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Rock Art Research 2012 - Volume 29, Number 2.
244
U-Th analysis and rock art:
a response to Pike et al.
By ROBERt G. BEDNARiK
The implicit purpose of the recent paper by Pike
et al. (2012) appears to be to clarify or refine the
chronology of the cave art of south-western Europe,
most especially of the early phases of that sequence
of traditions. The following is intended to show that
the results they report will not necessarily rewrite
et passim) have succeeded in this. The reasons are as
complex as a constructive discussion of the individual
claims made, and their respective merits, but a small
The uranium-series ‘dates’ Pike et al. provide
collected in eleven Cantabrian caves range from 164
to 40 800 years . Only those from three of these sites
are discussed (Pike et al. 2012). No details were given
of the speleothem deposits sampled, but they are all
reported as being directly and physically related to
pigment residues. Therefore they clearly constitute
do not, as the authors emphasise, date the rock art
concerned. Nevertheless, if their validity were accepted,
they would provide valuable minimum dates where
the calcite skin is superimposed on the rock art; while
in the cases where underlying calcite was sampled, the
results should be maximum ages.
Precisely the same method was used more than
thirty years earlier in Malangine Cave, South Austra-
occurring both below and above a much more sub-
stantial calcite skin consisted of petroglyphs rather than
paintings (Fig. 1). In the Australian study (Bednarik
but averaged a thickness of 15 mm, providing very large
samples, and it did not have to be removed forcibly,
because naturally exfoliating material was amply
available (in a quantity of several kilograms). More
importantly, these samples were not only subjected
to uranium-series assay, but simultaneously also to
of testing one method against the other. This work,
were that the bulk sample of the entire lamina showed
a carbon ratio implying a carbon age of 5550 ± 55 years
BP (Hv-10241) whereas the very same speleothem
yielded a U-Th result of 28 000 ± 2000 . This massive
discrepancy remained unexplained, and although
there may have been some carbon ‘rejuvenation’, it
was assumed that post-depositional mobility of the
uranium content was in all probability responsible for
only published much later and reluctantly, essentially
Decades later Pike et al. (2012) would have greatly
applying the same care to their samples. Perhaps they
felt that the sample amounts available to them were too
small for carbon analysis, but they could have easily
to check the reliability of their method. They propose
that the internal consistency in some samples, taken
from inner and outer sections of a calcite skin, supports
their contentions, but this would obviously be irrelevant
if there are systematic distortions of the uranium-series
sampled deposits similarly.
The early Australian work was followed by a
tandem to rock art, with much the same result (Causse
et al. 2003). Yet both studies were completely ignored
Figure 1. Ceiling petroglyphs in Malangine Cave, South
Australia, reappearing after the thick reprecipitated
calcite lamina, seen on the left, exfoliates naturally.
This lamina, of about 15 mm thickness, bears itself
shallowly incised engravings, thus eectively
separating two phases of cave petroglyphs.
Photographed in 1981.
245
Rock Art Research 2012 - Volume 29, Number 2.
by Pike’s team, here as well as in their preceding
similar work in Church Hole, United Kingdom. In
not even related to any rock art, being located some
markings. Therefore it remains unclear in what way
the Church Hole analyses are relevant to any of that
site’s rock art. Moreover, the claims that engraved
from mistaken iconographic interpretation (Bahn et al.
2003) to the description of about a hundred entirely
natural features as rock art (Ripoll et a. 2004). When
their unfounded claims, including the contention that
the ceiling of this ‘Sistine Chapel’ constitutes the ‘most
richly carved and engraved ceiling in the whole of
cave art’, were challenged (Bednarik 2005), the Church
Hole team responded with personal abuse (Ripoll et al.
2005). Nevertheless, its members did tone down their
capricious claims subsequently (but without formally
acknowledging that they had been wrong; see Montelle
2008), and the quantity of supposedly Palaeolithic art
replaced with the equally capricious uranium-series
analysis of irrelevant accretionary calcite skin.
team now proposing a large number of ‘re-datings’ for
a series of caves in Spain’s north, and anyone querying
them should anticipate an intemperate reaction; this
team does not welcome the stating of alternative views.
The prospect of a terse response should not, however,
deter a critical review of their data and propositions.
Pike et al.’s (2012) statement that the Proto-
Aurignacian represents the arrival of Homo sapiens
presumably refers to Homo sapiens sapiens, because other
sub-species, such as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, also
belong to this species, and existed well before the so-
called Upper Palaeolithic (Bednarik 2008). The authors’
statement that paint residues often lack binders implies
that they are unaware that nearly all carbon dates from
rock paintings are unreliable, because all rock surfaces
and substrates contain organic and non-organic
contamination (derived from micro-organisms, aerosols,
the molecular or object level (Ponti and Sinibaldi 2005).
Unless this can be accomplished, carbon ratios can only
be accepted from charcoal pigment and beeswax art
(Bednarik 2002).
The authors’ support for the ‘long chronology’ is
certainly laudable but they seem unaware of the many
previous publications proposing or documenting
that model. In their discussion of Chauvet Cave they
overlook that the early phase of its rock art has for
credible presence of ‘anatomically modern humans’
at least in Europe, and has been proposed to be up
to in the order of 40 000 years old (Bednarik 2007; cf.
Sadier et al. 2012). Similarly, their suggestion that so-
called Neanderthals might be responsible for some of
the early Franco-Cantabrian rock art is not in the least
new; it has been proposed for many decades, from the
early part of the 20th century (the sepulchral slab from
a Robust child’s grave in La Ferrassie is surely the work
recent years (Bednarik 2007). Again, the author’s lack of
familiarity with the relevant literature is disconcerting
(e.g. when they claim that the purportedly oldest
of their analysed motifs are the oldest rock art of
Europe), and this extends to their comments concerning
Chauvet Cave. The dating of the rock art in that site
own work, which uses a method unproven in rock art
age estimation and burdened with previous failures.
rejected all of the hundreds of datings from Chauvet,
and claimed without empirical evidence that the rock
art is much more recent than the Aurignacian traditions
supports a claim for essentially similar antiquity as that
of the older Chauvet paintings, apparently unaware that
and contradict his own objections to them. After all, the
‘discs’ or dot markings occur not only in the Cantabrian
Figure 2. The cupule slab of ‘Neanderthal’ interment
No. 6 in La Ferrassie, France.
Rock Art Research 2012 - Volume 29, Number 2.
246
cave art they believe they have minimum dated, they
are very numerous in Chauvet Cave also. However, in
Chauvet they were produced as prints (paint applied to
hands and then pressed against the wall), whereas Pike
et al. claim that in El Castillo Cave, this motif type was
produced by blowing pigment onto the wall.
Similarly, the authors’ laudable support for the
gradualist model of recent human technology and
symbolling ability indicates that they are distancing
themselves from the misguided replacement hypothesis,
but they seem unaware of the Oldisleben 2 object, which
— although portable rather than rock art — is of the
Micoquian and thus currently the earliest known
the principal propositions of Pike et al. (2012) are far
from refuted, and their key claim, that the early Franco-
Cantabrian cave art is probably the work of Robusts, is
in all probability correct. It is, however, not a new idea
rock art. Therefore the most recent propositions by
Pike et al. are not essentially refuted, and may in fact
be correct. However, this is far from established and
the analytical method they used against carbon isotope
analysis, as has been done by this author several
decades ago. It is also essential that their sensetionalist
claims be presented in the context of an impeccable
knowledge of the relevant previous literature, which
is this case is sadly lacking.
Robert G. Bednarik
P.O. Box 216
Australia
robertbednarik@hotmail.com
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RAR 29-1058
