Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Town Hall Cave, located in Teyjat, Dordogne (New Aquitaine), is a major archaeological site of the Upper Paleolithic, occupied at the end of the Magdalenian (about 11,500 years before the present). It owes its name to its proximity to the village town hall, on the northeast edge of the village, under the school and near the church. The cave, dug in a recrystalized Jurassic limestone, has two levels: a 75-metre-long upper, where the engravings are located, and a lower, accessible by a well, with a small underground stream. The 48 wall engravings, discovered in 1903 by Denis Peyrony, adorn the first fifteen metres of the upper level. They represent animals (aurochs, bisons, horses, cervids, reindeer, bears) with remarkable realism, characteristic of the IV style of the final Magdalenian.

The first explorations began around 1880, but it was in 1889 that Perrier du Carne discovered engravings on bones and objects like harpoons. In 1903, Denis Peyrony identified the parietal engravings, then studied by Louis Capitan and Henri Breuil. The excavations of 1904, carried out by the teacher Pierre Bourrinet under the direction of Peyrony, reveal two archaeological layers: a lower one attributed to Magdalenian V (c. 10,000 B.C.), with harpoons with a row of barbed wires, and a higher one of Magdalenian VI, containing two-row barbed wire harpoons and Teyjat tips (pedunculate silex). The cave is listed as a historic monument on April 4, 1910. In the 1960s, Claude Barrière studied parietal decor, followed by a collective project led by Patrick Paillet.

Teyjat's parietal art is distinguished by its bovid frieze, famous for its finished style, and by the overrepresentation of the cervids (29 out of 48 representations), reflecting a mixture of cold (rennes, bison) and temperate (cerfs). This site illustrates the global warming of the late Magdalenian and the departure of large herbivores northward. Among the movable objects discovered are harpoons, projectile tips, and an engraved eagle radius representing a reindeer herd. Nearby, the Miège shelter delivered an adorned bone ankle and a pierced stick decorated with animal figures and "ratapas" (fertilizer engineering). Today closed for conservation, the cave has an exhibition room featuring facsimiles and an immersive video about the life of hunter-gatherers in the late Ice Age.

External links