La Marche Engraved Stones: Ice Age Human Faces from France

The La Marche engraved stones are a collection of limestone slabs from a cave at Lussac-les-Châteaux in western France, decorated about 15,000 years ago. Excavated from 1937, they include rare realistic human faces in profile, unlike the animals that dominate most Ice Age art. Long doubted as possible forgeries, they are now accepted as one of the most important records of how Ice Age people pictured themselves.

Discovery and excavation

La Marche is a cave and rock shelter near the small town of Lussac-les-Châteaux, in the Vienne department about 35 kilometres south-east of Poitiers. In 1937 the amateur prehistorian Léon Péricard and the researcher Stéphane Lwoff began excavating its deposits.

Over the following years they recovered large numbers of stone tools, bones and, above all, flat slabs of limestone covered with fine engraved lines. Commonly cited counts put the total at around 1,500 engraved slabs, often called “plaquettes”.

Lwoff presented some of the human figures in the early 1940s. The finds immediately attracted attention, and controversy.

What the slabs show

Many slabs carry animals typical of Magdalenian art, such as horses, reindeer, bison, bears, cave lions and mammoths. There are also abstract signs and lines.

What makes La Marche unusual is the number of human images. Well over 100 slabs, by published counts, show human figures, many of them heads seen in profile. Some faces have noses, mouths, ears, beards and hair carefully shown, and some appear to wear head coverings or have distinct hairstyles. Others show bodies, sometimes seated or reclining.

Elsewhere in Ice Age art, human figures are rare and often schematic or distorted. The detailed faces at La Marche stand out as something close to portraits, although we cannot know whether they depict real individuals.

Reading the lines

The engravings are very hard to see. Many slabs were reused many times, so dozens of figures overlap in a tangle of fine lines. Light must strike the surface at a low angle to reveal them.

The French physician and anthropologist Léon Pales spent years studying the slabs with Marie Tassin de Saint-Péreuse. Using careful tracing, they separated the overlapping figures one by one. From 1969 they published a series of volumes on the La Marche engravings, including a 1976 volume devoted to the human images.

The authenticity debate

When the human faces were first shown, many prehistorians were sceptical. The faces looked too realistic and too “modern” for the period, and some features, such as possible hats or trimmed beards, seemed out of place. Some specialists suspected that the slabs had been forged or at least engraved later.

Supporters pointed to the archaeological context: the slabs were found in layers with Magdalenian tools and animal bones, and the human figures shared style and technique with the animal engravings on the same stones. The publication of Pales’s detailed tracings in the 1970s convinced most researchers that the engravings are genuine.

Today the La Marche slabs are widely accepted as authentic, although interpretation of individual figures still varies between researchers.

What the faces might mean

Researchers have offered many readings of the La Marche faces. Some see them as attempts at portraits of real people, others as caricatures, and others as figures from stories or ceremonies. Several heads have exaggerated features, which has led to suggestions that they were meant to be humorous or symbolic.

Some figures of women appear heavy-bodied, and a few have been interpreted as pregnant. Léon Pales also drew attention to details that may show clothing, such as garments, belts or boots. These details give rare clues about how Magdalenian people dressed, although each one is open to debate.

Dating and context

The deposits at La Marche belong to the Middle Magdalenian. Radiocarbon dates and comparisons with other sites place the main occupation at around 15,000 years ago, although calibrated dates for the Middle Magdalenian can push the age back to roughly 16,000 to 17,000 years.

At this time western France was colder than today, and people hunted reindeer and horses on open landscapes. Other Magdalenian sites show similar engraved slabs, but none has produced so many human images. Earlier figures with individual features, such as the Venus of Brassempouy, are much rarer.

Timeline

• c. 15,000 years ago: Magdalenian people at La Marche engrave limestone slabs with animals and human faces.
• 1937: Léon Péricard and Stéphane Lwoff begin excavating the cave.
• Early 1940s: Lwoff presents human figures from the site, prompting doubts about their authenticity.
• 1969: Léon Pales and Marie Tassin de Saint-Péreuse begin publishing their study of the engravings.
• 1976: Their volume on the human figures is published, persuading most specialists that the slabs are genuine.

Why it matters

La Marche challenges the idea that Ice Age artists focused almost entirely on animals. Its faces offer a rare look at how people of the Magdalenian period saw one another, with hair, beards and individual features. Seen alongside the painted animals of caves like Lascaux and Font-de-Gaume, the slabs show how varied prehistoric art could be, and how easily unexpected finds can be doubted before careful study wins acceptance.