Hydrological staging of a second carved shelter in the Paris basin: emergence of new Palaeolithic symbols

Abstract

A second female sexual figuration has been found in a cramped cavity shelter in a quartzitic sandstone megaclast at Courdimanche, some 10 km from that recently described in the La Ségognole 3 shelter at Noisy-sur-Ecole. As in the latter, modifications to the quartzitic sandstone hosting the figuration had been undertaken to deliver water flows on demand, presumably to enhance its ‘power’. The Courdimanche figuration is a spectacular, annular, essentially natural structure with a sandstone protrusion at its centre. The encompassing shelter is engraved with a large motif of neat and deep grooves which evoke a phallus and several smaller convergent grooves evoking vulvar features: almost all point to the annulus.

The proximity of the Courdimanche shelter to the La Ségognole shelter, both featuring modifications that enhance natural structures to form a sexual figuration, is noteworthy. The two sites are likely to have a cultural link (technological and possibly also spiritual) and thereby the same Magdalenian age as that attributed to the Ségognole 3 shelter by the style of the horse engraving associated with the sexual feature. Staging the sexual figuration by hydrological modifications, as at Ségognole 3, connects femininity with water. This is fundamentally different from the engraved or sculpted static Palaeolithic feminine representations throughout southwestern Europe. We explore a territorial cultural identity that links water to the symbol of fertility: a semiological change that could indicate changes in the socio-economic functioning of regional groups.