L'art mobilier gravettien de la grotte de Gargas : une plaquette gravée inédite de la collection Cartailhac-Breuil (IPH)

Résumé En

E. Cartailhac and H. Breuil excavated at the Gargas Cave (Aventignan, Hautes-Pyrénées) in 1911 and 1913. Within the Gravettian level, they discovered some mobiliary art objects, in particular an engraved pebble with a bison and a feline. This was a significant step in order to solve the question about the cultural attribution of the Gargas rock art (the painted hands revealed in 1906 and the engravings in 1907 and 1910). It was then possible to establish a stylistic and technical link between the engraved pebbles and the drawings on the cave walls of the lower gallery. Therefore, these drawings were also attributed to the Gravettian (“Upper Aurignacian” at this time). Since 2004, the new research program concerning the Gargas Cave has included the re-examination of the Cartailhac - Breuil collection, which is kept at the Institute of Human Palaeontology (Paris). That allowed us to discover several unpublished mobiliary art pieces made on pebble. We present here a small plate on which there is the engraved draft of a horse head. After a recall of the former discoveries of portable art from Gargas, this new representation is analysed and compared with the other horse drawings engraved on the walls of the engravings Sanctuary.