Radiocarbon Dating of the Decorated Cosquer Cave (France)

Hélène Valladas (1) , Anita Quiles (2, 1) , Emmanuelle Delque-Količ (3) , Evelyne Kaltnecker (1) , Christophe Moreau (3) , Edwige Pons-Branchu (1) , Luc Vanrell , Michel Olive , Xavier Delestre

1 GEOTRAC - Géochrononologie Traceurs Archéométrie
2 IFAO - Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire
3 LMC14 - UMS 2572 - Laboratoire de mesure du carbone 14

The Grotte Cosquer (southeastern France) is a Paleolithic painted cave only accessible by a deep-water dive. The cave has yielded numerous Paleolithic engravings and drawings, which were produced from wood charcoal. This article presents new radiocarbon dates obtained on samples collected in 2012 directly on 17 parietal representations and at the soil surface, and discusses the 14C results obtained since the discovery of the cave in 1992. A total of 41 samples were dated with ages ranging from 33,000 to 20,000 cal BP. They show that the cave was intermittently decorated over about 10,000 yr

Mots clés: decorated Cosquer cave; 14C dating; Paleolithic

Domaines: Archéologie et Préhistoire

Hélène Valladas, Anita Quiles, Emmanuelle Delque-Količ, Evelyne Kaltnecker, Christophe Moreau, et al.. Radiocarbon Dating of the Decorated Cosquer Cave (France). Radiocarbon, 2016, Proceedings of the 22nd International Radiocarbon Conference (Part 1 of 2), 59 (2), pp.621-633. ⟨10.1017/RDC.2016.87⟩. ⟨hal-01568510⟩