pyrenees region include:

Discovery

The cave has been known to locals for more than a century. The earliest documented exploration dates back to 1881, although it wasn't until the arrival of the intrepid French speleologist Norbert Casteret (1897-1987), that the site's prehistoric art was found.

Casteret and a friend, Henri Godin, first explored the cave in 1922.

Twelve months later, they returned and this time - after swimming through two underwater passages to reach the depths of the cave - Casteret found several new picture galleries, with engraved drawings on the walls, along with a number of clay reliefs, including a sculpture of a headless bear, riddled with spear marks.

For a short period, the latter discovery made Montespan cave world famous.

Later, Abbé Breuil (1877-1961) and Louis Capitan (1854-1929) surveyed the galleries and made sketches.

A monograph on Montespan was produced by Trombe and Dubuc in 1947, while a doctoral thesis on the site was completed by C. Rivenq in the 1980s.

Site

Montespan's archaeology is rather unusual. The cave is formed out of limestone, and has an underground river, as well as a number of large calcite formations (speleothems) known as gours (rimstone), which when created often look like stairs.

Most of the rock art is found deep in the cave, in a secondary gallery (off the main passageway) known as the Casteret-Godin gallery.

This gallery extends for about 160 metres and is only accessible by climbing a series of gours. The engravings and reliefs are found there in the final 60 metres.

Engravings & Sculpture

The walls of the Casteret-Godin gallery are covered with clay over their entire length.

They contain a variety of rock engravings and bas-relief sculpture in clay.

The engraved drawings include depictions of horses, bison, and anthropomorphs, and are interspersed with bas-reliefs of horses, bears and other damaged, worn, or otherwise unidentifiable creatures.

Similar engravings are found in the Hall of Chaos, a chamber of the main pasageway, where there are drawings of bison and horses, as well as a single bird.

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The Clay Bear

About half way along the Casteret-Godin gallery, in a rotunda-shaped chamber, there is the famous high-relief clay sculpture of the headless bear, or bear cub.

Measuring roughly 0.6 metres (2 ft) in height and 1.1 metres (4 ft) in length, the sculpture depicts a bear lying on its belly.

When found by Casteret, the skull of a bear cub rested on the sculpture's front paws.

Prehistorians believe the figure was originally covered by a bearskin, and the head was joined to the body with the aid of a stick.

As already mentioned, the sculpture was found riddled with holes made by spear points, suggesting it was used in some sort of sympathetic magic ritual.

The Montespan bear is also associated with bear worship (cult of the bear) - a practice supposedly initiated by Neanderthals during the Mousterian culture, or earlier.

More likely, it was an effigy that young hunters could practice on, in order to overcome their fears. After all, many caves were inhabited by bears, who were typically enormous and extremely fierce.

This dovetails with other theories suggesting that Magdalenian caves in the French Pyrenees may have been used as venues, to educate and instruct adolescents about the gradually warming world, which demanded greater cooperation in the management of resources.

In another side gallery off the main passageway, a frieze engraved in clay, called the 'hunting scene', shows horses pierced with similar holes. The frieze is thought to represent another ritualistic effigy.

In total, the cave contains 52 engraved or sculpted figures, including: 23 horses, 17 bison, 2 wild ox, 2 goats, 1 deer, 1 bear, 3 undefined creatures, 2 human-like figures, and 1 bird.

Some clay-drawn vulvas are also present at Montespan, similar to those at Bédeilhac cave in the Saurat valley, and the Aitzbitarte caves in the Basque Region of Spain.

Abstract Signs

Genevieve von Petzinger, an expert in cave signs used in Stone Age culture, has created a unique database of more than 5,000 signs from around 400 sites across Europe.

She has identified 32 abstract signs and symbols that are commonly found in paleolithic caves in France.

These pictographs are mainly associated with the Upper Paleolithic, and were likely devised by modern humans before they arrived in Europe.

Of the 32 signs, the following 11 are visible at Montespan:

References

(1) Henri Begouen. "Prehistoric discoveries made in the Montespan cave (Haute-Garonne)." Reports of the sessions of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, no 4, 1923, pp. 349-350.
(2) J. Charet. "The headless bear of Montespan." Bulletin of the French Prehistoric Society, t. 47, no 7, 1950, pp. 264-267.
(3) R. Begouën and J. Clottes. "Materials for use in the history of Montespan." Préhistoire Ariégeoise, 1988, vol. 43, pp. 13-33.

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